Villains and Vigilantes

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Dumarest

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Anyone got any slick formulae for Villains and Vigilantes combat that allows you to forgo the attack/defense and comparative experience levels tables? Any way to calculate without committing the tables to memory? I don't see a pattern in the numbers in the basic chance to hit with particular attacks but maybe I overlooked it. Also, does anyone have any insight as to why a 1st level attacker should get -1 to hit a defender of the same level? All else being equal, defense is just inherently better. The combat tables in V&V have always seemed wild and woolly to me. Chemical Power needs 6 or less to hit someone using a Magnetic Power defense but 9 or less against Sonic Abilities because...? :trigger:
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Well, for comparative level, I have this awkward mess.

Attack bonus = Level / 2 round down. Additional bonus of +1 at Level 3.
Defense bonus = Level / 2 round up. Additional bonus of +1 at Level 2.

To find attacker's combat modifier, subtract the defender's Defense Bonus from attacker's Attack Bonus.

For the Attack types versus Defense types, I've got nothing. Every time I think I see a pattern, I see a column where it goes off into randomsville.
 
Anyone got any slick formulae for Villains and Vigilantes combat that allows you to forgo the attack/defense and comparative experience levels tables?
Sadly, no.

Look, I loved playing V&V back in the day, and I'm sure it could be fun even now, but it's a goddamn ridiculous game.
 
I'm thinking about running it again in the near future. I love seeing what screwball powers get rolled. I recall playing a hero with Crustacean Powers long ago. I think he was called King Crab but I can't be sure unless I find his character sheet. Yes, once upon a time I was sometimes a mere player and not the Maze Controller!
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“I am the Maze Controller. The god of this universe I have made. The absolute authority. Only I know the perilous course which you are about to take. Your fate is in my hands.”
 
FGU games scream to be converted to a VTT for automation.
 
I'm thinking about running it again in the near future. I love seeing what screwball powers get rolled. I recall playing a hero with Crustacean Powers long ago. I think he was called King Crab but I can't be sure unless I find his character sheet. Yes, once upon a time I was sometimes a mere player and not the Maze Controller!
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“I am the Maze Controller. The god of this universe I have made. The absolute authority. Only I know the perilous course which you are about to take. Your fate is in my hands.”
I recently bought this flick for 2 bux and I am glad of it
 
I've got V&V Mighty Protectors. Have you had a look at it. It unifies things up with a points system but there are still random roll options. One thing I like is that there are scaling maximums on things like damage and armour relative to total points.
 
I've got V&V Mighty Protectors. Have you had a look at it. It unifies things up with a points system but there are still random roll options. One thing I like is that there are scaling maximums on things like damage and armour relative to total points.
I have heard that Mighty Protectors is somewhat polarizing. What changes were made to the Villains & Vigilantes rules?
 
Well, the attack table is gone...

I think the handling of power modifiers could be better as they're fixed discounts rather than multipliers. You know, it's more structured, less loose, less D&D like, lots of big changes but no multiplying decimals to figure out your hit points. Fixed lifting amounts by Strength scores, fractional points at places in the progression charts. Initiative changed, I'd have to look up what they did there but the 15 points per action is gone. I guess, what I'd say is that it's like the jump from D&D 2e to 3e, you can see the DNA there but it's not the same game any more. Personally it's better but I like crunch and structure. It's not bad but it's not anything new you haven't seen before elsewhere either.
 
You know, it's more structured, less loose, less D&D like, lots of big changes but no multiplying decimals to figure out your hit points. Fixed lifting amounts by Strength scores, fractional points at places in the progression charts. Initiative changed, I'd have to look up what they did there but the 15 points per action is gone.
That sounds like an improvement, but I did like the initiative rules. I feel like you could make old-school Champions run a lot smoother by using the V&V initiative system.
 
I have heard that Mighty Protectors is somewhat polarizing. What changes were made to the Villains & Vigilantes rules?

Well, you have V&V and then you have Mighty Protectors. The games are written by the same dudes. There are some of the same names for powers. Both are superhero games and use dice, pencils, papers. That’s about it for the similarities.
 
That's a fair interpretation really. I think if I'd been given V&V, the changes I would have made would have been an integrated Strength scale where your size hit points are based on your size but most of your super strength is just that, super. I'd have ditched the defense table for resistance and vulnerability like 5e D&D uses. And I'd have set up the power tables so you'd only get big powers like animal / plant powers if you didn't get many powers in the first place. Still, I think Mighty Protectors is decent and still fairly D&D like. It's not the stripped down simplicity of V&V but it's not as complex as Mutants and Masterminds or Champions by a long shot.
 
I've got lots of good memories of playing V&V back in the day, but I wouldn't enjoy the system now. Having some skills, some type of awareness/perception stat, and a better balance of offensive powers (some do more damage than others for no particular reason) among other things.
 
I still prefer V&V myself, though a lot of that may have to do with me having a higher chance of playing, or running V&V than Might Protectors (not a HIGH chance but still.)
 
I would put Mighty Protectors in the category of new editions that went too far from the original.
 
Anyone familiar enough with Mighty Protector's want to examine a character I made, see if I did it right (working from a PDF is tough.)
 
I would put Mighty Protectors in the category of new editions that went too far from the original.

I agree with this. If you review the 3 books, Mighty Protectors was really Living Legends 2nd Edition. Unfortunately it was a better option to fragment the fan base for V&V instead of trying to drum up a fan base for Living Legends.
 
