DAMAGE: The attack’s DC + the mod associated (usually STR for melee attacks, and POW for “powered” (ranged) attacks, weapons usually don’t get Mods added to the damage, but have other bonuses associated with having the weapon).
Damage also has various types associated with it:
- Physical: The most common type, often seen in punches/bludgeoning attacks. Physical attacks often have a variety of effects based on the attack, but are often non-lethal on their own.
- Lethal: Damage that can penetrate the body like blades and bullets are fairly common, and have the nasty effect of being able to swiftly end a fight with hi-crit bonus: max damage + roll the base damage again.
- Energy: The most common “elemental” damage, found in the likes of Magic and Lasers. Like with Physical, Energy has a variety of effects based on the attack, but often is associated with Daze.
- Electric: Electrical damage often travels in a current, and as such can sometimes ignore Evasion bonuses and can chain from target to target.
- Fire: Fire damage’s secondary effect is simply more damage in the form of Damage over Time as the target is burned.
- Cold: Cold damage usually has the side effect of slowing down its targets, reducing the amount they can move and potentially even the amount of actions they can take!
- Darkness: Coming from the netherworld, Darkness damage often has a chance to terrorize weaker foes, and lower their accuracy.
- Psionic: It is exceptionally rare to find a foe with defenses against a Psychic attack on their mind, but those that do are often heavily guarded.
- Toxic: A rare form of damage, Toxic comes from biological attacks such as poisons, etc, and will almost always have some sort of nasty de-buff associated with it.
SECONDARY/STATUS EFFECTS: Many Powers come with Secondary Effects beyond damage that can alter a target’s stats and effectiveness, or Status Effects that can alter the way they behave. Powers that have these as well as damage either have the Effect/Status as an afterthought, 50/50 share, or are purely for the Effect/Status.
(DE)BUFFS: Effects related to a character’s stats directly, without effecting how they play in a major way are referred to as Buffs when positive, and Debuffs when negative. Common (de)buffs include:
- +/- Evasion, Attack Bonus, or Perception (accuracy)
- +/- Damage, or Resistance to Damage (usually to all types for both)
- +/- Movement, or Attack Rate (either in amount of actions, or frequency)
Uncommon (de)buffs:
- +/- Healing, Regeneration, or Damage Negation (direct (de)buffs to those aspects)
- +/- Absorption, or Max HP (Take less hits to go down)
- +/- Powers, or “Special” (Can lower the effectiveness of Superpowers, or even (de)buffs)
STATUS: Effects that alter how a target behaves, usually by altering their options for actions.
- Knockback/Prone: The target is flung X squares away, and often must use an action to get on their feet again. While prone, the target has no combat advantage.
- Immobilize: The target cannot make move actions until freed.
- Cage: The target is restricted to an area, and cannot affect anything outside of the area.
- Phase: The target cannot interact with anything on the normal plane of existence, but can otherwise move about. Can affect things that are also phased.
- Hold: The target cannot make –any- actions until freed.
- Repel: Pushes targets away from an area or for X squares.
- Daze: The target can only make 1 action until save ends.
- Sleep: The target is “Held”, as well as oblivious in most cases to those around it, until it is the target of something that either damages or moves them.
- Confuse/Control: The Target cannot distinguish friend from foe, or is being controlled directly by a separate entity.
- Poison: Target takes X damage at the end every turn, often with X increasing each turn until save ends.
- DoT: Target takes X damage at the end of each turn for Y turns.
- Anchor: The target is the “anchor” for specific effects, such as (de)buffing those around it, or becoming more susceptible to further effects.
- Disable: Target temporarily loses an ability, such as their ability to fly.
DEFENSES: Unlike traditional D20 games, the world of Marvel has a wide variety of ways to defend yourself beyond getting out of the way or wearing armor. While not all powers will grant every type of defense in their respective “set”, everyone has the most important form naturally with their Reflex save. It is a good idea to get some sort of defense however, as even the most powerful of heroes take a hit some times.
AC(or Evasion): The ability to make yourself harder to hit either through classic AC/Armor, or being able to simply get out of the way of incoming damage. As mentioned, every character uses Evasion through their reflex save, with armor or certain powers (Super Reflexes) adding onto it. Mechanically, this raises the check needed in order to actually hit your character, so if you have +2 to evasion, the enemy would have to roll 2 higher than normal in order to land a hit. In combat, this is your first line of protection as not getting hit at all is certainly better than simply taking less.
Negation: A slightly rarer form of defense than the others, but next in order is Negation, which acts sort of like AC/Evasion only directly applied to Damage. Assuming you are hit by an attack, you can still avoid the damage if your Negation is high enough, as the total damage needs to exceed the amount just like the hit check needs to surpass Evasion. An example of a set that gives Negation would be transforming one’s skin to steel. Most weapons may simply bounce off harmlessly, but stronger attacks could still puncture through and harm the character for the full damage.
Resistance: The ability to take less damage (usually limited to certain types at once), often seen in portions such as “resist 1/5th of incoming energy damage”, etc. This means that if you were attacked for 10 points worth of Energy damage, you would subtract 1/5th, leaving you with only 8 points to subtract from your HP. Resistance is great as it isn’t a roll of the dice like Evasion, and much more common than Negation, but is often limited by type and amount resisted.
Absorption: Damage Absorption works much like a separate “layer” of HP over a character’s normal HP, and does not affect their Regeneration or Healing powers that rely on the Max HP value. Coming after all the other layers, Absorption’s benefit is that it allows a character to still take “damage” with little consequence, except for that it will run out once depleted and usually takes a while or certain requirement in order to be replenished.
Regeneration/Healing: The ability to heal one’s self either a set amount, or a % or their maximum HP value, many powers have a healing option to them. Regeneration works similarly to standard healing except it occurs like DoT effects, healing for usually a % of their Max HP over a flat number at the end of each turn. Coming after all the other defenses, Healing is generally a last resort, as it only works after a character has been damaged. That’s not to say it isn’t bad however, as it’s certainly better than staying at low HP!
