Team Defense

One of the many advantages to the Characters of being in a super-team is that they start learning ways to combine their respective abilities to stop dangerous attacks from much more powerful opponents. Everyone knows that when Dash and Violet of The Incredibles used their Superspeed and Force Field jointly to block attacks by Synapse and his henchmen, they were able to block much more powerful blasts than either could have withstood separately!

The original rules in the "White book" do not actually address this sort of collaboration. Oh, if two Characters with the same Skill or Power try to combine their abilities, the GM can apply the "Combining Actions" rule. Their APs have to be within 3 columns of the AP rating for the most powerful Character involved, which effectively lowers the OV of their collective target.

Except that this presumes the combining Characters are on the action side of the Action Check, not the opposing side!

Which means that everyone wanting to work together on defending a single target has to save up their Initiative for the phase of the attack in question, and put themselves in harm's way.

We think this is not an elegant solution!

— Tesla Coil of the Knights Vigilant thinks this sounds more heroic than
"We are not Looney Tunes
ergo
'dogpile' is not going to work!"

Needless to say, what's been actually happening is that mostly the Characters focus on individual efforts to stop the threatening Gadget/Character/whatever before the danger can manifest. They hope that any remaining APs of attack which gets through one Character's individual effort will be further reduced by the next Character who is able to act within those four seconds -- if, indeed, any potential defender DOES still have an action left that round and the ability to take some sort of relevant defensive measure.

If they are unsuccessful, they hope that the target can withstand whatever got past them. Maybe one person manages to put themselves in the way as a sort of "voluntary ablative armor", or yank the target away from the immediate danger. Nobody gets any advantages or disadvantages beyond The Cool Rule.

I wind up with so many new holes in my armor because of this.

— Moon Knight of the Knights Vigilant

The 'Team Defense' rule that is used instead!

When the attack is announced but before it is rolled, everybody contributing to the Team Defense effort gives up their next Initiative phase, whether that is in the same round or comes after the next roll -- in the same way that Full Acrobatic Dodge works.

A ballistic piano is flying through the air right now, aimed to smash directly on that Fabergé Egg! It's bigger than any piano I have ever seen! Somebody do something!

— Kara "the Fortune Teller" Sesseran, over team comms, to the Knights Vigilant

Here's where it gets exciting!

The people who plan to collaborate on Team Defense state

• that they are doing so;
• what Power, Skill, or other Ability the individual will contribute, and what its AP rating are;
1. whether they plan on spending some of their Hero Points on the upcoming roll.

Note that each participant might be contributing a completely different type of defense!

I can project my Force Shield 8 APs about a foot in front of the Egg! But I've got no HP to spare on the roll.

— Moon Knight

I shape myself into a cushion of dense sand right behind Moon Knight's Force Shield, and use my Self Manipulation of 7 APs to form of a sandy archway with a Strength of 7 APs to deflect the piano... or maybe break it... but that's ok! Uh, is this a Concert Grand Piano? Those only weigh approximately 6 APs. I think there's a limited amount of potential EV here. I'll save my Hero Points for a later round.

— Sahara

I run up to hunch protectively over the Egg. I use Reflection/Deflection to knock aside anything that smashes through the shield and the cushion of sand! I have 10 APs, and if that's not enough then I'll start the bidding with 3 Hero Points on our RV.

— Mr. Glass

Yeah, I mean, it looks like a piano. And it's definitely ballistic. I don't know if it's made out of wood or not. No guarantees on the EV here!

— Kara "the Fortune Teller" Sesseran, over team comms, to the Knights Vigilant

If the impetus of this roll wants to counterbid point expenditure to improve their end of the roll, we swap over to the Boosting Dice Actions article for a few minutes. Once that is resolved, the GM counts up how many defending Characters are contributing to this Team Defense,

(While they're at it, the GM also checks to make sure that everyone contributing is within 3 columns of the highest contributor. If Mr. Glass contributes a 10 AP defense, the lowest useful contribution is going to be a 3 AP ability of some sort -- even if they are contributing a kind of defense that no one else has covered! Two APs of Mind Shield do not contribute to this Team Defense example!)

The GM starts out with the highest-contributed defense that specializes in that type of damage,

which might not be the overall highest-rated Power here!

and then the GM applies the Team Attack chart but in reverse!

Instead of dropping the OV, the chart now increases the OV by a number of column shifts determined from how many defenders worked together.

