Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

[Sweeper]

My buddy Mark is getting ready to run a Palladium game combining Heroes Unlimited and Nightbane, (him and his fasination with the macabe, *sigh*). The PCs will have the superpowers, we really haven't talked about NB characters. Both Mark and myself are fans of Hero, but the rest of our group is dead set against the idea of using the system.

 

I got a copy of HU2 to prepare for the game. While I was looking through the rules and powers, I found myself really missing the flexibility of creating powers using Hero, GURPS, or even M&M.

 

I was thinking of borrowing elements from said games to set up a system that allows this.

 

My obstacles as I see them:

1) The way powers are set up in HU. It would seem that 1 major power roughly equals 2 minor powers, but not all powers are created equal.

2) Not all H.C.C.s are created equal, (a common problem with Palladium games). How to figure out how to what would work.

3) Palladium is a level based system. 'nuff said

 

Opinions?

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

Opinions?

 

My opinion is that taking HERO concepts and trying to apply them to Palladium will have one of two outcomes.

 

1) It will work reasonably well, and your friends will continue to think that Palladium is good.

 

or

 

2) It will not work, and your friends will consider it the fault of the HERO-ness ported over, and continue to think Palladium is good.

 

My condolences.

[Lord Fyre]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

Opinions?

 

It is time to teach your friend hero - specifically CHAMPIONS in this case. He can then port the source material if he wants with out having to worry about the rules problems of the Palladium system.

[The Main Man]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

Yeah, I don't know what to say except maybe, just maybe, you should make their characters in both M&M and in HERO to ween them in.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

While I sympathize with your desire to add the flexibility of HERO to Palladium's system, I rather doubt that you'll ever be completely satisfied, unless you and your GM customize the system so much that your other anti-HERO players will be uncomfortable with the result.

 

Since you're asking for opinions, I suggest that you simply accept Heroes Unlimited and Nightbane for what they are, and let yourself get into playing them. If the rest of your group are good gamers and you're all having a good time, you may be surprised to find that you don't really miss the HERO options that much.

[csyphrett]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

As a Palladium Gm, I can say that building or adjusting powers is easy. Sometimes you can take a power in the book and scale down, or use one piece out of it for a minor power, or scale up to increase effectiveness.

 

Most of the problems are going to be in the character generating. What do you want to do, what can you do, and what are you willing to settle for or hand wave?

CES

[csyphrett]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

While Palladium has a built in imbalancer in the way the classes don't match up, you can impose a certain amount of balance with your choice of classes and powers that are allowed.

 

All Hardware, Special training, non powered classes will give you a group of soldiers, mechanics, agents, martial artists for example.

 

CES

[Certified]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

How about this, prep for a duel game. Start by talking about character concept. Have the players describe the powers and how they work. Then let them build the characters in HU as best they can while you and the GM also build Hero characters to match the concept described without comparing the stats just concept ideas. This can be presented as a one shot trial. To show the other players the difference in the system. If they do not like the Hero characters be willing to play HU without gripes. This can also be worked into the storyline as the Nightspawn shift between normals and their monstrous forms. As the PCs will be playing supers however some of essence can be used to explain the shift in powers. (Forgive me I'm not to up on the Nightspawn Universe so I don't remember exactly how the Nightspawn get their powers. IIRC it's a link to something like a Shadow Realm. The PC's may share the link if only enough to write off the shift in powers between Hero and HU.)

 

Once you have the two sets of characters outline the characters game based abilities explain the Hero characters as concept to the concept. Play the first encounter with the system they know and the second with the Hero characters.

 

Cons: You still need player buy in to try this. This requires double prep work from the GM pregame. Players may be turned off by feeling being out done or even insulted.

 

Pros: No extra effort required on the players part. Allows the players to pick their powers in HU verses roll randomly. (Some might random roll but this allows them to explore the maximum lets fit the concept HU has t ooffer.) Offers a very different gaming experience as players learn how their powers shift to meet the concept as opposed to being form fitted. It's also a quirky way to tease the players with what character customization and generation can be like.

 

Well I hope this helps. Good luck and may Todd McF#%#$@ DIAF for slitting Palladium's throat over Nightspawn.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

Find new friends.

 

Ok, maybe I'm not 100% serious, but I TRIED to let myself relax an enjoy a game using the Palladium system and I'd rather have spent the time... Oh...sleeping, drinking, with my girlfriend, in the shower, delousing my cat...

 

 

Gods above thats a lousy system.

[casualplayer]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

What was the evil combo again? I think it was Growth (whatever HU calls it, maybe Size Change: Growth) and Increased Physical Endurance. You will dominate, and if you can take Invulnerability too they might as well hand you the keys to the White House. Oh no, there goes Tokyo, go, go, Godzilla!

 

Try to get the point across that each power set in HU is an Elemental Control or Multipower in HERO, sometimes both (things like Flame Control and Ice Control.) If you have Champions, let them look at the random character generator and how they can just shop the packages or dice up a character in minutes. Matter of fact, use the random chargen in Champions and then translate to HU and your characters may turn out somewhat balanced.

 

There is no saving H.C.C.s. They are horrible and irredeemable.

