Marvel Multiverse RPG Makes Massive Changes to Rules in New Update

The upcoming Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game has released a new update which fundamentally changes and simplifies the game. Marvel just released the new update on its website, with a wholesale change that eliminates or simplifies multiple elements in the game. The new update reduces the number of Ranks (which serve as an indicator of a character's power level and aren't intended to be an equivalent to a Level Progression system) from 25 to 6 and eliminates the Archetype system entirely. Archetypes were an equivalent to a character's Class and determined everything from a character's Ability Score cap to their defenses, health pool, and damage modifiers. 

The new ruleset eliminates the use of the large tables found in the original Marvel Multiverse playtest used to calculate roll modifiers and defense abilities in favor of a more simplified system that is mostly determined on a character's Rank and their underlying Ability Score. For instance, a character's Defense score is now calculated by adding 10 to a character's Action modifier. So, a character with a Might Modifier of +8 would have a default defense of 18 against Might attacks made against another character. Damage rolls have also been significantly simplified – when an attack hits, a player uses the result of their Marvel dice in the attack rolls and multiplies it by their Rank. Some powers (such as the Super-Strong Trait) can increase the amount of damage an attack deals by increasing the multiplier used to calculate damage. 

The new update also significantly increases the number of powers that use Focus, a resource tied to a character's Vigilance stat. Any power that has to be actively used will require players to spend some of their Focus, with more changes to come on how much Focus is spent when a player uses a Power. 

The update promises more changes are on the way, including updates to Traits to bring that character-building system in line with the new rule changes. You can check out the changes on Marvel's website along with the revised Character Sheets for all existing characters as well as a new Character Sheet for Shang-Chi.

Marvel Multiverse RPG will officially launch next year.