So even though I did not contribute any Hero Points here, and even though my 8 APs of Force Shield is close to Sahara's 7 APs of Self Manipulation, it's objectively only a quarter as tough as Mr. Glass's 10 APs of Reflect/Deflect. This means my participation bumped the team up from one teammate's "9 to 10" column all the way up to a "13 to 15" column?

— Moon Knight to GM

Yup, you got it. Two people working together get one column shift in their favor. Three or four people working together get two column shifts in their favor. And since Mr. Glass already put down some Hero Point expenditure on increasing the RV, anything to get through your combined efforts will still have its actual damage potential whittled down on The Result Chart.

Sweet!

— Moon Knight to GM

Just bear in mind: the choice to contribute to a Team Defense is an active choice. It uses up one Initiative phase's Dice Action, whether that's the act someone would have taken in the same round (but they had not taken their turn yet) or the one immediately following (if they had already gone).

Team's busy! I'll just, you know, relocate this back into the vault, shall I?

— Tesla Coil quietly picks up the Fabergé Egg cradled in both armored arms and strolls over to the earthquake-proof bank vault across the street.

A more complex example of Team Defense in use!

In our example above, all three of the contributed defenses work against Physical Attacks specifically.

A falling piano is definitely "force or impact"!

— Sahara to GM

Right. And I'm not going to be pedantic about whether, say, Flame Project would count as "force or impact" for your purposes. You're defending the Egg, you're putting yourself at risk of getting damaged to Save The Day, it's good story. No worries.

But! What if the target were Donata instead of a Fabergé Egg, and the piano was loaded with a psionically charged Mind Blast attack?

I'd feel sorry for the bad guys? Possibly go get some churros for afterward? We don't really have Mental Defenses on this team that are Usable on Others.

— Sahara to GM

... a haunting laughter echoes through the air...

Then perhaps you need some... assistance...

— The Shadow is technically outside his jurisdiction

Oh, hi! Haven't seen you in, what, a year or so? How you doing?

— Sahara to The Shadow

Well enough, thank you!
I came to the Big Apple on the rumor of a poltergeist in an off-Broadway theater.
I found sinister signs of--

— The Shadow to Sahara

HAIL HYDRA!

-- those guys.

— The Shadow to Sahara

Nobody thinks an antique terrorist organization needs to succeed in any goal they set for themselves, so now The Shadow will help the gentlemen from Knights Vigilant defend Donata. Let's say that the Shadow has a Mind Shield of 5 APs, which he contributes to the existing three-person defense as was previously given to the Fabergé Egg.

I don't know how much help I will actually be? Four "team defenders" gives the same number of column shifts as three.

— The Shadow to the GM

Ah! But! The above example applied to Physical Attacks exclusively. None of their contributions are designed to apply to Mind Blast attacks!

Thanks to the Shadow's contribution, in addition to the Physical defense we already described, this Team Defense can also affect Mental Attacks. Sahara's dense cushion of sand, Moon Knight's glowing Force Shield, and Mr. Glass's light-refractive Reflection/Deflection can also improve how well the Shadow obscures Donata's mind from the harmful influences of the psionic broadcast.

But we're working off the Shadow's 5, not Sahara's 10, right?

— Moon Knight to GM

For the Mental Attack, that is correct. Four defending Characters working together on a single Team Defense would give the same two column shifts in their favor to increase the OV on the Action Check, and for this particular Mental Attack check that would be shifting from the "5 to 6" column of The Action Chart up to the "9 to 10" column.

Given that this is the exact same demonstration except that we're now including the Shadow: did my Hero Point expenditure on RV count for the Mental defense?

— Mr. Glass to GM

… You know what? Yes. Yes it did. An advantage of being Heroes and also Player Characters is that I will let your boost apply to all Team Defenses performed at once, for a single phase, in a single effort. up to the normal maximum of double the APs of the primary defending Ability.

So however many points my fellow defender spent on the RV for this effort, it could bring my actual RV up to as high as possibly 10 -- double my original 5 -- without costing any of us any extra Hero Points?

— The Shadow to the GM

I said "three", originally, but we didn't play out a bidding war for this demo.

— Mr. Glass to The Shadow

Isn't it great when Heroes decide to work together?

Villains do not get this cost-saving possibility. Neither do Non-Player Characters.

Thanks for the defense, everyone! Now, as prep for the next Initiative roll:

I'm a damsel,

I'm in distress,

I call DIBS!

— Donata of Mouse Force tightens up her grip on the Breaker Bar of Great Justice
as she hunts for her would-be attacker