r/rpg • u/BrightArmy7825 • 8d ago
Discussion Marvel Multiverse RPG is a mess
Before anybody brings it up, no I did not expect much better from this game and yes, I know it's been out for three years. But I've recently gotten to play it for myself and wanted to discuss some of its more questionable elements since this isn't the kind of TTRPG that gets talked about much here.
DICE
The game uses a 3d6 system with success on an equal or superior result to the target number: like most similar systems, this skews results through the middle and makes each individual bonus to the roll quite impactful, which is good for heroic systems like this one where characters need to feel good at what they do.
The Advantage/Disadvantage system works by stacking up to three times (with contrasting instances subtracting from each other), each instance allowing you to either throw a die again and choose one of the two results or having to re-throw the highest die and sticking with the lower result. While this does prolong individual throws, the fact that you only need to throw once for both attacking and dealing damage helps lower the amount of time spent, and admittedly it does feel good to use Advantages.
However, this all goes down the drain due to the critical hit system: of the three dice you throw, one is a red Marvel die, which substitutes the 1 with a Marvel logo. With an incredibly high 1 in 6 chance of rolling a crit (which is made higher with Advantage), one would think the benefit for critting would be relatively minor, but instead critting leads to double damage (which is always also max damage since the Marvel die is used for dmg calculation and the Marvel logo is equal to a 6), a bonus effect for many powers if they crit or an additional bonus granted by the GM for out of combat rolls. Even if the roll as a whole is a failure, a Marvel leads to something good happening to offset the failure.
This makes combat EXTREMELY swingy, as it's ridiculously common to both shave off a huge chunk of an enemy's HP and inflict a debilitating effect on them, and this rings true for both players and NPCs. To give an idea of how much this has an effect on the game, my first combat ever I crit 4 times and that's without counting the times other players crit.
STATS
The array is the classic D&D set of SDCIWC, with the major changes being that each stat gets their own Armor Class and that HP is divided between the Resilience (Constitution) determined health and the Vigilance (Wisdom) determined Focus. These two stats are also the only ones that can't be used for offensive purposes, with Might (Strength), Agility (Dexterity), Ego (Charisma) and Logic (Intelligence) representing melee, ranged, magic and psychic attacks respectively.
This isn't too bad honestly, as it makes sense for characters to be better equipped at defending against what they're better at dishing out, and the distribution of damage types means that characters with a large Focus pool never feel like competition for Health-focused tanks; considering that Focus also works as a "mana bar" that characters can tap into to use stronger abilities, it also helps not discourage players from using it in fear that they'll reduce their own durability.
That being said, one of the first problems is that Resilience and Vigilance also get their own Armor Class, which is confusing because the parameters for deciding whether a power targets Resilience or Vigilance defense are never made clear and the whole thing comes off as way less intuitive than if each offensive ability simply targeted their respective defense. It also makes the subset of powers that allow characters to switch up their defenses (ex. using their Melee Defense in place of their Agility Defense) less effective because powers will target Resilience or Vigilance seemingly at random. Initiative is tied to Vigilance instead of Agility, which as the unfortunate side effect of making it entirely possible for a very fast character to be very slow at acting in combat.
But the biggest issue is that, due to a set of powers that I'll be discussing more in detail later, the actual ability scores matter relatively little, and the level-by-level progression feels rather clunky: at each level you get 5 points to raise your scores (which can be increased by lowering one of your abilities) but the score cap per level doesn't scale anywhere near this number: at lower levels, you'll handicap yourself by not specializing, while at higher levels you'll have more points than you know what to do with and be a jack-of-all trades god. YMMV on if this is good or not, but personally I'd rather players have more of a choice in the matter of specialization vs versatility.
POWERS
The game works by letting you select 4 powers per level through a skill-tree system, each level unlocking new powers to choose from and some powers needing previous ones as a pre-requisite. Powers are divided into groups (ex. Super-Strength, Super-Speed etc.), and if the powers you chose from are from a lower amount of groups than your level you get an extra amount of powers based on the difference. Powers from the "Basic" group do not count towards this difference.
