I don’t often do reviews but I couldn’t find one for this so…

I owned the last version of the super powers companion but now we have the SWADE version. I didn’t do the kickstarter (and I missed the Fantasy companion as well – since they moved from kickstarter I’m clearly not getting the press as I did Rifts, SWADE Rifts, 3rd Rifts KS and Seadlands).

For a more indepth review with section breakdowns read here

https://that70sgame.com/2022/05/23/savage-worlds-supers-power-companion-review/

So I’m going to summarise this as I review other things:

The Great: Nothing stands out.

The Good: Lots of powers. The bases seem to be covered but they are still easy to use and modify. A wealth of bad guys but…Way too many.

The Bad: I don’t feel they added much to the previous book. They’ve tried to capitalise in the blurb on things like the Boys but then you get two tiny paragraphs which says which World Rules to use and i’m not convinced they would do the job. There are token rules for Relics and HQs but they are small sections. The powers are tightened up, but I’m not sure how much new stuff this book is really bringing. And almost half the book is writeups for made up characters that lack the history of mutants and masterminds or sentinels and so while useful for reskinning or one shots or reference, didn’t need this much space.

The Ugly: Making a character above level 1 is still a pain. Spend power points, and starting abilities, skills and edges and then work out what other edges, abilities and skills I can get as I level up. And this is necessary for a lot of NPCs and it’s more complicated than it should be

So it has the good stuff from the previous Super powers companion(s) but adds very little. Everything is updated to SWADE, but then SWADE was only really a tweak to Deluxe. Chances are if you wanted this book you helped to kickstart it. And if you didn’t you probably aren’t bothered!

Is the pdf worth it?

How much do you like Savage World Supers? If you do and don’t have it then sure.

Will you be buying the physical book?

Maybe? If it’s cheap then there’s a good chance.

Is this book worth getting SWADE for?

If you’ve never played Savage Worlds don’t start with supers. Buy the core book. Play some action heroes. Get Deadlands. Then maybe think about this. I wouldn’t start playing Savage Worlds just to play this. It’s good, but it does still feel tacked on to the basic Savage Worlds chassis.

Can I make hero X/Y/Z in it?

Probably? There will always be characters that are hard to make in games outside of Champions and M&M, but this seems to do a good job.

Does it fix any of the problems Savage Worlds has at this level?

Not really. There are sidebars with good advice on how to work around certain comic book tropes. But they also seem like a get out clause for anywhere the system falls over or doesn’t work like the comics do.

So you seem pretty down on this book?!

Not at all. I’m looking forward to making characters with it and hopefully playing it. And hopefully trying it out. But it doesn’t solve any Savage World issues I have OR do something to pull me away from other games.

Overall this does what the last Super Companion did . It lets you play Supers in Savage Worlds. If you already did that it’s a bit newer. If you didn’t, it’s not really bringing anything new to the table.

So 3 out of 5 stars. If you’re a Savage Worlds Fan, make that 4.

The Art is amazing. The class system is pretty great. The world is a bit different.

My advice: Buy it and support it!

I love the system behind this "game" that is used in Star Wars. But the star wars books (all 3 cores of them) are complete games. This is not.

Obviously a generic system such as this needs some work to run, but this needs tonnes. I could take Fate core and run it because the system is so simple that its easy to mod and stat villains etc. Savage worlds has a number of companion books that flesh it out, but even the base game has enough to run with.This does not. The cypher system core book (whose system i hate) tries to do the exact same thing as this book, but does a better job.

The supposedly simple rules and character creation run to >100 pages. Then there are the Settings chapters. I was expecting these to be massive, but each setting gets about 2 pages of explaining the tropes, then a page of example setting, some races, a few pages of gear and one page of antagonists. That's it. I don't think any one of the settings is particularly useful as they are given so little space. The organisation of this book means that some things are very hard to find. Having one antagonists chapter, and one gear chapter would probably have been better than having them in 8 different places. We get ~10 pages of vehicle rules, but just 3 vehicles, rendering the chapter useless. It really needed another 100 pages of example statlines and fleshing out of the settings or at least the options for the settings.

The rules are still good, the character creation is pretty straightforward, the magic system seems ok, but as of now this feels like it is missing a lot to be useable. As of now, i still think the star wars books would be more useful for running a non-star wars game, and they look a lot nicer.

The book is a starting point, but nothing more. I look forward to the inevitable setting books, but ideally there would be an options book or GM book with more help to do your own world...

Very combat heavy but very enjoyable. Having a group of mercs throughout helps a lot if you are not combat heavy. And a few good surprises for the players. Nice easy way to get into the game.