Pop-Training Time!
Gear up and get busy with your new skills and powers.
World Building:
First-time Light Strikers (and especially first-time players) need to spend a majority of their time learning about their world, their class, and their powers. As the SC, you’ll use the Origins pack to get started as bring stories to life along with your own ally characters, villains, and class powers.
Main Plot Backstory:
This adventure will help players between levels 0 and 2 learn more about their Light Striker class and using their powers by putting them to the test. The foundation of the training exercise is laid out, but some of the details will need to be filled in by the SC based on the party of Light Striker players and their abilities. But since Light Strikers spend years training, you can increase the difficulty for higher level characters.
For your group of players, one of their main professors suddenly announces a “pop-training” (like a pop-quiz) on one of their normal class days.
The professor has altered the inside of a three-story building (with help from faculty of Mechtician, Imagizard) to add supernatural and tech elements to it. There is a hidden container cube 1’x1’ with a special lock / code entry. The Light Striker team must locate the box and open it (the SC decides what’s inside, relevant to the story and players). The building has numerous rooms with tricks and traps at the ready.
Light Striker Players Adventure:
As the Sage Commander, you can start the session as a normal training day episode and go straight to the house. For a quick session, you can have the players seek the box. For a possible 2-part session, the instructor can also become a “final boss” for the Light Striker players once they open the box and before they leave they must defeat their professor.
If you want to make a longer session you can extend the completion of the training mission into a new adventure and the new danger or problem can arise in direct connection to the house or during the training session.
Ideas to put into the house for challenges:
A fake decoy box
A trap that explodes with a supernatural flashbang that will blind anyone who’s looking at it for 1 hour
Each door unlocks only by showing the matching emotion clue (laughing, crying, angry, bored, etc. It’s a good idea to have your players roleplay their expression)
A room that can answer questions but only tells the opposite of the truth
A room that gives riddles for clues to the box
The box is constantly being moved / moving
To finally unlock the box, they must all participate.
The important thing is that no single character can open it alone.
For example, there are four locks:
Lock 1 — Power
Someone has to use their Light Striker ability.
Lock 2 — Emotion
Someone has to display the correct emotion.
Lock 3 — Knowledge
They must remember a clue from an earlier room.
Lock 4 — Teamwork
Two or more players must activate the lock simultaneously.
The Professor Challenge
All Light Striker professors in the Powergrounds will make sure to battle their students regularly thoughout their training to gauge their studnets’ combat ability. This ensures they are ready to take on the real dangers that they will eventually encounter.
To add this element to the training adventure, the Light Striker professor will also be inside the building and will battle the Light Striker players in one room if they enter. This can come as a surprise to the students. To leave, they must defeat their teacher but they’ll only battle at a fraction of their full power (only use 2 or 3 abilities, only 1 attack or Light Striker power on their turn). To simulate combat, you’ll still track HPD as normal, but emphasize that the professor will have everyone wear a small device strapped around their chest called a “delaymin” that softens Light Striker powers and damage done by physical and Spiritus means.
The delaymin was invented by Mechticians and it’s composed of complex circuitry programs and divine flower crystals that are specially synced up. The connection makes it so that when people who wear the synced up delaymins attack each other, their damage is padded and softened, Everyone can still feel impact and be affected by force as normal, but any hits don't cause actual damage. Once turned on, delaymins run out of power after about an hour and require around 8 hours to be recharged fully. They consume large amounts of power.
The Epilogue
If they cannot find the box in time or at all, the result can be the same—the professor will acknowledge their failure and have them reflect on it. Then, the professor will offer them guidance to become better and maybe even offer them another chance on a different day to try one more time (with some slightly modified challenges).
If the heroes succeed, tie the contents of the container to their current story campaign. They do not need any special reward since it’s a natural part of their curriculum, but ithe object in the box should be made relevant to future adventures or a longer overarching campaign story.