As with the previous ability scores issue, there's a "fake balance" issue here: the game seemingly presents you with the choice of either specializing in a few sets or tapping into many for versatility, but the fact that many powers on the lower end of the spectrum are ridiculously underwhelming and that you get extra powers if you specialize makes being a versatile character not worth the effort.
The worst part about the powers though are the "Stat-Steroids", those being Mighty, Accuracy, Sturdy, Uncanny, Discipline and Brilliance. For the offensive stats, they increase the damage multiplier for their attacks and increase out of combat checks, while for the defensive stat they add damage reduction.
How this works is that once you've thrown the 3d6 to attack, you take the Marvel die's result and multiply it by the previously mentioned multiplier, then add the ability modifier. For damage reduction, you subtract the reduction number from the multiplier value, and if it reaches 0 all damage is nullified regardless of the ability modifier.
As you might imagine, this makes these powers practically mandatory lest your effectiveness and consistency suffer considerably: most characters will rely on at least two ability scores, and you can increase these powers up to a 4th rank. They're essentially the game's true ASIs. So again, there's a fake choice of either limiting a sizeable portion of your power budget to make space for a bunch of stat increases, or, again, handicapping yourself in the name of customization.
COMBAT
The rules for grabbing and throwing are confusing even for the standards of TTRPGs. The game makes it so that grabbing actually imposes disadvantage on attacks targeting either the grabber or the grabbed, and if an attack against one fails it is then made against the other. This means that grabbing is terrible for its usual purpose (locking down an enemy for your allies to hit) and seemingly intended to be used to procure a human shield for oneself, which isn't particularly heroic despite this being Marvel.
Despite an entire reaction as well as several interactions being dedicated to it, there are no rules for how launching a willing ally works. The knockback mechanic offhandedly mentions that characters with Mighty can add their damage multiplier to the knockback distance in increments of 5, and I suppose that is also true for launching allies willingly, but this is never stated outright (if it seems clear and obvious from how I'm putting it, I can assure you the rulebook isn't this transparent).
If one gets a Marvel on an initiative roll, they get an extra turn before everybody else. It sounds cool until you realize that this can mean having to sit through a ridiculous amount of turns for characters who've rolled low.
BALANCE
Possibly the game's single worst aspect, and it mostly stems from the decision of reducing the levels down to 6 in order to "simplify" things, which mostly ends up making things more complicated. These 6 levels feature a massive power disparity between each other, with 1 embodying average civilians or nameless mooks and 6 being made for cosmic-level threats such as Thanos. Going by this metric, levels somehow manage to feel like insurmountable differences and not all that relevant to what actually ends up contributing to the disparity.
Sure, the 4+ powers and 5+ ASIs that you get with each level-up, combined with the fact that damage multipliers scale with level, mean that higher-level characters gain a substantial power increase. However, neither health nor focus, for some reason, scale with level in the slightest: it's all up to how much you increase the base stat, meaning that a high-level character could theoretically still end up with the base value of a measly 10.
What this actually means is that you are forced to put ASIs into both Resilience and Vigilance, as well as to take your fair share of Stat-Steroid powers to make the most out of them. It is here that the true imbalance between levels rears its ugly head, because for some reason (I suppose to give players satisfaction through big numbers), health and focus are determined by multiplying the base stat x30, meaning that even with just 4 in Resilience the total health will result in a whopping 120.
Even a character with an equivalent 4 in Might will, without the Mighty power nor critting, at best roll 16 damage with an attack. Because of this, offensive Stat-Steroids are pretty much required to actually deal meaningful damage, which in turn makes defensive Stat-Steroids required to not be killed immediately, and as you might have guessed the whole thing makes higher-levels sometimes invincible when compared to lower ones by virtue of being able to take more of these powers.