[Shaft]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

I rather liked the character generation in Heroes Unlimited, though I admit, my circle of friends made some slight modifications to it when we were playing it 15 years ago or so. It might be fun to build HERO versions of ther various powers and use them as the basis for randomly rolling up HERO supers.

 

We would allow PCs to roll twice per power and pick the best combo (ie if you got one major power and three minor powers, you'd have two rolls on the major powers table and six on the minor power rolls, and you pik the best combo). It made for less random results, and still presented the occasional surprise variation.

 

The problem with Heroes Unlimited IMHO is the system, not the character generation.

[Sweeper]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

Find new friends.

 

I can't do that, they're my friends,(I mean, we've finally grown to tolerate each other). 'sides, in Cardboard Crackland, it's very hard to find folks to play 'other than D&D'.

 

What was the evil combo again? I think it was Growth (whatever HU calls it' date=' maybe Size Change: Growth) and Increased Physical Endurance. You will dominate, and if you can take Invulnerability too they might as well hand you the keys to the White House. Oh no, there goes Tokyo, go, go, Godzilla![/quote']

 

So, 'That's' the combo that Mark said he'd shoot down if he saw it. That's ok, unstoppable characters are extremely boring anyway.

 

I really doubt I could make something up by the time to change games comes around. My group is made up of GMs, so we set it up to play a game for a certain story arc, (right now, we're playing an unholy combination of D&D's Keep on the Borderland and the 'Hacked' ver, Little Keep on the Borderlands using the Castles & Crusades rules), then someone else will take over with another game and hopefully different genre so we all take turns playing 'Gawd'.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

I rather liked the character generation in Heroes Unlimited' date=' though I admit, my circle of friends made some slight modifications to it when we were playing it 15 years ago or so. It might be fun to build HERO versions of ther various powers and use them as the basis for randomly rolling up HERO supers.[/quote']

 

Our (long-missing) board colleague Fuzzy Gnome did some work along those lines: http://web.archive.org/web/20050317094621/http://www.herogames.com/oldForum/Rules/000322.html

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

I can't do that, they're my friends,(I mean, we've finally grown to tolerate each other). 'sides, in Cardboard Crackland, it's very hard to find folks to play 'other than D&D'.

 

Yeah, I really do understand.

 

Just call it fair warning.... trying to play a Palladium system game with my friends actually ended up costing me a couple of them.

 

But I honestly can't blame just the system... that game just revealed a side of them I'd have rather not met.

[csyphrett]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

There's nothing really unstoppable in Palladium, but combinations of powers are really great for collateral damage. Sonic speed and growth will allow a character to punch a hole through a city with a sonic boom.

 

Sometimes its easier to get a description of a character before you try to roll him up.

 

CES

[Shaft]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

trying to play a Palladium system game with my friends actually ended up costing me a couple of them.

 

But I honestly can't blame just the system... that game just revealed a side of them I'd have rather not met.

 

I know what you mean. When we played Beyond the Supernatural, one of my friends came up with a baby bandolier so that he could have a steady supply of infants at the ready to sacrifice for spell casting.

 

In his defence, the rules encouraged it. (People have a certain amount of Potential Psychic Energy, which is effectively like END for Spellcasting. Babies have twice as much PPE as an adult, and when you kill someone, you can tap into their PPE which doubles at the moment of death).

 

Also in his defence, he never used it (7 crying infants gives you massive penalties to a Prowl check) - he just designed it to mock the system. But still, we mocked him for coming up with the damn thing in the first place.

[Lord Fyre]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

Just remember . . .

 

Champions > Heroes Unlimited

 

[Sweeper]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

As my buddy Mark is fond of saying: 'It's funny that we have a hobby where we wouldn't want to associate with 70% of the participants in said hobby.' I do disagree with that. It's more like 40%

 

And fortunately, I've been beating the odds so far. *Knocks on fake wood*

[jkwleisemann]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

Uhm... good luck. I got started on Heroes Unlimited, and was truly grateful to discover Hero System.

 

Of course, the fact that my first HU GM *forced* us to use the random generator for everything but name didn't help at all.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

My advice would be don't bother.

 

 

But, in the interests of being constructive, I would approach it like this:

 

Step 1: Convert some HU characters into HERO System terms and see if I could distill a general power level and point range for major and minor powers.

 

Step 2: Make some HERO Powers in the same general point range

 

Step 3: Re-express the HERO Powers in a fashion that mimics the HU style

 

Step 4: Introduce them to the group as possible new Powers without mentioning how you came up with them

 

Step 5: Achieve world domination

 

Step 6: Profit!

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Power creation flexibility in Heroes Unlimited

 

My advice would be don't bother.

 

 

But, in the interests of being constructive, I would approach it like this:

 

Step 1: Convert some HU characters into HERO System terms and see if I could distill a general power level and point range for major and minor powers.

 

Step 2: Make some HERO Powers in the same general point range

 

Step 3: Re-express the HERO Powers in a fashion that mimics the HU style

 

Step 4: Introduce them to the group as possible new Powers without mentioning how you came up with them

 

Step 5: Achieve world domination

 

Step 6: Profit!

 

Nope, still not worth my time.

 

I'll stick with:

Step 1: Steal Underpants

Step 3: Profit!