Wednesday 14 April 2021

Stargrave: The Powers

The official release of Stargrave is now just two weeks away, and the Stargrave Nickstarter pre-order program is surging onwards, with lots of cool new miniatures.

Today, Osprey Games released the Power Card Sheets from the rulebook as a free download. These cards contain the rules for all of the powers that Captains and First mates can choose from, all 52 of them.

Creating these powers was probably the most enjoyable part of the design process. It was my chance to develop fun and clever ways to bend or break my own rules, to give players the chance to manipulate the game environment, and to allow the main characters to do some really cool, cinematic stuff.

Also, it presented a nice challenge. In Frostgrave, everyone is controlling a wizard, so it was easy to justify anything cool they could do, just by saying ‘its magic’! In Stargrave though, the characters come from all kinds of different backgrounds. While a few, such as the Mystic and the Psionic can do things that look a bit like magic, most of the others; however, can not. Soldiers, Rogues, Cyborgs, etc. should have abilities based more on skills, or technology, or luck. In fact, that’s why I called these things ‘Powers’, as I couldn’t think of a better, all inclusive term, for the different abilities that captains and first mates can possess.

Now, in truth, I haven’t worried too much about the logical justification of why a particular captain has a particular power – that’s up to the player when creating the captain’s background – but I did want to create powers that could match as many different sci-fi tropes as possible. So, if you want a captain who survives by his combat training and wits alone, you can. You can also have a mystic that can suck the lifeforce out of others and blast things with weird energy. The key for me, was making both characters fun, balanced, and desirable.

So, have a look through all the powers and, hopefully, it will get your own creativity stirring, giving you ideas for cool characters to start their adventures in the Ravage Galaxy!

11 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing these with us! :)

    How is 'Activation' and 'Strain' working/stands for?

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  2. Activation is the default die roll needed. Strain is damage you take for using it.

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  3. Very cool, do you know if a physical copy of the cards will be released?

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  4. Seems to be interesting, Im very corius about the rulebook!

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  5. I'm really looking forward to this release. Fingers crossed there will be a deck of cards available.

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  6. After building all those armies for Oathmark, I need more minis like I need a horde of gnolls setting up housekeeping in my basement. So naturally I went nuts on the Nickstarter *sigh* Hopefully a good opportunity to drag the youngsters away from dragons and elves and get a Vorpal board game in with my kin in your part of the world. Looking forward to this greatly...many thanks. Will there be a volume similar to Perilous Dark coming along in the near future? Asking for a friend who lives in a remote valley surrounded by Orcs.

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    1. There is definitely some solo / cooperative stuff in the works!

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    2. Sorry Joe. Got behind on the blog reading and just noticed the "Dead or Alive" post. Thanks again! Any suggestions for some other minis that might be useful for Stargrave?

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    3. Lots! I've seen old Mantic models (you might be able to pick up some of the Dread Ball teams for cheap - they could be weird and fun), old GW Rogue Trader models, Maelstrom's Edge minis. Plus you can mix and match from the Frostgrave fantasy range to add in extra flavor!

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  7. Just got my copy in the mail today. Gonna start reading it tonight. It's a beautiful book for sure.

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  8. Played my first game last night. Really enoyed it. I was a touch warried it would feel like a mirror match as was very wrong. The two warbands played very differently. I got a few things wrong. I used Remote Fire incorrectly, and it wasnt until the end of the game that I realized you on take Strain when Powers are successfuly activated. I'm really looking forward to the next game.

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