Steve

Aid powers that enhance CVs and/or Teamwork skill for teammates could be considered.

The usual way this is answered is to use Extradimensional Space from the Advanced Player Guide II but there are other tricks that can be used.

In Old English, the word 'mann' just meant human being or person.  A male was 'wer' (from which we get werewolf) and a female was wif (from which we get wife).  So you could just call them Yeomann, with the extra letter n to designate it as gender neutral.

The Boom Boys (along with nearly as many Boom Girls) are members of a growing network of teenaged street gangs that have somehow acquired a mutagenic serum called “Boom Juice” that awakens superpowers in a very few of those who receive it (in the 200-300 point range for less than 1% of recipients).
 
Nothing much seems to happen to most recipients (90% have a mild improvement no better than a typical VIPER agent), and some die in various horrible ways after taking it (9%). For some reason, it has no effect on anyone too old (over 19) or too young (under 13), so seems to be affected by hormone levels found during puberty.
 
Boomers are a new addition to the street scene and it is unknown if any of them will keep their powers into adulthood or they will fade away as their hormone levels change. It is unknown who is supplying the Boom Juice. Most of them do smash and grab robberies or muggings to get cash.
 
The vast majority of Boomers are physically enhanced types, so tend to be Bricks and Martial Artists along with a few low-level Speedsters. Animal-like powers have also been observed. Some possess energy-based powers with special effects like electricity, fire or cold. None seem to have any mental abilities other than varying degrees of Mental Defense.
 
The gang members are intended to be a low-level villain group for teenaged superheroes to fight. As the superpowered members of the gang gain experience with their abilities, this opposition could continue into adulthood, with some of the gang members becoming full-fledged supervillains.

Grunt is one of the more physically powerful Boom Boys with a simplistic powerset rather similar to Bulldozer’s. He is illiterate and not very smart, so crime is an easy way for him to make money. He will do simple smash and grabs, once breaking open an ATM for the cash inside, and mugging people.

Twinkle is a young Boom Girl, aged fifteen. She is surprisingly strong for her size and build (five feet tall and 110 pounds) but with a 25 STR.
 
Her primary powerset is a blinding area effect flash centered on herself that she can emit which she is immune to and a twinkling, lightweight force field just barely strong enough to deflect bullets up to .45 caliber. She can also teleport short distances, which makes her difficult to catch.
 
She will teleport into jewelry stores and steal what she can grab or mug people on the streets.

Fun-Size is an older, tomboyish Boom Girl, almost eighteen. She possesses linked abilities of Shrinking and Density Increase and some added physical enhancements even without her powers on. So the smaller she is, the stronger she is. Her current limit is shrinking to 1/4 her normal height and a 40 STR, but her punches are armor-piercing when at her smallest size from her tiny fists.
 
She liked to fight even before getting her powers, but she enjoys it even more now that she’s gotten limited invulnerability and super-strength.

Large Multipowers with lots of slots can invite decision paralysis during combat.
 
Having three powers active at 50 points each does not sound abusive to me.

The Boom Boys (along with nearly as many Boom Girls) are members of a growing network of teenaged street gangs that have somehow acquired a mutagenic serum called “Boom Juice” that awakens superpowers in a very few of those who receive it (in the 200-300 point range for less than 1% of recipients).
 
Nothing much seems to happen to most recipients (90% have a mild improvement no better than a typical VIPER agent), and some die in various horrible ways after taking it (9%). For some reason, it has no effect on anyone too old (over 19) or too young (under 13), so seems to be affected by hormone levels found during puberty.
 
Boomers are a new addition to the street scene and it is unknown if any of them will keep their powers into adulthood or they will fade away as their hormone levels change. It is unknown who is supplying the Boom Juice. Most of them do smash and grab robberies or muggings to get cash.
 
The vast majority of Boomers are physically enhanced types, so tend to be Bricks and Martial Artists along with a few low-level Speedsters. Animal-like powers have also been observed. Some possess energy-based powers with special effects like electricity, fire or cold. None seem to have any mental abilities other than varying degrees of Mental Defense.
 
