If you’re creating a character for a game you’re going to play as Part of a Team of super heroes, you should chat with the other players—especially the Narrator—before you begin.

If you’re just coming up with a character for your own amusement or practice and don’t intend to play them in a game, that’s wonderful. Doing that can be all sorts of fun on its own. But if you want to be able to play the character in a particular game, you can head off many conflicts by making sure that the character is likely to fit well with the rest of the team.

Rank Caps

The first thing to consider is what kind of game the character is going to be playing in. Will the team’s members haunt the rooftops and alleys of Hell’s Kitchen? Will they soar through the galaxy and strive to prevent a galactic war? Or will they do something else entirely? There’s plenty of fertile ground for all sorts of adventures in between.

The kind of game the character will be in can help determine the range of ranks you want to play with the character. That includes the character’s Starting Rank and their rank cap.

Most super heroes don’t start out as young farmers who level their way up through countless years of epic adventures to lead nations—with the notable exception of Colossus. Instead, they have an origin story—during which they figure out who they are and how their Powers work—and they usually don’t add any new Powers from there. They just become better at using the Powers they have.

A super hero’s continuing adventures don’t spring from a need to accumulate more power. Instead, those adventures arise from the hero’s sense of duty to do what they can to help the people around them and possibly even to make the world a better place.

In game terms, a super hero’s origin story often starts out with them at Rank 1. From there, they can rise through the ranks until they hit the peak of their Powers. That’s called their rank cap. They spend most of their career as a hero at that cap.

When creating a hero, it’s often best to start out with the rank cap in mind. For instance, if you want your hero to have adventures like Spider-Man, you should set a rank cap of 4. If you’d rather have Captain Marvel–type adventures, the rank cap should be 6 instead.

If your group doesn’t want any preset limits and just wants to see where the game takes them, that’s fine. The default rank cap is at 6, which is the upper limit.

Starting Rank

Once you’ve set the character’s rank cap, you can decide at what rank you want the character to start. Some players like to just start at their rank cap and play a hero who’s already at their peak. Others prefer to start from scratch—at Rank 1—and work their way up to that point. This is the classic way to develop a hero from an average person to a legend.

It’s perfectly fine to skip over a number of lower ranks, though, and start off a bit shy of the character’s rank cap. Many players like to start a couple of ranks lower than where they plan to wind up, which gives them a strong starting point but also plenty of room to develop and grow. If you’re shooting for Rank 4, for instance, you could start play at Rank 2 and work your way up.

Look to the end of this chapter for more details on rising through the ranks.