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Necessary Evil

Z

zarlor

Well-known member
The data file for Necessary Evil has been through the initial review process and is pretty much ready to go, so it should be available as an official Savage Setting in the near future. In the meantime if anyone wants the latest pre-release version just let me know. For those of you who had links to earlier versions it's still in the same place, just updated.

Some items of note... The Super Powers Companion is required for this data file to be of any real use. In general I've assumed that the SPC versions of powers are the correct version over what is in the Necessary Evil Sourcebook. However, I've added in the NE version of Allergy (at CapedCrusader's suggestion so you can select either the NE version or the SPC version as would be appropriate for your campaign) and I've added in the NE evil "Lair" power so you can either choose that or the "Headquarters" power, again depending on what would be appropriate for your campaign.

That should be it. Just let me know in a PM if you want a pre-release copy, as usual, otherwise look for the official version in the not too distant future. Please let me know if you run into any issues and I'll be happy to get them fixed up right away. (It always seems like I miss something.)
 
I have kept out of most of the discussion regarding the Super Powers Companion. I have been waiting for the new edition.

Have any of you played with the SPC? And out of those that have, how many have also played Mutants and Masterminds? I have a conundrum, as a system I prefer Savage Worlds, but I do really like how Mutants and Masterminds handles the powers. I am wondering if people have experience before I try it (and potentially tick off my group).
 
I have played both, Savage worlds is ok for Super heroes, but Mutants and masterminds is the game for super heroes. At least for my group. They like savage worlds for a lot of genres. They just didn't care much on have savage worlds work with it. But to be fair that's just my group. Others might find they love it. I love savage World also, I just didn't like it for Straight Super heroes. I like using the super powers in other ways in my game.
 
I can't say I've ever done M&M. My gaming group is currently playing Necessary Evil and for Supers rules I've played Champions (HERO system) and Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP version). I have some friends who swear up and down over Champions, but honestly Supers in Savage Worlds is the best I've played so far, and we've got a nutty group of guys and we've still gotten their characters to work in the game. One of our group is basically playing "The Blob" from the old 1950s horror movie, and another is playing a walking cartoon character Marvin the Martian... although without the Shrink Ray, we couldn't quite figure out that on using SPC. He took the Invent power, though, and his inventions are all delivered by ACME (through their interdimensional delivery service, of course). ;) I'm having a blast with the system.
 
But for a more serious game, I just didn't like how it played, Hero is a good system for a player, but for a gamemaster it's just way to numbers heavy. It is a good system. Just a bit to complicated for my taste. The way Savage Worlds does powers is ok for a basic supers game, but the powers are not customizable enough for me - Mutants and mastermind has the power of the hero system but less complicated. I'm not saying it not good enough to do a supers game, it's a bit to lite for my taste. That's just my own opinion. I say try it out once and if your players don't like it, you can always go back to M&M, but you never know. they might like it. Just do something small to test the waters.
 
Well, to give you an idea of what floats the boat of my group I think we're mega-excited for "Spirit of '77". I'd never even heard of the Apocalypse World system their using as the base for the game but after having read through the teaser module they've put out I think it might be right where my group is these days. Totally over the top and not particularly complex. I don't suppose it's really a supers kind of system, though. I have plenty of good things about M&M but getting my group to try new systems is like pulling teeth so somebody in the group would have to have already been hooked and totally excited to run and teach it before it would even be a possibility.
 
OK, Superhero games. I've not tried M&M. Quick game system synopsis, anyone?

Hero(Champions) - I'm one of the originals on this one. I have every book for every edition from the first book they put out up through 5th Edition. And there's a lot of books. One of the best character creation sets, you can really customize a character. I love the speed chart. HOWEVER - it has the absolute slowest combat system I have ever played. No matter what tweaks we tried to make (even using software to manage turns), a fight always took 3+ hours. It totally kills the game for me. I can't bring myself to play it anymore after playing Savage Worlds, and I haven't picked up the Sixth Edition.

GURPS Supers - GURPS is based in reality. Superheroes are not. GURPS cinematic rules don't really work for this. Plus the GURPS system of breaking fights into 1-second increments. Slows things way down. Also very rules heavy, like Hero.

Marvel RPG, Villains and Vigilantes - Ugh. Just ugh.

Savage Worlds - I am currently playing in an SPC First Edition game, and getting ready to run one. As far as creating the character, SW doesn't have as much flexibility as some of the others. It improves with the 2nd Edition, but SW always leans towards simplifying things, and superheroes can get pretty complicated. So, sometimes you have to compromise on what you can get away with. As far as play, however, it rocks. Because it's Savage Worlds, it's fast. It also doesn't force you to deal with things like Endurance. You want to use your Power, you use your Power. No need to keep track of how many times, how many you have left, etc. I find that with most SW games, the system gets out of the way and lets you play. I prefer it these days.
 
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Thanks for the comments. I will wait for SPC2 for Hero Lab and at least give it a try. I like lower powered Supers as the norm, more along the kines of Wild Cards than Justice League.

I used to play GURPS. My main group would only play it for 10 years. Now I am in a group that everyone but me runs Pathfinder. While I do like the powers system in M&M that is also its flaw. It can be a whole lot easier to have the smaller list that SW has. You van always add to it if needed. And M&M would be a good source for ideas.