The gang members are intended to be a low-level villain group for teenaged superheroes to fight. As the superpowered members of the gang gain experience with their abilities, this opposition could continue into adulthood, with some of the gang members becoming full-fledged supervillains.

File -> Preferences -> Display tab -> Display Active Points on abilities (by default)
 
Note that will not affect existing abilities -- those will have whatever setting you saved them with.

Yes, an escort/bodyguard/driver could be fun. Perhaps the humanoid penguin has an unusual talent for solving crimes and keeps stumbling across murders, or less lethal Scooby-like mysteries. The human assistant could be a less than willing helper (“Tracking down weirdos and criminals isn’t in my job description. I’m just supposed to drive you around and get you to games.”)

Even without powers, there could be “weird events” he/she participates in.
 
Personally, I just find the idea of an anthropomorphic penguin slouched at a bar somewhere in Pittsburgh and grousing about life in between performing at sports games or Scooby-like weird event adventures to be funny.

In a superhero universe, perhaps the mascot of the Pittsburgh Penguins is a human-sized anthropomorphic penguin, either from another world or another universe.
 
Think Howard the Duck, only a penguin.

In a superhero universe, perhaps the mascot of the Pittsburgh Penguins is a human-sized anthropomorphic penguin, either from another world or another universe.
 
Think Howard the Duck, only a penguin.

Reminds me of PenPen from Neon Genesis Evangelion. The mascot of the series and hot weather penguin (relatively speaking...he has a sleeping quarters inside a for him walk in freezer).

Whatever you pick is probably fine. Speaking from my 40+ years of experience as a GM and worldbuilder, I can say your players probably will probably neither notice nor care about your choices for such details... unless they get in the way of a PC getting what the player wants, in which no amount of internal logic will prevent complaining. So don't stress about it.
 
In fact... it might be more interesting to try this exercise: Write down the domains you want available on slips of paper, Put the slips in a bag and shake them up. Pull out three domains at random. See if you can make up a god for that set of domains, no matter how deranged the combination may seem. With a little work, you can probably come up with a myth to justify why the same god deals with, I don't know, Death, Light, and Travel.
 
I also recommend the World Creation Superdrafts threads in the Non-Gaming Discussion forum. A game of competitive shared world construction, in which each participant takes the role of one of the gods making that world. There've been six so far, I think, in which people came up with amazingly creative gods In the last one, I went rather conventional with a God of Love; but other people produced gods of Metal, Colors, Moons, Doors, and a truly terrifying God of Tyranny -- among others. I guarantee these will broaden your horizons when it comes to designing gods.
 
EDIT: Here's the link to the last one. Enjoy.
World Creation Superdraft 6: May 2022 - Non-Gaming Discussion - HERO Games
 
Dean Shomshak

Hardlight has investigated the PSI-mooks equipment, and happily none of it was rigged to explode if dismantled. It includes some rather nifty autoheal stuff.
 
Hero Shrew: Smart supervillains don’t piss off the Goonion. 
 
Hero Shrew: You could always patent the Goo Gun and sell it to police departments across the country - what are the inventors going to do, complain?
Flux: Do you want to get sued by evil lawyers? Sorry, evilLER lawyers.
Magus: How much do you want to bet that they did patent it, and it got ‘stolen’. 
 
GM: The gun only worked for Scooter because he’s always thinking violent thoughts.
Flux: ‘I could murder a mealworm bar’?
GM: He’s also thinking happy thoughts, and it’s not an imbalance, just weird. 
Hero Shrew: “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
 
GM: I don’t know where Hardlight got the idea this equipment has organic components.
Hero Shrew OoC: Well, don’t blame me.
Flux OoC: Yes, it’s not a Scooter Filter problem this time. 
 
Hero Shrew’s player: *to the cats* You two, behave yourselves!
Flux’s player: That's a perfect impersonation of Fireflash when she finds out what we have planned.
 
