Dark Superheroes with Night Shift: VSW

 

 Let's be honest: It's more than likely that there's a supers supplement for Night Shift: VSW on the horizon some day in the future. Here's the trick, though: you don't really need it to do supers with the game as it stands. You could do a street level supers game with NS:VSW exactly as it sits, and you'd still be well within genre. Look at TV shows like Arrow or Batwoman on the CW or the Netflix Marvel shows for examples of how street-level supers can be dark urban fantasy at its finest. 

Hell, consider Blade as an example of how the superhero genre can be mixed with horror. It's certainly not outside of the wheelhouse of Night Shift to experiment with superheroic games, particularly if you keep it at "street level" abilities. 

Let's check out the easy ways you can do superheroes with Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars

Start with the Supernatural Race

In Night Shift: VSW, you have essentially two options for your character "race," which we usually prefer to refer to as "species," as it's more scientifically accurate. These are your standard humans, and your Supernatural. The Supernatural PC character is highly customizable, and basically comes stock with a suite of superpowers. 

From the standpoint of getting started, there's your core. The only big differences I'd make is allowing the +3 to raise ability scores above 20 for Supernaturals, and maybe adding an option that multipliers of what you can do increase with every point above 18: thus, Strength 19 means you can double your carrying limit, 20 trebles it, and 21 quadruples it. For Dex 19 you'd double your base speed, for 20, treble it, and for 21, quadruple it, etc. This doesn't affect your bonuses for your attribute checks, which still scale as normal, just what you can lift, how fast you can run, etc.

This may not be a perfect solution when it comes to things like Con and the mental abilities, but the GM can easily come up with a modification for those abilities modeled on Str and Dex. 

Next, you may wish to rename the race/species, whether it's mutant, demihuman, metahuman, altered human, whatever. 

Finally, pick your power and go! You're out of the gate a superhero, and you even get to improve and gain new powers as you go. 

Character Classes Mean Customization

Don't ever imagine that character classes don't have a place in a dark street-level supers game. First, playing a normal human with a character class should, theoretically, still be balanced against your supernaturals, since supernaturals suffer an XP penalty for starting off with thair powers. 

Second, adding a character class to your supernatural character offers a degree of customization. What if you want a character who had a mystical encounter with a black cat on Halloween? She absorbed the soul of that cat due to a mystical ritual gone wrong in a nearby building, which she didn't even know about, but now she has the abilities of a cat. She of course wishes to apply them to selfish ends and is also a cat burglar. Simply choose the right powers, give her the +3 to Dexterity, and then choose the Survivor character class to give her abilities like move silently, hide, locks, and the like. You're done! You've got your superpowered cat burglar with the powers of an actual cat. Sure, it's a bit derivative, but we're offering examples, here! 

Of course, several of the classes already play nice with a supers game.  The Witch/Warlock, Psychic, Theosophist, and even Inventor are already primed for a supers game. Heck, the Inventor gives you that crime-fighting gadgeteer detective type character or the character with that flying suit of super-weaponized armor right off the bat, which you can improve with additional gadgets and effects as you go. It's even possible to retool the Inventor entirely and allow for the Science Points to become Power Points; instead of creating super science devices, your character simply purchases superpowers. 

There you have it! Street level supers with Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars. Learn more about it on our website or get your copy today!

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