Possessions and Super Heroic Donjon

[tk421]

Hiya, folks.  I convinced (read: forced) my normal gaming group to give Donjon a try.  I'm excited and they're excited.  I took a poll of the players to see what type of game they wanted to play, as I feel that Donjon is the perfect system to do just about anything.  They settled on Super Heroes.  

Which is kickass.  But it does lead to a few interesting complications.  In particular, I'm concerned with the natural weaponry stuff.  In the book, if I understand it correctly, you can't just have an ability that naturally implies a weapon without making up for it in someway (the example in the text was firebreathing made up for by having to eat a special diet).  Now, in a superhero game, innate weaponry is going to be the bread and butter of most characters.  Wolverine, Cyclops, Superman, Green Lantern, and many more all have a "weapon" that is a part of who they are.

So, I'm looking for ways to make this less of an issue for these type of characters.  Namely, I'm thinking of accepting any one natural weapon per character that they don't have to buy anything strange for.  However, this occupies one of their permanent possession or weapon slots.  They don't have to buy anything special, just they can have less things.  I'm more comfortable with this type of abstraction, since being able to carry more possessions as you get to higher levels is pretty abstract and non-realistic anyway.

[Manxome]

I actually believe that would slightly disadvantage the players, since it prevents them from purchasing, looting, or enchanting a magical version of their weapon at some later time.  It's not just about the DR 3 weapon that you get before heading out on your first quest, it's also about the DR 3 weapon with +2 attack and +4 damage vs. undead that you loot from the level 10 monster's corpse somewhere down the line.

Of course, you could let the players loot other magical artifacts with those bonuses, and it would be easier without the intrinsic woth of a DR 3 weapon (and consequently some players might prefer to do that anyway), but then they're down an inventory slot.

I suppose it's probably not a really big difference, just keep in mind that it is there.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

For this sort of game, having a natural weapon that takes up one permanent possession slot - and one only - doesn't seem that disadvantageous.

Letting them get rid of that weapon would be even cooler - oh, no, I've lost my powers! What will I become?

[galex]

Ah, bless you! I have been toying with the idea of how to make Donjon work for supers...please post your experiences! Plus any other rules tinkering you did to make the system work with the setting.

Just out of curiosity...are you planning a "serious" or more playful campaign style? My players are more suited to a serious style and I'm having a tiny bit of difficulty convincing them that this ruleset can work for the tone they like.

[tk421]

It went pretty well.  I was going for a slightly silly style (NPC supers included DJ GrooveMaster, Siberian Samurai, and the Rumormonger), but the PCs ramped up the silliest to an absurd level.  The two highlights this silliness were a) when a PC used a Discernment based ability to "notice" that one of the Alien invaders had SPACE LUKEMEA, and b) when another used his "Analyze Powers" power to find that the Big Bad had fart-related abilities.  They seemed to have fun with it, though.

The subbing of items for inherent weaponry worked really well.  Since it was a supers gave, there wasn't any focus on looting corpses, buying things or anything like that, so the used slot never really became an issue.