Vigilante City 5e - Part I

 Vigilante City got the 5e treatment and it’s pretty damn spectacular. There are two books: Core Rules and Villain’s Guide. The core book is around 285 pages. While it says Core Rulesyou’ll still need a Player’s Handbook or the Basic Rules to run it. While it can be used with either version of 5e, most Bloat Games 5e stuff is made with D&D 2024 in mind. The art is primarily Runehammer’s work (like the original) with a few Christopher Torres and Phil Stone pieces here and there.

Most characters in Vigilante City are Humans and MegaHumans. At your GM’s discretion you can also include non-human species.  There are 16 modern backrounds included. A majority of the book focuses on classes. There are 17 non-powered classes and 8 powered MegaHuman classes. Like the SURVIVE THIS!! version of the game, the basic classes are very well balanced. The MegaHuman classes can bend and break things though, so GM’s beware. The game was designed with Batman in mind, rather that Justice League and Superman. That being said some of the MegaHuman classes can get wild. That’s why despite the fact the authors state this is a vigilante game, not a superhero game I consider it a superhero game.

The regular classes each have multiple subclasses. The MegaHuman classes work a little different though. There are 11 subclasses that can be taken by any MegaHuman. The SURVIVE THIS!! version of the game had something similar with the powered characters.

We’re then presented with 9 or 10 pages of new equipment. You get all the weapons and armor you could need. There’s also an extended section on utility belts and gadgets for them. A few new rules are included. There’s an ignited condition that objects and characters can have that just makes sense to me. Magic comes from dark dimensions (ala Doctor Strange) so there are madness and Void rules. There are new first aid rules as well an ability called Outsmart that lets you negate attacks. This is another transplant from SURVIVE THIS!! that I’m a big fan of. We also get some simple radiation rules and a few new skills. Vigilante Points (V Points) are another new rules addition for the game. It’s essentially a reputation system. Definitely makes sense in a vigilante themed game. There’s an extended rules session for team tactics. Groups can choose to take a particular formation which grants bonuses. There are also combo actions which let you do things like the fastball special.  

The book looks gorgeous and packs a lot of content for your vigilante/superhero games. As a big fan of 5e supers content this is right up my alley (which is hopefully not Crime Alley). In the next few days I’ll go more into the classes and also discuss the Villain’s Guide.