DnD4 Countdown 12 - Supers and DnD4

One of my favorite rpg-genres is Super Heroes. After playing a short session of Mutants and Masterminds the other day I started to think about what the design principles of 4th ed would mean in a super hero game. What I came up with did leave me intrigued.

Power levels
It seems like the three tiers of play as they are presented in DnD4 could scale fairly well to a super hero game.

Lvl 1-10 would mean street level super heroes, sidekicks and unexperienced heroes. They are still more than the average Joe, but they havn't reached the higher power levels yet.

Lvl 11-20 is equivalent to most Marvel heroes, like Spiderman, X-Men or most parts of Avengers. Powerful with the ability to make a difference, but not earth shattering really yet.

Lvl 21-30 is where your cosmic powered semi-dieties come in. Either that, or very experienced characters. One could argue that Batman, for instance, would fall into this category because of his immense experience, even though he technically is a normal human that falls into the Street Level category. Other examples are the Silver Surfer, Thor and Superman

Power sources

The list of power sources for the different classes could include (but not be limited to) the following: Intense training, energy, brute force, psionics or robotics

Powers

In DnD4 there are three types of powers, at-will (usable every turn), encounter (usable once per encounter) and daily (usable once per..well.. day).

At first glance this doesn't seem appropriate for a super hero game. In the comics they never talk about that they only use a certain power once etc.

However, in practice, this holds true fairly often. To me, it seems like they are not using their most powerful attacks at all times, rather the opposite. They seem to hold these of just until they really need them. Instead, they rely on common attacks most of the time, and then once in a while they activate their magnocapacitorblast or whatever they may call it.

In the comics, I guess this could be explained with that the power takes a lot of energy, or that it is risky or whatever. In game terms, however, it just means that the power is a daily or encounter power.

Sample classes

• Super-soldier
• Intense training/ Leader
• Elemental
  
• Energy / Striker
• Brute
• Brute Force/ Defender
• Cyborg
• Robotics/ Defender
• Beastial Figher
• Intense training/ Striker
• Master Archer
• Intense training/ Controller