GM: As a reminder as to how you got involved with the clinic, that's because it's run by E-G Employment, the subdivision of Erikson-Gulsvig Logistics GmbH. The corporation you're setting Loweltech to sue so you can progress the Moreau issue. They’re providing the Moreau the suit will focus on. I’m resisting the impulse to make them a lamb. Or goat.
 
Getting the financial records of the company turns out to be more difficult than we might have anticipated - the clinic never applied for charity status so the records aren’t easily available. We eventually get the records anyway - which are sent over in hard copy. Hundreds of thousands of pages. Including huge amounts of irrelevant material. 
 
GM: At least they didn’t do the old trick of non-standard formatting as well. But it’s still three whole semi-trailers of loose paper. 
Flux: We’re going to need office space.
Hardlight: We’re going to need a warehouse. 
 
Even with a team of accountants from LowellTech and a device Flux invents to digitise it all, it’s still going to take weeks to go through it with a fine tooth comb and find anything that might interest the District Attorney. Beyond the factory that was making psi drugs instead of destroying pharmaceutical waste. 

Hero Shrew: Circular economy.
Hardlight: What?
Hero Shrew: Make powerful drugs, sell the pharmaceutical waste to this company, who make different powerful drugs. 
 
Sending over all the records in paper form isn’t an admission of guilt, but it’s certainly evidence that Erikson-Gulsvig Logistics GmbH is annoyed with us. It almost certainly means they won’t want to help with the Moreau situation anymore. We hand the investigation off to the FBI.
 
GM: They have people that get off on going through this kind of paperwork.
Fireflash: Remind me next time - don’t ask, just break into their system. 
 
At least we’ve put a major crimp in PSI operations. There’s not many places they could hide manufacturing on that scale.
 
Magus finally gets a copy of The Whispered Paths, although the person that found it for him was so annoyed by the experience they’re going to charge any future mystic customer double. Unfortunately it’s in Fucine, an extinct language once associated with witches. Someone was very upset that somebody was after the book, and increasingly upset the closer it got to Edge City. The bookhunter tells the Magus that for free, because he didn’t try to stiff her, which is apparently a problem with mystic types. 
 
GM: There’s apparently a book that can help you translate Fucine to Latin, but it’s rare, because why would anybody need to read Fucine?
Magus: Well, I’ll try Amazon first. It seems I’ve embarked on Book Hunt 2.
Hero Shrew: Now there’s a phrase you need to pronounce carefully. 
 
Although the author of the journal, P. Lanzo Geovanny Renzo Aberto Geomar Alfredo Pasquale Conti, is best known for going completely mad. 
 
Flux: That’s never a good sign. 
 
Flux: To be fair all penguins are man-eating, they just don’t often get the opportunity.
 
Magus: I have a nasty suspicion who has the journal.
Fireflash: If it’s who I’m thinking of we did deal with their local cult.

GM: You have to be a special kind of wrong when even the Descending Hierarchy of Hell wants nothing to do with you.
Flux: ‘We’re evil - but YOU are CRAZY’
 
APPARENTLY, a copy is in the possession of septuagenarian antiquarian Angilia Eleonora Dubois, who is old Monterey money. It’s highly suspicious that such a rare book is present in a city that someone wanted to keep The Whispered Paths far away from.
 
Hardlight: Are we pulling a heist? I'm all for a heist.
Fireflash: I am entirely against doing a heist! I’ll just ask her if we can borrow the book for a few days, for the public good.
 
Dubois’ entire family were killed in the disaster that turned Monterey into Edge City, so Fireflash turns her attention to the Dubois family lawyer. Said lawyer points her towards the collection’s curator, Liberty Kendra Brown. 
 
Hero Shrew OoC: You might want to assure her you’re not letting me anywhere near the collection.
 

 

 
Dubois is in her 70s, but barely looks it. Apparently she came out as a mutant 20 years ago. . She has pointed ears and a slightly lengthened lifespan. Some of us suspect elf ancestry.
 
GM: Do any of you have Architecture skills?
Hero Shrew: I do! *looks at building* Yep, that’s architecture.
Flux: He’s eaten enough of it. 
 
