5th Evolution: Carbide City #2 Review

You may have noticed that I like superheroes. You may also have noticed I like Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. But did you notice that I like when the two are combined? If you are a regular reader, than of course you do. 

Today I wanted to review 5th Evolution: Carbide City #2.  You can read my review of the first issue. To utilize this book properly, you need a copy of it, because not all of the genre rules are repeated. 

The artwork is phenomenal. Clash and her Demo Demonettes (featured in Issue #1) take on the new heroic archetypes. This, like every 5Evo book, is followed by a short comic that sets up the adventure contained within. There's a nice throwback to issue one in the second panel as it features the the villains the heroes faced in the last issue. It also has a cereal box with the unnamed hero that graces its cover. 

The adventure centers around a feral evo, Poe, has been framed. Poe is an ally of the characters and they must clear his name. This brings them into conflict with other evos. If I remember correctly, Poe, is the a character played by author, Andrew Hand.

The following section contains 16 different locales in Carbide City for your players to visit. These range from parks, sports stadiums, to city hall. The locations are given history and game play information, as well as three adventure hooks. In addition, each location has other relevant gaming content. If there's an important npc or henchman/mooks associated with it, they'll be given stats. Some locations also have resources, such as tech and magic items to use. If you backed the first Kickstarter, a lot of this content appeared in one of the stretch goal for Carbide City.

Setting info is followed by new rules. We're give more resource information (as classic 5e money rules aren't used in Carbide City). Advanced Equipment rules are also presented. This section discusses how to make supertech by adding some different tweaks to existing 5e magic items. This is a quick and dirty system, but it absolutely works. 

As mentioned in Carbide City #1, pc's in Carbide City are created using archetypes. These archetypes are classified as Tier 6 in the setting, which are the equivalent of 12th level characters (CR 5). The new archetypes presented are:

• Aerial - flying warrior, examples: Hawkman, Angel
• Changeling - shapechanging hero (though limited to humanoid forms), examples: Mystique, Copycot
• Elementalist - evo with a body made of or potentially coated in powerful energy, example: Static, Ice Man, Human Torch
• Force Field Fabricator - hero that can create protective invisible wards, example: Invisible Woman
• Verdent Hero - hero primarily made of plant matter, examples: Swamp Thing and Groot
• Power Suit Pilot - warrior piloting a suit of power armor, examples: War Machine, Hardware

The new archetypes are followed by optional rules to update the archetypes from Issue #1 to tier 5 (level 20 characters/CR10). There is a short discussion on why this can be fun for a short time, but can be problematic in the long term. 

Evos don't level up in the classic sense, but they do gain advancements (buffs, bonuses, and abilities) when they reach milestones. The original archetypes are given seven new advancements. There are also seven general advancements that can be taken by any hero. Finally Team Advancements are presented. These optional advancements are pretty cool. Instead of taking individual advancements, the super team can decided to take a team one. These allow characters or at least the teammates that decided to contribute new traits and abilities to help their. Think Fastball Special.

If you can't tell, I love this one. The book hasn't been fully released yet. Kickstarter backers have it in pdf form and are still waiting on physical copies. After all backers pledges have been filled, they'll put copies up on their site. Until then, you should pick up the other books in the 5Evo line.