Hero Datafile: Nico Minoru

I’m back with this week’s Monday Milestone hero tie-in: Nico Minoru. Hey Sabrina, this is a REAL teenage witch!

Unfortunately, no one guessed correctly, so everyone wins a no-prize!

Nico’s Marvel Wiki bio is here. I found her Wikipedia entry to be more useful.

This datafile may prompt some discussion, so I want to go into a little “behind the scenes” on my design.

The big challenge with Nico was coming up with a way to simulate her “Staff of One”. This is her primary source of power and is pretty restrictive. Each spell can be used once, and she has a limited number of uses. After which it is re-absorbed into her body. I debated with coming up with a completely new ruleset for this, but that didn’t seem true to the concepts of the game. Ultimately what I decided on was using Plot Points to manage this.

If you look on the sheet, you will see that when she summons the Staff, she gains 3 PP. Which seems like a lot. The reason for this is that to use the Staff of One as anything other than a club, you will need to spend a PP. This accomplishes two things. First, it seemed to be a good way to approximate this powerful magical artifact in the hands of a teenager who doesn’t really know what she’s doing. Especially at first. Second, it provides a way to limit uses of the Staff. Since once you run out of PP, it is re-absorbed.

Honestly, she will probably be at a slight disadvantage compared to many of the other characters out there. But, I think that is true to the character. This can be mitigated somewhat through “unlockables” as you gain XP. I would suggest giving more PP when the Staff is summoned and/or giving her more abilities under her Magical Aptitude powerset. I think both of these would be in line with how the character develops in the comics.

As I mentioned, I expect this datafile may prompt discussion. I will be more than happy to hear your thoughts. Positive or Negative.