Her house is original Spanish, by the look of it.
 
Flux: I’m impressed it’s survived this long.
Magus: Any building over 60 years old has survived three alien invasions.
GM: Dude, this one survived a zeppelin assault!
 
Ms. Dubois: No need to be so formal, people keep forgetting I was a young woman in the 60s. 
 
She doesn’t remember the journal at first, but recalls the auction she acquired it at. And starts seeming a little concerned as Fireflash and the Magus explain their interest. She needs to make a phone call, and has Liberty take them through to the densely packed library.
 
GM: She has one of those old-fashioned phones.
Magus: One with a cord?
GM: Thanks for that, now I feel old. 
 
As Fireflash and the Magus make digital copies of the journal, Hardlight waits out in the car, since he felt weird about going in in costume. One of the staff brings out refreshments.

Fireflash: These days if you scan a demon into the internet it’s back 30 minutes later, whimpering and asking to be put back in the book.

GM: ‘I tried the worst things I could think of and they kept suggesting improvements!’
 
Flux gets a phone call on his Chris Jones phone, from Bob in accounting.
Bob: Hey, Chris, have you been making some strange friends lately? This jacked surfer-looking guy came in asking questions. Wanted to know if you’d made any new friends lately. Have you?
Flux: Not really, you know what my social life is like.
Magus: Funnily enough ‘good-looking surfing dude’ is a good description of me, when I’m not wearing other faces. 
 
When we get back to the base, we’re very glad we uploaded the images already, because the new camera we used to take the images has mysteriously vanished. 
 
Hero Shrew: Well, if the book deletes anything that it’s copied onto, we probably shouldn’t have uploaded the images to the internet. 
 
On the other hand, if somebody else wanted the contents of the book, there didn’t seem to be much actually stopping them raiding the collection directly. 
 
Flux is cautiously checking his apartment, just in case the jacked-surfer-dude is a threat.
 
Flux: It’s a bit embarrassing, I’ve been successfully kidnapped once, and we failed to get Fireflash kidnapped twice. 
 
Fortunately he doesn’t need to rely on the Mk.I Eyeball. Whoever was hanging around is magical, but not a flavour he’s familiar with. But his apartment is so small that sending more than one of us in to check is honestly difficult. There are other issues too, of course. 
 
Flux: Maybe don’t have two or three costumed superheroes STANDING AROUND OUTSIDE MY SECRET ID 
Fireflash goes in disguised as a civilian, instead of wearing her usual string bikini. She gets comfortable and uses Retrocognition.
Flux: Ah. It’s just occurred to me that this is my personal living space.
Fireflash: Fortunately it's vague and unclear and that is very small so we don’t have to worry about it. 
Flux: I really have to stop asking my friends for help. 
 
Whoever was here seemed very interested in the traces of Flux’s magic, and entered and left through the wall. 
 
Hardlight: Maybe they were just here to recruit you into some kind of magical school?
Flux: I’m allergic to owls. 
 
Magus tracks the magic back to Little Haiti, then loses him in the magical hotspot there. But it would appear from there it leads straight to, and into, Lake Effinger. 
 
Magus: Ah. I wonder if it’s whoever rang me, after I left my number there. 
Hardlight: You left your phone number on the Tesseract???
Magus: Of course not. I left it on the outside of the cave the Tesseract was in, after we sealed it. 
 
The jacked-surfer-dude is indeed at the cave, with waterproof bag and swimtrunks. He’s just ignited a torch. Underwater. 
 
Fireflash: That’s a neat trick.
GM: That’s Atlantean fire magic. 
Atlantean: *cheerfully* Magus! 
 
He surfaces to talk to us. 
 
Atlantean: My apologies for intruding on your private identity. 
Flux: In future, I have an email address, a phone number, and a doorbell. 
 
The Atlanteans didn’t MAKE the tesseract, but they do consider it their responsibility. 
 
