Final Tally of Changes. Part III: Bosses.

Forty minutes until Sunday ends here so I'm still on time for this one. You know how it goes by now, a whole bunch of this has been discussed in the comments section before but with a handful of entirely new additions.
 

Boss Powers

• Do you Desire the Power? is now usable only once per Round per target but, if the target has no Genre Points left, they must take the second option and only if they have no Allies alive do they hurt themselves: More of a clarification than a change, really. This was more or less how it was always supposed to work.
• Useless! now blocks 5 Damage plus the current Tension per use but may be used once per Round: So you can't toss up a 15 damage barrier up while you're about to die, but each activation itself is much stronger - twice as strong as early as  Turn 1!

Boss Upgrades

• Adaptive Morphology now grants 5 and 10 Defense at Levels 2 and 3 but can only choose between Beam and non-Beam: So an additional five defense is A LOT, but can still be overcome by barrier-piercing effects and can't counter melee/shooting specialists anymore. It is stronger to ensure its impact is felt even at high power levels but less versatile so nearly everybody should have a way around it.
• Bullet Hell's Level 3 and 4 triggers now deal half your Systems + Tension and Systems + Tension instead: This is the opposite of the above change, making it less extreme. The total amount of Damage is considerably lower, from around 30 to around 20, so it still hurts a lot but won't obliterate everyone standing right next to it when it goes down.
• Eye for an Eye adds Tension to all triggers: This was okay but is now more respectable as an alternative to Bullet Hell, adding up to an extra 5-10 Damage total, but it is still lower than what Bullet Hell can put out when it gets multiple PCs in its area of effect. Still, it is direct damage against whoever needs to be protected the most right now and doesn't depend on any stat.
• Nanoskin Shell's damage shield now adds Power Level to all triggers: A curious variable to add, I know. A 15 damage shield is juust enough for survivability at low levels, but not so much for the higher ones. The 3 or 6 extra points won't make the boss unbeatable for PCs just starting out, but adding 15 more HP to a superboss is much more noticeable.
• Phantom Predator's Level 4 ability imparts two Disadvantages to attacks from Weapons that aren't Blasts, Bursts or Lines: Stealth Field got changed so it is only fitting that the Boss-tier equivalent does too.
• Three Times Faster now chooses one Enemy each Round to gain against them a bonus to Might Tests of half Speed at Level 2, half Speed to Defense at Level 3, and full Speed to Might Tests and Defense at Level 4: This was just plain overpowered. Now it is comparable to Bloodlust in that you single out one target and overwhelm them with raw power. You can change the target each Round, but the bonus depends on Speed so it is lower than the baseline bonus Bloodlust gets you.

Boss Weapons

• Suicide Swarm is a Blast 3 with Long Range and the Damage taken increases the result of the Might Test: This should be able to catch at least two PCs per attack now, and because the bonus is a flat up boost to the result of the Might Test it'll be a hit. Still doesn't have the raw power of something like Overfreeze or Merge but the controlled self-damage means it can be used to maximize the effects of something like, say, Bullet Hell to hit even harder.
• Ultimate Bomb is a Blast 5 but gains two Advantages to its Might Test: This is pretty straightforward. We're reducing the sizes of all Blasts and the largest Blast in the game got its radius halved. The huge area of effect was its selling point though, so now it hits much harder to compensate. Ultimate Bomb still hurts the user though, so it is a double edged sword that just got a lot more vulnerable to duelist lockdowns.
• Overfreeze loses Blast and Long Range to become a Line Weapon: As a Blast, this was just too strong against low level PCs who rarely had a way to survive a constant spam of beam attacks plus difficult and extreme terrain. As a Line, it still hurts quite a bit but doesn't spell doom for the whole of them.

I talk a lot about how the Kickstarter rewards are coming along but not a lot about the version of the rules that is going to continue being free. So here's the brief version: If things go well this week and I don't get swamped by work at the end of the month, I'll be uploading that next Sunday. Until then!