I had fond memories of playing V&V in college, before we shifted over to Champions. A year or two ago, my brother picked up a copy of the V&V rules and gave them to me, and I just ran a one-shot adventure with it a few weeks ago. The adventure was called "Streets of New York: Crime Wave 1982" and the pitch was "Ed Koch needs your help!" to clean up crime in the Big Apple. The two and a half hours we played turned out to be mostly a single fight at the press conference where the Mayor announced the membership of the new team, and a disgruntled maybe a little racist anti-hero vigilante type showed up to challenge the inclusion of a young black superhero named Streethawk on the team on the grounds that he was too inexperienced (that is, Streethawk's player had rolled a really bad reaction from the crowd when the Mayor introduced him). I feel like everyone had fun working through the byzantine intricacies of the combat system, but the rules are indeed pretty disjointed if you're used to more coherent designs. Nonetheless, I'm going to try it again at Dexcon in Morristown NJ in July, so if anyone's interested I'll post here to let you know how it goes.
 
I was in a V&V campaign before I moved out of NY. The GM runs a forum for the game that has been around forever. He uses a lot of house rules, which you can get here.

I had fun playing in his campaign; he was probably the best GM I've ever had.

I had run it last a few years before I moved, where I ran Death Duel with the Destroyers & Island of Doctor Apocalypse for a mini-con NerdNYC had put together. I improvised some stuff, and it went well. I was more of a Champions guy, but I did run V&V first
 
That's the one. All the players in the group were members too. We'd post stories about our characters. I had one for my Iron Man wannabe, Glare called A Glaring Commentary. I never finished it (My character died in the last adventure I played in, and I was going to do an in character post of the session right up to his death, but was too busy to do it. By the time I could, I had forgotten a lot of the session, and couldn't do it justice)
 
I used to be pretty active on the site too. Not as one of the players but a V&V fan.
 
That's the one. All the players in the group were members too. We'd post stories about our characters. I had one for my Iron Man wannabe, Glare called A Glaring Commentary. I never finished it (My character died in the last adventure I played in, and I was going to do an in character post of the session right up to his death, but was too busy to do it. By the time I could, I had forgotten a lot of the session, and couldn't do it justice)
Sounds like A Glaring Omission to me.
 
Also, does anyone have any insight as to why a 1st level attacker should get -1 to hit a defender of the same level?
I've owned the rulebook for less than two weeks, so I have no special insight to offer, but I wonder if that's tied in to how the attack power vs defense type table is laid out. A lot of powers (like non-comporealness, for example) seem to be a perfect defense against certain powers (can't blast me with your electrical powers while I'm phasing, ha ha!). Except, instead of just saying that the attack can't ever work, it instead says you need a 0 or less to hit on a d20.* So (not counting relevant characteristic modifiers), a more experienced attacker does have a chance, no matter how slim, of figuring out a way to slip past a seemingly unbeatable defense. But you generally have to be a couple of levels higher than your target to get at least a +1 to hit... so perhaps it was a design consideration that you needed to be significantly more experienced than your opponent to try to overcome such defenses.

Which is not to say it's an elegant design - it's not, it's a hot mess of a system - but I'm willing to give the designers the benefit of the doubt and assume that it wasn't just random numbers thrown together, but rather there was some actual thought put into how it would all work together during actual play.

*Have I ever mentioned that rolling low on a d20 to hit is a goddamn commie plot and it makes my teeth itch?
 
I used to be pretty active on the site too. Not as one of the players but a V&V fan.
I only read it, never created an account or posted anything. Same with the Hero Games Forum and a couple of others.
 
Which is not to say it's an elegant design - it's not, it's a hot mess of a system - but I'm willing to give the designers the benefit of the doubt and assume that it wasn't just random numbers thrown together, but rather there was some actual thought put into how it would all work together during actual play.

*Have I ever mentioned that rolling low on a d20 to hit is a goddamn commie plot and it makes my teeth itch?


Pretty much this is accurate and I've owned copies of the game going back to the '80s when I discovered a catalog I could order more obscure games through! (No FLGS, only chain book stores.) However, that's a pretty accurate assessment. Although I admit Non-Corporealness, the biggest problem was that a rolled starting character could still hit you if they had the right stats/boosts. Making it less valuable than it seems.

To give you an idea, V&V I ran, owned, but never got to play. (Though I'd made a few characters for it.) It was MSH I first played and Phasing was one of the two powers I had (Tracking, and Phasing.) I had a lot of fun even if it was a one-shot. Though I've gone back and run V&V a few times there are some crazy combinations that come up. (Heightened Speed or Speed bonus plus Ice powers--since freezing stuff is a movement action, a friend sold off like several hundred inches of movement to FREEZE an entire cruise ship in place.) They had all the time in the world to stop highjackers--since the ship wasn't moving, and there wee raiding boat wasn't either.
 
V&V Revised was the first superhero RPG I ran. Great fun! The intro adventure Crisis at Crusader Citadel will never be forgotten, especially since I've run it it more than once for different groups.

After initially using the Combat Table, I dropped it and made any modified roll of 11+ a hit. Powers like Armor, Invulnerability and Flame Power (aura) reduced damage, plus characters could always 'Roll with a Hit' to reduce damage even more. At one point I had a grocery list of house-rules but, the last time I ran the system, it was RAW. Just as much fun as the very first time.

I grabbed Mighty Protectors recently and it addresses many of old house-rules pretty well.
 
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