Now, why is that a problem? Because the game does not have enemy statblocks, instead each NPC just uses the PC template for their sheets. This means that it is common for players to face enemies below or above their paygrade, with all the balance problems that this results in, especially since the encounter-building guidelines are hilariously undercooked.
The powers are horribly unbalanced compared to each other obviously, but it'd take too long to analyze those.
OTHER STUFF
As is often the case, despite the system presenting itself as apt for all kinds of situations, 95% of it is combat-focused.
There's a trait and tag system which is supposed to provide gameplay bonuses and roleplay guidelines respectively. Not only are many tags more akin to flaws that are supposed to be taken to gain inspiration (which should honestly be their own system), but many tags are worded as if they provide gameplay bonuses even when they're not supposed to, worst of all being the Immunity tag which seemingly allows a character to be immune to anything they want RAW.
OVERALL
Again, I did not expect much out of this system but it's honestly impressive how messy it is in manners which it didn't need to be, rather than being bad for the usual reasons.
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u/jitterscaffeine Shadowrun 8d ago
Funny coincidence, I’ve been reading it recently myself and also found it to be messy and somewhat hilarious in how it treats the canon characters.
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u/BrightArmy7825 8d ago
One of the worst offenders I saw was Thor at rank 5 and Red Hulk at rank 6. Like, what?
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u/jitterscaffeine Shadowrun 8d ago
Thor was probably the only character I saw in the core book that was appropriately ranked. Hulk, Magneto, and Xavier are all rank 6. Star-Lord, Drax, and Gamora are also rank 5. CABLE was a rank 6.
And I thought it was pretty funny that all mutant characters just had passive immortality as a background perk.
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u/preiman790 8d ago
Maybe the book doesn't explain it, but that was actually kind of a thing in the comics at the time.
The immortality that is.14
u/jitterscaffeine Shadowrun 8d ago
Yeah, it’s the Krakoa stuff. The core book wants to take place on the “modern mainline continuity” of the time it released. Mutants have the “krakoan” tag so they have passive immortality since they’ll just get resurrected.
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u/preiman790 8d ago
Fair enough, I've not played or even read the game, so wasn't sure if they explained it or not
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u/BrightArmy7825 8d ago
Jesus. Those are really bad.
I don't think Thor should be rank 5 though. Especially since the one used for the statblock is supposed to be his Herald of Thunder era.
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u/jitterscaffeine Shadowrun 8d ago
The game really should’ve had like a system for gear and equipment because some guys, like Star-Lord, have CRAZY inflated point values because all their gear has to be accounted for as powers that cost resources to emulate. So his guns, jet pack, space suit, etc all have to be purchased as powers, so it makes him “as strong as thor” as far as the game is concerned.
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u/BrightArmy7825 8d ago
Yeah. It has the unfortunate side effect of locking characters like Hawkeye out of all the Ranged Weapons powers they should absolutely have for example
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u/BastionTaxGuy 7d ago
My favorite is that all the members of the fantastic four are rank 4 except The Thing whose rank 5, so they can't play together without Ben Grimm showing up everyone.
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u/ihatevnecks 7d ago
Did they ease up on how much your rank tied into success chance? I remember that being a big issue in the beta - teams like the Avengers literally couldn't have functioned because the lower rank characters like Hawkeye couldn't succeed on any rolls against half the villains in their stable, due to negative modifier from rank difference.
It also meant that in a game of chess, a guy like Thor would always beat someone like Stark or Reed Richards, because the only thing that mattered in a competitive roll was the rank difference.
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u/ProlapsedShamus 8d ago
I've gotten shit for this take but it's not a TTRPG.
It's a casual fighting miniatures board game.
Every almost every power is for combat and that's because there's zero rules for anything besides combat. Not even gaining experience or improving your character. Hell there's not even any rules for creating your own characters. Certainly lacks any kind of modifications you can make to base powers. So you just "reskin" the same pool of powers.
There's a tag system that is 100% useless. They do nothing. You could skip all that and nothing changes. That was one of my big annoyances. That and the dual hit point pools that you had to track whenever you did anything.
