The more time I spend on this game, the more amazed I am by its simplicity and applicability. I spent 40 years (no hyperbole) trying to write this game. I have entire notebooks filled with dice mechanics and brainstorming and notes and sketches of how to build a dice system that would be flexible enough to apply to any superhero situation, but also simple enough to be able to play without ever looking at the book.
Seriously, once you know the dice (4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, 20) and know how to cut those numbers in half (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10), and know how to cut THOSE in half again and round down (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5), you know everything you need to know. That's the entire game. But, somehow, it still feels like it encompasses the full range of supers, and allows for a lot of nuance within what is a very simple framework.
The other thing that lets me know the design is pretty good is that every time I come up with a new problem, the game already knows how to solve it mechanically. I just added about a dozen gifts to the Stalwart Companion (it's up to 9 pages now), and every weird, unusual gift immediately had the most logical way to solve it in game. Part of the design trusts the GM in setting thresholds for challenge ratings (4, 8, or 12... with a 'default' setting of 6 if you really have no idea). Once you grasp that 4 is kinda challenging, 8 is pretty challenging, and 12 is like super challenging, you can solve anything that comes up. This also should make it really easy for players and GMs to develop custom gifts that are not in the rules. I think I'll add some suggestions to the GM section how to do that.
I've also gotten some feedback, and as a result I have two things I've been added to the companion: the first is point-build (rather than random) character generation. Again, it was an easy add, and I think it makes a lot of sense. I tied the number of gifts you get to your force (your power SV), because characters with higher power are likely to have more powers, and this allows the player to decide how many gifts they can get by allocating the points to power. The character you end up creating with this method is pretty much typical of a character you would get through random generation, so I don't see one as giving you 'better' characters... they're just different ways to solve the same thing.
Second, I'm adding some rules about stabilizing dice results on results (like damage). I like that superpowers have this large range of damage (D20 gives results of 1-20; so that cosmic energy bolt could potentially only deal 1 hit. I'm okay with that). However, for things like a tank cannon, it should deal more consistent damage in a narrower range. I think a reasonable alternative is to shift down 2 dice, but add that die's SV to damage. So, D10 (1-10) becomes D6+3 (4-9); D16 (1-16) becomes D10+5 (6-15). The average gets a little higher, but the range is narrower, and you cannot get the highest possible result. I like that option, and I think that players could choose this alternate damage for their attacks as well, if they so desired. D12 is the only outlier, and the stabilization is always superior to the standard die (since it still gives a 12 option, but the lowest result possible is 5). As I warn in the rules: if you are going to stabilize your dice, your enemies will too! This is another one of those easy fixes that the game had already told me how to solve.
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