[Capes] New uses for Story Tokens

[Gamskee]

I actually kind of liked prominence, though maybe I misunderstood what it did.

If I am not mistaken it gave a) initiative to claim cards and b) more actions.

The reasons why I liked this(once again I may have misunderstood) is becaue of the balance of prominence between heroes and villains.

Say you want to do a 'master villain' plot. Do you have to make the character sheet any differently or more 'twinked' than a normal sheet? No, just throw more prominence on this central villain until he is equal with the heroes. Then that villain can react a few extra times and sort of pick and choose what he would like to deal with. More actions = more power to choose what the villain is trying to do. Note that some players might feel a bit railroaded with this technique, but at the same time dice are an equalizer.

But that was just what it seemed like to me. Though I believe a richer story token system is much better. More uses is also a good thought.

[TonyLB]

You can still have more actions at a cost in Story Tokens.  It's just that you don't keep getting that advantage in actions, Page after Page.

I agree (and worry) that this undercuts the ability to make a singleton villain so strong that he can challenge a whole team of heroes, page after page after page.  Basically, if you've got one guy fighting five, and you want equal actions for him, then it costs five STs for the heroes and five STs for the villain in the first page.  But then the next page it costs zero STs for the heroes and four STs for the villain.

The Editor needs to have some substantial resource advantage before he can whip out such a villain and hope to play him effectively.  And these resources are going to go away (barring investment strategies... see below) as the pages go on, so the villain will eventually run out of stamina and succumb to greater numbers.

That having been said, I sort of think that the Editor should lose resources for whipping out such a villain.  You're talking about delivering a fairly humiliating loss to the heroes, which is all well and good, but which should set them up for a later victory.


Investment Strategies

The advantage a singleton villain can have over a group of heroes is that he can more easily control how he spends his resources.  Specifically, he has better opportunities to win the easy battles and lose the hard ones.  This leads to a lot of flexibility for investing your energy precisely where it is most useful.

[*]If an Event has been ignored by the heroes, you control it and resolve it.  This gives you strong Inspirations in exchange for very few Story Tokens.[*]If an Event has gotten a lot of attention from the heroes but isn't a big deal to you, you use an Inspiration to up your singleton die (to force them to spend actions running up their many dice, and to prevent them gaining big Inspirations, because of the high-low formula) and let them win it.  This gives you lots of Story Tokens in exchange for mid-level Inspirations.[*]Always sieze and Gloat on the Events where your victory would violate the Comics Code.  It's an out and out win for you, and not to be neglected.[*]Following those three strategies at good rates of exchange gives you a net income of both Story Tokens and Inspirations, with which to sieze and resolve the Events that matter to you.[/list:u]