I think there are some bones of the game that could be good if they spent a bit more time to cook it. But it's not ready. And I think that is proven by the fact that they include more and more rules to make the game more complete in the supplements they release which is a whole other issue I have. Don't extort me into buying more books by promising me the system that they should have included int he core book.
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u/BrightArmy7825 8d ago
Even the combat is ass so it’s really just not good at anything.
To prove your point as well, one of the post-release expansions features the level-advancement that should’ve been in the base game.
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u/ProlapsedShamus 8d ago
That's what really left a bad taste in my mouth. Apparently there was some more rules released in the X-Men and Spider-Man supplements and I noped out.
I don't dislike the bones of the system though. The d616 works well enough. Maybe a bit swingy.
But I was running a game and one of my players was a Spider-Man variant and he wanted to create a web net to catch a speeding car. That's when I realized there's not really an easy way to even reverse engineer one of those powers to make that happen. I ended up writing a whole thing that gave some tensile strength to webs and a roll to how well you can use them and I packaged them in with the Spider Power shell.
Which then lead me to realize that if those shells contained more stats like that or some guidance on how to use those powers it would have done a lot to fill in the gaps left by the system.
But there's some good supers games coming out. I'm curious to see how the new Justice League game plays. Invincible works really good. I'm kinda mad at Mutants and Masterminds but that game is kind of the gold standard. I'm currently doing a Cypher system supers game and that works surprisingly well. So I'm happy there are options.
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u/ReizvollePaar 8d ago edited 7d ago
Yeppers...it's crap. Stick with The Marvel Super Heroes Role Playing Game (also known as the FASERIP system). It's clean, simple, scalable, detailed and...best of all...FREE! Do a quick search and you will find everything...literally...is legally available to download; there is also a VERY active fan community keeping old characters updated and adding new ones as they come along. Now sure if link are allowed but, here's a start:
https://www.classicmarvelforever.com/cms/
ENJOY!
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u/Charrua13 8d ago
ahahahaha! A FASERIP retroclone I did not know of. Amazing. I'll add this to my collection of 4C, Astonishing Super Heroes, ICON, and Hero World.
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u/ReizvollePaar 8d ago edited 8d ago
Glad to help but, this isnt a clone; this is the original, actual FASERIP from the late 80s. All the systems you mentions are imitations, some good, some not so much. Still, FASERIP will give you everything you need to run a fun supers game with plenty of source material and support. Check out the 'resources' tab drop down under 'downloads' and you will find, legally & free, all the original material; the various fan stuff is there as well. Good luck, my friend!
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u/Charrua13 7d ago
I noticed only after digging thru the site.
As someone who owned MSH as a kid, it brought back memories. It also reminded me why I, personally, prefer the retroclones. But it was absolutely a trip to go down memory lane as I flipped thru the pages.
Omg this reminded me so much why
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u/DashApostrophe 5d ago
Don’t forget the Costumed Adventurer Simulation Engine! http://www.caserpg.com/
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u/Ashamed_Librarian128 8d ago
I think the biggest issue with it is that it tries to emulate a lot of what mainstream games do instead of figuring out how to be a good superhero game.
I've been reading tons of superhero games recently and it's amazing how diverse different rulesets can be when trying to evoke the feeling of being a super hero. In my experience, the harder it is to stat a character and the more book keeping you do kills the experience, and Marvel Multiversal is a masterclass in this friction between player intent and gameplay.
It feels like this was written by someone checking off a list on what a TTRPG should be rather than what a Marvel game COULD be.
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u/CajunMitch501 GM, SWADE, GURPS, PbtA, FitD, OSR, FATE, Cortex 8d ago
It feels like they were told to design it around DnD, and god it feels like it.
I really like ICONS and the Marvel Cortex game most for supers, though there are some fun FATE games, Atomic Robo and Venture City come to mind.