Fireflash: *sigh* What are the odds we’re going to have to go through it before we can shut it down?
Atlantean: My people did try to sense what lay beyond it when we first discovered it. We detected only fear and death. So hopefully not?
Magus: The thing’s the drain for most of the magical energies in the city, so that can’t be good. 
Flux: Why did Magus get a phone call?
Atlantean: He left a card. 
Flux: Note to self - graffiti more walls.
Atlantean: Please don't.
Flux: ‘For a good time call’
 
The explosion that created Lake Effinger WAS intended to create a dimensional breach, although given the ‘fear and death’ aspect it might not have been the original intended destination. 
 
Hardlight: At least we don’t have to get hit by a truck if we decide to Isekai.
Magus: We could build a Dimensional Damage field into the Quadraphibious Qruiser.
GM: Please don’t. 
 
GM: Well, that went much more peacefully than I expected.
Magus OoC: ‘What, there were no misunderstandings? Bulls***, what is this comic!’ ‘And then they talked like adults about it and went home’
 
GM: There’s one thing protecting Captain Planet from a reboot is that it was created by Ted Turner.
Hero Shrew’s player: So it won’t be so much resurrected as recolourised.
 
Flux’s player: Buy Demolition as a skill.
Hero Shrew OoC: People keep telling me not to do that.
 
GM: I had this picture I was going to use a neat stadium, then realised it was from Pokemon. And I don’t want to put Hero Shrew in a pokemon arena. ‘What do you want me to do?’ ‘Beat up this cock-fighting seizure monster’ ‘ Well, OK'.
Flux OoC: ‘You weren’t supposed to eat it!’
Hero Shrew OoC: I don’t want to speculate what Scooter would evolve into.
 
The organisation that's monitoring Fireflash’s superhuman metabolism has a problem regarding the Moreau medical analysis program they are involved in with Allanah, but it's not something they want to worry her about until they’ve dealt with it themselves.
 
Fireflash: Well, that’s a sentence guaranteed to make me worry. 
 
Some of the biosamples they’ve been taking of her are going missing. The samples are all supposed to be destroyed, but the residue numbers aren’t adding up. And the security about the samples is enough that it has to be some kind of superhuman stealing them. 
 
Hardlight: Biotechnology isn’t my strong suit - what could somebody malicious do with these samples, if they had them?
Hero Shrew: Make an army of clone soldiers? We’ve already had that one. 
How can we do our own security inspection without giving the culprits time to hide the evidence?
GM: At least you know if it looks like they’re hiding evidence, it’s evidence their security organization is compromised.
Flux: ‘oh look, somebody fled the building a minute after you told security you were coming’.
 
Hero Shrew’s player: Back, what did I miss?
Flux’s player: Firelash’s player brought up Dimetrodon and broke the internet. It was probably punishment for all the puns. He didn’t SAY any but was probably thinking them.
Flux’s player: Their audio sounds like GladOS dying. I know it’s disrupting the game but it’s hilarious - like GladOS and SHODAN  having a conversation about Dimetrodon in the background. 
GM: HoWWWWs my -a—--DIO nooooooooooWWWwwwW
Flux’s player: Still GladOS having a stroke.
Hero Shrew’s Player: And now you sound like someone using a taser on a Cybertronian. 
 
Fireflash’s Retrocognition reveals the fact that a known shadow-manipulating and teleporting superhuman, Ghost Shadow of the Six Teens, messing about on the site. It looks like he’s stealing a bunch of feline samples now.
 
Magus: And now you have to go apologize to Security for being kind of a d*** when you showed up.
Fireflash: Sorry, we’ve been dealing with all sorts of aliens and psychic shapeshifters for the last few months, we've got kinda paranoid.
Head of Security: Psychic shapechangers? Now I’M going to be paranoid.
Fux: Try not to think about it too much - they’ll know.
 
Hardlight is a bit uncomfortable about the big greenhouse dome in the middle of the facility.
 
Magus: He was once stuck on a flight where the only entertainment was Biodome starring Pauly Shore, and it had a lasting effect.
 
One suggestion we have for security is blinds on the inside of the warehouse windows, to stop our teleporter friend easily getting in and out.
 
