The original post is from March, but I thought about how it would convert to The Black Hack.

Beat the Monster Rating, you go before the monster. Otherwise, you go after.

If you draw the same rank as the monster rating, Red suits go before the monster, black suits go after.

Drawing a joker means you roll with advantage and the damage goes up one die step.

Since TBH is player facing, no monsters or GMs draw cards. (Although a certain GM may draw from his/her own deck of cards for random encounters.)

    <img class="alignnone" src="https://www.sycarion.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/MSHRanks.png" alt="" />

vsM Superhero thoughts

If you eliminate Shift 0, there are 13 ranks from Feeble to Shift Z in the original MSH game. I thought of matching challenges with ranks for playing cards.

Feeble is 2, Poor is 3, up to Shift Z is Ace. If you really wanted to be advanced, Shift 1000 is Black Aces, and Shift 3000 is the Ace of Spades. If you really want Shift 5000, add a joker to the deck. It changes the probabilities slightly, but not enough to redo all the calculations.

Cosmic level was fun for me, but I'd probably stick to just 2 through Ace.

Still, anything below 6 is pretty much automatic for the rules as written. So, maybe we look at changing the stats to range from 1 to 4 instead of 2 to 6. This makes checks for anything 4 and above worthwhile.

So with these two changes, could I make a vsSupervillians?

    <img class="alignnone" src="https://www.sycarion.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/vsMProbs.png" alt="" />

Part 4: vsM Study

Here is a graphic of the probabilities I've calculated so far.

To help read this table, let's say that I want to find out the probability of success for my character to kick down a door. The GM rules that I use my Offense attribute. My character sheet says I have an Offense of 3.

The GM also rules that his is a Hard challenge, so I need to match or beat 10.

I draw 3 cards and take the highest valued card. If that card is a 10 or better, I have success.

The probability of my success is 77.5566%

I have added values that don't appear in the SRD. Those values do not yet have a descriptor like Easy or Very Hard. So in a by-the-book game of vsM, you would never be asked to match a Queen or better. The GM would only have you match or beat 4,6,10,King,or Ace.

I am exploring other values within a standard deck of cards. Later, I'll explore values in my Five Suited deck of cards.