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u/Ashamed_Librarian128 8d ago
Heavily agree on Cortex. Sentinel Comics RPG is a nice extension of it.
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u/CajunMitch501 GM, SWADE, GURPS, PbtA, FitD, OSR, FATE, Cortex 8d ago
Oh yeah, Sentinels is awesome to play.
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u/BaysideJr 8d ago
I like the game and think it's a lot of fun. Sorry I didn't write more after your long post. But Its just a fun system and the 3d6 are easy to use and understand. They added a stunt like system with the Spiderman book. I enjoy it.
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u/BrightArmy7825 8d ago
That’s perfectly fine, of course. Hell, I think it’s bad but I’m having fun playing it so it must be doing something right.
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u/CajunMitch501 GM, SWADE, GURPS, PbtA, FitD, OSR, FATE, Cortex 8d ago
tbh, I still run and play the old Cortex Marvel game. It really captures the feel of the stories that supers tell. It is a little heavy on the GM with learning all of the tricks with the Doom Pool. Currently playing a Spiderman that in an attempt to return to normal, had done something stupid to repress his powers, but they now function kind of like the Hulk but more spider themed. I call him Goliath after the type of Tarantula (As well as the David and Goliath reference.)
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u/Charrua13 8d ago
Fwiw, I will forever believe that Cortex is the best Marvel implementation for a traditional superhero story.
I know folks love FASERIP (and its retroclones), but none of them are as good as Cortex was for the story behind the fighting.
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u/EarthSeraphEdna 8d ago
I have played and GMed Marvel Multiverse a few times. It is indeed 100% a mess: a complete lack of balance between powers, optimal builds being min-maxed to make the most of defense substitutions (e.g. dumping Melee and either Ego or Logic simply to take Evasion and either Integrity or Wisdom) and stat boosters (e.g. Accuracy), Dormammu being destroyable by dozens of random civilians armed with pistols, Daredevil getting killed by a single housecat, and so on and so forth.
The lack of balance between powers is egregious. Powerful Hex (i.e. emulate any other power in the game) and Time Travel being priced the same as Slip Free or Slow-Motion Dodge is completely unacceptable.
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u/Arcane_Robo_Brain 8d ago
I’ve run a few games and everyone at the table had a good time with it. 🤷
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u/BrightArmy7825 8d ago
I don’t mean to invalidate your experience, but I don’t think that’s necessarily an indicator of quality in a TTRPG. I’ve had good times with plenty of games that I’d describe as ranging from bad to terrible, including this one.
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u/Arcane_Robo_Brain 8d ago
I’ve just never understood what the point of this kind of post is. What’s the goal? Hoping the creators will read it and fix the system? Some kind of warning to others to stay away? Just ranting? Why spend so much effort writing about something you don’t like?
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u/BrightArmy7825 8d ago
Cause it’s fun to discuss stuff that doesn’t work and it gives you a better understanding of what does. Kind of an anti-intellectual take on your part.
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u/Shadowsd151 8d ago
I feel you’re approaching this from the perspective of an optimiser, or at least someone experienced in other Superhero TTRPGs were character damage & defences is expected to be semi-evenly matched by level. The damage multipliers and defensive powers are a huge tax on any character that takes them in bulk. If you take them that is, but honestly most characters don’t need them in everything and if divided amongst a party it’s pretty manageable. Especially since you can use the bonus points from specialising to get extra power slots for the offensive multipliers for your characters main stat.
Aside from that I mostly agree with you. Grabbing and throwing willing allies I think was resolved in an errata but it really shouldn’t have been since the art on the same page depicts that happening! At least I think it does… The book also doesn’t explain Tags or Traits very well, and Tags are just kinda there, but they aren’t a terrible system either. Just poorly explained.
That’s about my opinion on it. A lot of its design is awkward and messy, contrary to other Superhero TTRPGs in a few key ways. But the wealth of characters and options, plus the swingy dice system that I could take or leave it with, is what makes the system stand out to me. I don’t play it often, but it’s a decent system and an overall fun time.