Hero Shrew: Are we going to have to go into the big glass dome they’ve been pumping mutagens into?
GM: What?
The Magus: There probably aren’t any mutagens, no.
Hero Shrew: Oh good, so I don’t have to retroactively ask for today off.
GM: How did you get the idea that the dome is full of mutagens?
Magus: He saw a suspicious biotech company with a big greenhouse. Hero Shrew is the kind of person who bases his understanding of science on Saturday Morning Cartoons.
Hardlight: Are we going to have to worry about cat-themed supervillains now?
Hero Shrew: Maybe he just wants to make a pet for his girlfriend?
Magus: The only cat-themed supervillain I can think of works for Teleios, and he wouldn’t need the help.
Although Flux does recall one Lynx, who works for the Overbrain. She’s also a huge anime nerd.
Magus: Probably explains how she knows Ghost Shadow.
GM: They probably met at a convention. ‘That’s a really good Ghost Shadow costume.’ ‘Costume? That’s a really good fursuit.’ ‘Fursuit’?
 
We determine that the samples are being stolen in-between sampling and destruction, while they’re in the queue until there’s a full load for disposal. So Ghost Shadow must have access to the full schedule on the disposal chain, since he’s going straight to the right canisters, and we already know the Six Teens have good tech savvy, since the first time we met them they were ransacking a server. Hopefully he hasn’t noticed we've been to the site yet, and we can plant some samples that Flux and the Magus can track and wait in ambush.
Ghost Shadow is well-known enough to us that we know he claims to carry his own ‘internal shadow’ as a power source. 
 
Magus: Any chance we can go beat up Black Paladin and steal his sword?
Fireflash: ‘Now you don’t HAVE a shadow, Bwahaha.’
Fireflash: Do you have any more of those tracers, like the ones they stuck into me?
Magus: We know their group has a tech expert as well as a magic user.
GM: The Black Warlock?
Magus: Hmm. Well, if we ever meet him I’ll try to refrain from any comments about being a proper warlock. 
Hero Shrew: So, this Overbrain, does he have a humanoid exosuit?
GM: No? He doesn’t need one, he has minions.
Hero Shrew: Sorry, still thinking about mutagens and Saturday Morning Cartoons.
 
Hardlight: Well, we still need to make this fake sample. Scooter, pull up your shirt.
Flux: Let’s NOT give them a sample of an actual biological superhuman, ok?
Fireflash: For one thing we don’t know what they’ll do with it.
GM: Indeed - Steiners are rare, as well as having innate psychic abilities.
Magus: Scooter is innately capable of determining what the people around him are thinking and knowing exactly the wrong thing to say. 
 
Magus: So let's set up our trap
Fireflash: And hope it doesn't turn into a cat-astrophe.
Hero Shrew: I’ve got a bad feline about this.
 
We track Ghost Shadow and a single other person, to a makeshift lab in an abandoned warehouse.
 
GM: Supervillain Hideout #3
 
And the other person is a Moreau that Scooter recognises - a Moreau that never needed to be caged back at the Genesys labs. A Moreau that helped the scientists. The one the other Moreaus called Lab Rat. Scooter is not happy about this. Of course if we are going to grab him, we have to deal with the teleporter first. Flux Flashes them, and the Magus and Hardlight try to bubble them. To the GM’s shock, this works.
 
Hardlight: Flawless Plan!
Magus: Feels wrong, doesn't it?
 
Unfortunately Lab Rat hit a panic button. More unfortunately, Scooter grabbed and shook Lab Rat, who goes limp after an audible crack. Magus hurried heals him, while Fireflash hurls much deserved abuse at Scooter.
 
Flux: World of cardboard, Scooter, world of cardboard!
Fireflash: If you keep doing this Scooter you’ll kill somebody and end up in prison.
Magus: And I’m neither fully aware how nor entirely willing to heal death.
Ghost Shadow: *hacking away ineffectually at the walls of the bubble* F***!
Flux: Oh, sorry, I forgot you were there.
 
