My first impression of this book was primarily negative.
It's UGLY. It is obviously the output from a wordprocessor slapped right into PDF format. Nothing pretty to it at all.
U - G - L - Y.
Time to take the sales money and buy some publishing software. Also consider publishing in a SLIGHTLY smaller font. 12 point arial is huge, especially when you print it. Exported to RTF and reformatted in a word processor with the margins reduced and the font reduced to 9 pt Times New Roman or 8 pt Arial, each page of my version of the document held 3 full pages of the original. The full document is slightly under 27,000 words, definitely not worth 62 pages of dead trees to print.
BUT. Then I really started to work through the content, and I was impressed! This has obviously seen some major thought and work and probably playtesting too! New classes, prestige classes and so on. It really feels like a complete work, definitely infinitely superior to NightShift Games' nasty foray into the d20 supers market. Better than that, it is presented as a complete RPG (minus the character generation rules, as per the d20 license), not as a tack-on set of rules to turn another game into a superhero RPG.
Basics:
Vigilance uses the Wounds / Vitality rules. Which means it's most likely in violation of Wizard's latest decisions against other companies who were going to use this system. But it works better for the genre than straight hit points (at least, if yu want a more "realism-based" supers game... but then again, plain hit points should be fine considering the amount of abuse a super can take in most stories).
Instead of Races, there are origins. Classic to the genre. These include 'Advanced Training', 'Alien', 'Artificial Life', 'Mutant', 'Mystic Encounter', and 'Scientific Experiment'. I was surprised not to see 'Robot' on the list... but pleased to see the munchkin's choice from Marvel ('God') to be missing.
The classes seem fairly typical for a non-fantasy game. One has an odd saving throw progression, but otherwise they seem balanced and appropriate. Brick, for example, gains a bonus Wound point at every even level. I was surprised to see Gadgeteer here instead of as an Origin.
The feats and powers are what make the book truly part of the genre. I would have appreciated more powers (looks like it's time to crack open the Ultimate Book of Powers from the old Marvel RPG again), but the ones here are well done and the feats are very nice.
The equipment section seems lacking. The vehicle rules are rudimental and the weapons are about the same. There is more detail for the six types of hand grenades than there is for all the firearms thrown together. While the introduction to the document mentions that armor provides DR instead of AC benefits, NO body armor is included in the rules, and in the section on buying material from the PHB, it doesn't say how to handle the switch from AC to DR.
The next chapter is Prestige Classes, and they are Golden. Behemoth, Mentor, Mind Master, PowerHouse, Secret Agent and Speed Demon all feel perfect for the game. Just by expanding on this chapter and the powers chapter, this could evolve into a masterpiece of a game.
All in all, this BARELY rates better than a 2 as it is really an incomplete work being sold as a finished product. But the groundwork is excellent and later editions should be something to watch out for.
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