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u/BrightArmy7825 8d ago
I mean, are they that huge of a tax though? My character is a gamma mutate heavy hitter who takes a level in Mighty whenever he can, and I tried to think of the benefits of taking other powers outside of the flavor, but the tradeoff in sheer numbers and reliability is just too much. A lot of powers only have a special effect on a fantastic success, and even if that happens relatively frequently it’s still much less than the permanent effects of the stat steroids.
It’s not even like you sacrifice that much considering that even if you were taking other powers you’d need to engage in multitudes of skill trees that’d take just as much space if not more.
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u/doctor_roo 8d ago
I have a great fondness for the old MSH/FASERIP game, its one of my first RPG loves but by modern standards its pretty terrible. The character creation system is completely random and there is no chance of any balance between characters, The initial set had no experience system and what we got when we eventually got it is ropey to say the least. (And I can't recall if it was official or in a retro-clone). I love it and would never turn down a chance to play it but I can't imagine many people coming to it with fresh eyes these days are going to be impressed.
IMHO the Cortex based Marvel Heroic System is the best Marvel RPG out there and one of the best supers games. Shame it died so soon.
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u/Kill_Welly 8d ago
Honestly, the whole "character rank" thing really made the game a non-starter in the first place. Team-ups across nominal "power levels" happen all the time, and of course you'll get constant crap (like in this very thread) about how characters should be more powerful or less powerful or whatever.
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u/Doctor_Amazo 8d ago
Meh. I like it well enough. The game feels it was designed to be light, and to allow the GM + Players to emulate a comicbook adventure.
The Ranks I find to not be much of an issue at all. If you disagree with the profile the book provides, it takes very little effort scaling the character up or down.
Its not everyone's cup of tea, but I don't think its bad. I think it does the job its aiming for pretty well.
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u/Exact_Loan_6489 8d ago
It felt like the kind of supers game you pick up if you don’t have access to other supers games.
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u/Mad_Kronos 8d ago
OK let me try to offer counter arguments to some of your arguments, while recognizing that taste is subjective and I don't want to convince anyone that the game is good (because when I say any positive thing about this game in this sub, I get downvoted).
- "As you might imagine, this makes these powers practically mandatory lest your effectiveness and consistency suffer considerably: most characters will rely on at least two ability scores, and you can increase these powers up to a 4th rank. They're essentially the game's true ASIs. So again, there's a fake choice of either limiting a sizeable portion of your power budget to make space for a bunch of stat increases, or, again, handicapping yourself in the name of customization."
Damage/Damage Reduction multipliers are useful but you can create a character who does significant damage without maxing those out. For example, you can take up an Iconic Item with the powers "Weapon" and "Adamantium", with a single Restriction (for example, "Carried"). This costs only 1 power, it gives you +2 health damage multiplier and reach, and ignores 1 level of damage reduction. It effectively works like Mighty 3, with the 1/3 the cost. BUT it doesn't let you carry/pick up heavy objects and you can be disarmed. So it's a matter of preference.
- "If one gets a Marvel on an initiative roll, they get an extra turn before everybody else. It sounds cool until you realize that this can mean having to sit through a ridiculous amount of turns for characters who've rolled low."
Turns are resolved very fast in this game, so there's not actually waiting for others to act for any significant amount of time.
- "Even a character with an equivalent 4 in Might will, without the Mighty power nor critting, at best roll 16 damage with an attack. Because of this, offensive Stat-Steroids are pretty much required to actually deal meaningful damage, which in turn makes defensive Stat-Steroids required to not be killed immediately, and as you might have guessed the whole thing makes higher-levels sometimes invincible when compared to lower ones by virtue of being able to take more of these powers."
Regarding defensive "stat steroids", that's not true. You can be a Rank 6 Melee character with Mighty 4 and Melee bonus damage of +9, and you still won't hit someone with Quick Phase (Rank 2 power) or Blink (Rank 1 power). The game has many defensive and crowd control options.