Necessary Evil looks very fun. I think that alone might tempt my players. Sure it can be done with M&M, but another flaw is that my group likes to loot, which can be problematic in M&M where, like HERO, everything is tied into Power Level and Power Points. Arrays help alleviate it a bit, but loaning Bob your super death ray while he borrows Jimmy.s power armor is naughty.
 
FYI - If you want to use Necessary Evil, it's based on Super Powers Companion 1st Edition... You wouldn't need to wait.

Also, the Super Powers Companion has options to lower the allowed power level.
 
Our current NE campaign has our GM capping the Novice characters at 20 PPs, we get 5 free PPs per Rank but cannot take the PP Edge and doing a final cap at 40 PPs for the campaign. My group is definitely not taking the game too seriously as we've got one guy playing the Blob (as in the 1950's horror movie, not the Marvel villain) whose primary goal is to eat all organic life on the planet eventually (which means his favorite saying to the people he really likes is to them that he will hit them last, isn't that nice of him, er it?), one playing a walking, talking cartoon character that is Marvin the Martian (he's the first iteration that walked off the cel he was being drawn on, not that hack in the Looney Toons cartoons, although he does fully believe he is an actual Martian... he took the Invent power that is trapped so that, essentially, all of his inventions are called into and delivered by ACME... you know, interdimensional transport so that somehow we never see the delivery vehicle but somehow after the allotted time a box parachutes out of the sky, is around the next corner, etc.) his primary goal is to get the parts he needs to finally destroy the earth so he can have an unobstructed view of Venus from Mars, and another guy is playing a full on fantasy dwarf who was the "King Under the Mountain" and has been in hibernation for centuries only to wake into this modern world that is obviously in dire need of having him become King Over the Mountain as well. My character is downright boring, but being a mastermind Super Sorcerer (Arrogant as all hell with a firm belief that everything is all a part of his master plan), who is Fearless with Telepathy he at least keeps the rest of them in check... mostly. And when they aren't in check... well, it was all a part of the plan. I was half tempted to pull a trick out of the Tick comics and take the Elderly Hindrance to basically play "The Terror", evil mastermind extraordinaire whose now well into his 90s and practically decrepit, but I didn't think of that until after we had already started the game. Oh well.

I can see taking the game more seriously could be a lot of fun as well, but even playing it as ridiculously over the top as we have been it's a total blast. I will say that 20 PPs can be powerful with a specific combination of powers (or Dwarf is devastating as a melee fighter and the Blob can be pretty nasty with his entangle/decay combination) but overall it's definitely at the low-end of 4-Color power levels. I'm not even that sure that 40 PPs will be full on Justice League levels but it should be fairly close. 20 PPs is probably a decent cap for a Wild Card characters, though, so you might consider something like a 5 PP cap at Novice and then topping out at 20 PPs. Having played a good 5 sessions of it so far, though, I can't recommend it enough. It really is a ton of fun.
 
Yeah, I am attempting to set up a Grimnoire Chronicles game. I am going through the power level issues right now, trying to decide how to handle it. It's a bit different, you get one power only. It can have several effects, but it all has to be based around one power and what you can do with it. Some things you can't spend a bunch of points on, they max out fairly low.
 
I realize that Necessary Evil is for the first edition, I was planning to fix it to go with 2nd edition. I would rather my group start with that from the beginning and not have to be converted later on.

One project that I have seriously considered is to make power costs more comparable to edges and racial abilities. That is, an advance is worth 2 points worth. This is technically doable since it is possible to make a defined power, along with any predefined mods for it, and give it an edge cost. Hero Lab supports fractional values, so 0.5 would be worth 1 point, or half an advance. As far as I tested there is no cap on cost (other than that it can cost a ton of edges/advances).

The line of thought that got me to consider such a project is that I don't really like how supers (from what I have read in the PEG forums) is a step up from normal play. That in itself is fine, but there is an inherent incompatibility which irks me. Maybe it is from my decade of playing GURPS, but I prefer all characters to be built with the same costs.

Also I do not like that being a Super is inherently superior to all other Arcane Backgrounds. A decent wizard has to be a Super and remake their powers with the SPC. I dunno, I just feel like it kind of trivializes too many things.
 
The project that I mention above would actually be a lot easier if HL allowed both the Powers and the Super Powers tabs to be open at the same time. Then all I would have to do is tweak costs where I deemed necessary.
 
M&M is probably, to me, the sweet spot between covering the powers in enough detail to represent heroes right without too much overhead; its easy to find people who swing off either end on that. Its not completely lacking in issues (I think the costing change on skills for 3e was a mistake, but unfortunately its baked into the costs of some other things enough that it can't be easily extracted; and the change in Impervious was not benign, but that's much more easily fixed. The effect of a big linear die roll (from its D20 ancestry) isn't always good either, though the hero point system buffers that a bit).

I haven't actually used SW with supers, so I won't authoritatively comment on it, but I've heard quite a few people have issues with it. That wouldn't surprise me as, honestly, I've never seen a game system not designed with supers in mind that really handles them well (GURPS Supers at least used to be a notorious example of this, though I haven't seen enough comments on the 4th Edition version of it to say whether its been any improvement).
 
After some thought, comments here and on the PEG forums, I think I will treat the SPC as more of a mod to handle something like Mythic for Pathfinder. I have come up with a workaround to be able to use Supers and normal powers on the same character.

My group had attemped Supers in GURPS in 3rd edition. It was lame incarnate.
 
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