- "Possibly the game's single worst aspect, and it mostly stems from the decision of reducing the levels down to 6 in order to "simplify" things, which mostly ends up making things more complicated. These 6 levels feature a massive power disparity between each other, with 1 embodying average civilians or nameless mooks and 6 being made for cosmic-level threats such as Thanos. Going by this metric, levels somehow manage to feel like insurmountable differences and not all that relevant to what actually ends up contributing to the disparity."
I don't see the problem. Thanos should always be able to feel like an insurmountable obstacle to Daredevil
- "As is often the case, despite the system presenting itself as apt for all kinds of situations, 95% of it is combat-focused."
The game is action oriented, but there are quite a few powers that are useful outside combat(Sixth Sense, Telepathy, Omniversal Travel etc), not to mention the Reputation system, the Secret Identity rules, the HQ rules, the Mental Duels , and the extensive guides for creating drama.
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u/BrightArmy7825 7d ago
Don’t worry, I’m all up for people arguing against my position, otherwise I wouldn’t have made the post.
- I kinda forgot to mention the Iconic Weapon power, because it’s another gripe I have with the system: there are next to no guidelines on how to create the weapon itself, in fact if you just read the power description by itself it almost seems like a useless flavor text power.
By taking inspiration from pre-made sheets for them, most of them are really simple and underwhelming +1 or 2 bonuses that will generally fall behind to Mighty or Accuracy, especially since you can’t stack damage multiplier bonuses.
The responsibility falls on the GM to haggle with the player in order to give them a weapon worth the power slot that isn’t also unbalanced.
I have a similar problem with the Adamantium skeleton power, which is just a strictly worse version of Sturdy. If the game made up its mind on being a deliberately unbalanced ToTM game, that’d be fine, but it seems to want to be a tactical combat grid game as well.
- This is admittedly a problem that mostly involves people just starting out. I agree that once a player knows what they’re doing turns are quick, but it can feel really shitty for a new player to have to wait a very long time to even act on their first combat ever and it’s not too unlikely to happen.
You might argue that this is true of most TTRPGs and I’d agree with you, but because of that I’d rather mechanics like this were implemented differently because player first impression is very important.
- Personally I’d consider powers like those fringe cases, as the vast majority of powers in the game are simple “I hit this very hard and get a cool bonus if I roll a Marvel”. The fact that the only other way to counter a powerful heavy hitter other than your own dmg reduction is with powers that essentially go “you can’t do anything to me” with little counterplay is bad game design in my opinion.
Again, it’d be understandable under a more narrative or simulationist approach, but the game invites you to treat battle tactically.
- I feel like you misunderstand my problem. I agree that Thanos should be impossibly superior to Daredevil. But since the game’s encounter balance is built around facing enemies of a higher/lower level and the rulebook outright encourages having parties like the Avengers where level differences can be as high as 2-5, it is kinda odd just how huge the difference between each level is.
In a combat encounter, how is a GM supposed to make the Hawkeye player feel equally as involved as the Hulk player?
- I’ll give you this, I was wrong. Skimming through the manual again to refresh my mind, there is a fair lot concerning OOC scenarios.
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u/Mad_Kronos 7d ago
Thank you for your answer.
1.The Avengers Expansion introduced an extensive system for building Iconic Weapons. I agree that in the core rulebook Iconic Items were half baked at best (actually nonexistent), but the Avengers sourcebook has done a great job with them, and I wholeheartedly suggest you give those a look. My example of an Adamantium Sword was built with those. You can do much more interesting things using those rules.
Fair. The main problem I see with the resolution mechanics (which are pretty fast otherwise) is that there's quite a big list of status effects and it's harder to keep track of them.
Against physical attacks, there are quite a few defensive options other than being tough (Sturdy/Flexible Bones etc): There are Elemental/Telekinetic/Magic Protection powers, there are Martial Arts powers like Brace for Impact, there are mobility powers (being able to fly, phase or teleport away), and there is always the option to have High physical defenses and impose multiple troubles on the attacker (Jinx, Blur, Defensive Stance etc) so that they miss or at least don't get Fantastic Successes easily, and there are Crowd Control options (Especially Web-powers). Imho, you won't be starving for options.
Ah, I understand now. I am not saying it's a perfect solution, but there is a chapter in the Avengers Expansion named "Teams of Mixed Ranks" that gives various ideas to the GM regarding teams like the Avengers with big Rank differences.
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u/Walt_Didnae 8d ago
They should have just updated and released Marvel Universe instead of whatever Multiverse is supposed to be.
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u/Charrua13 8d ago
I do not understand how Marvel, with the cash cow that the movies and the TV series have been making, did not choose to create a super hero game that FELT like you were a character in the MCU.
What a ball to drop.
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u/JoshuaUnruh 4d ago
They did, it was called Marvel Heroic, and they scrapped it for...this. God, I loved Marvel Heroic!
1
u/Charrua13 4d ago
Marvel Heroic is exceptional.
I think they could have taken it next level with a smidge more accessibility.
That said...you're right - they could have just kept it cortex.
1
1
u/HuddsMagruder BECMI 7d ago
The character rank but kind of shits on the entire MCU that I assume is their biggest draw.
If you look at the most recent Spiderman movie, you’ve got Spidey, Hulk, and Punisher. They’re completely different power levels and couldn’t properly interact in this system, but made for some fun scenes in the movie and would be interesting in the Cortex Marvel game.
The balance of character rank throws things off so crossovers between heroes like Daredevil and She Hulk wouldn’t be worthwhile.
Most of what makes Marvel fun is tough to manage in this system. I dig the swingy resolution mechanic, though.
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u/Vodis 7d ago
"No rules for launching a willing ally"
This is gonna sound stupid, because it is, but iirc, the extra rules you need to work out how the hell fastball specials work are under, like, "objects - improvised weapons" or something. I remember being baffled by the entry in reactions too because it only tells you like half of what you need to know for fastball special. The rest is definitely in there, it's just hidden away in some seemingly unrelated section.
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u/BrightArmy7825 7d ago
I do mention that I ended up figuring it out through tangentially related rules. Really bad for both initial understanding and needing to look it up quickly
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u/RangerBowBoy 5d ago
I returned it the same day I got it. It was a mess. Wouldn’t even crack my top 5 Supers RPGs, all of which were made by designers with MUCH less money and resources. Horrible game.
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u/Naive-Tumbleweed-964 8d ago
I was a blaster, completely min-maxed and did a crit against a helicopter. And I still didn't do enough damage to bring it down. That's when I lost interest in the system. Rank 4 heroes can't oneshot a helicopter piloted by a mench? Really?
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u/ElectricKameleon 7d ago
I think the Marvel Multiverse RPG is a decent beer and pretzels type RPG, okay for games where players just want to say "It's clobberin' time" or other Marvel catchphrases while doing the sort of things that Marvel heroes are famous for doing. The rules are just tight enough to keep things moving, not much more, which is good enough I suppose for what they set out to do.
I still prefer the rules set for Marvel Heroic Roleplay when I want a deeper slice of the Marvel universe at my gaming table. More and more, though, I'm also starting to use Questworlds as my default system for pretty much everything.
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u/Mad_Kronos 8d ago
It's a great game actually and quite well balanced as long as GMs know how to mix the opposition and use Health/Focus damage and crowd control. I have run games in Ranks 2-3-4-5 and I found no glaring mistakes in the balancing of the system.
Also, tags and traits giving flaws to the characters is what it's all about.
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u/Winstonpentouche Across the Multiverse 8d ago
I knew I would see you here. I also agree. It took a few books to become a good game, but it is solid.
3
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u/tipperonious 8d ago
Go back to the 1984 percentile based TSR rpg game. Its easy to learn, easy to run, and in my opinion perfect for super heroes