Flux manages to stop the harddrives being overwritten, as well as stop the countdown to some other kind of precaution. We call in the ECPD, and do a quick search of the building for anybody else. We’d better be fast - it turns out that Hardlight’s bubble will be exhausted in under a minute, unless he drops everything else he’s doing, including moving around.  
Ghost Shadow: We were trying to help a friend. And the ragdoll over there was the only Moreau with the skills we needed. Your bat friend is capable, but she’s not a geneticist.
Another problem is that it’s not Lab Rat doing the bulk of the work - Lab Rat was just doing the preliminary work for Dr Steinbeck, the creator of Moraeus with superpowers. Who wasn’t in Edge City.
 
Fireflash: It would be incredibly unwise of him to be in Edge City.
Ghost Shadow: Or incredibly clever. I don’t think he’d want to be far from his children. 
Magus: I hope you don’t mean that literally.
Ghost Shadow: What? EW. EW.
Fireflash: We do know another geneticist that might help. But we still want to know why you need the help. 
Ghost Shadow: Like I said, I just want to help a friend.
Magus: Is it Lynx?
Ghost Shadow: What. How did you kn-- No, of course it isn’t!
 
He admits it’s her. Apparently the Overbrain has screwed up her enhancements, and his control of Lynx leaves something to be desired too. Fireflash offers to help, if she hands herself in.
Ghost Shadow: Why do you heroes always go this route? Why can’t you just tell me if you know another geneticist?

Fireflash: We do - it’s Allana?
Ghost Shadow: She does know genetics? Cool! See ya! *teleports out of the bubble*
 
Allana the bat moreau might well offer medical help anyway, regardless of whether they’re a hero, civilian, or villain, but that won’t stop her throwing people through walls if it becomes necessary. Lab Rat gets handed over to the authorities before Scooter glares him to death, and hopefully without any other Moraeus finding out. 
 
Duty Officer: Lab Rat? Lab Rat? Wait, THE Lab Rat?? Oh hell, Duty Detail, NOW. Get him into one of the high security cells and sit on him, and do NOT take him past the Kennels - I mean the Moreau cells. 
 

Opening the session with a long conversation that started with giant river otters, detoured through the convergent evolution of dagger-faced felinoids and the Cold War’s contributions to continental drift, and ended with the mammal-like reptiles of the Permian.
 
GM: Shall we begin then?
Rajira’s player: Let us. And possibly tomato. 
 
The lower levels of the slavers’ lair is entirely flooded - fortunately we prepared some methods to deal with underwater tunnels early. Unfortunately the tunnels are inhabited.
 
Civilla’s player: We might not know what Skum are - which knowing this party is an interesting sentence. 
Civilla OoC: I believe I can speak their language - and am no doubt disappointing Terzo by knowing languages that are only spoken in dark places.
Rajira OoC: I’m probably just confirming his opinions about me.
Terzo OoC: Actually… hanging around in dark places and learning a secret language isn’t ENTIRELY unheard of for Terzo, for reasons he is keeping to himself.

GM:... You may have just skipped the entire dungeon.
Civilla: By not being murder-hoboes and actually behaving like civilised beings?
 
Civilla: If you have no ill-intentions towards the land-dwellers we have no ill-intention towards you. We have more problems with the maker of stupid laws - have you HEARD the stupid laws?
 
Since we seem agreeable and seek peace, they offer to take us their chieftain.
 
GM: There’s a lot of inscriptions you can’t read unless you know Aboleth.
Civilla: …Um. I’m sorry, but once you run out of dead languages that actually make sense you start looking into the weirder stuff. 
 
The carvings on the wall are written in the eerie language of the aboleths, relating various observations of human activity in Kintargo over the past several months—this is how the leader of the skum scouting tribe has kept notes on their observations. The name “Menotheguro” is mentioned several times in cadences of awe and respect, but the messages do not make clear what this creature is. Also, the fame of the Ghosts of Kintargo has even spread down here.
 
Terzo: I’m feeling mixed emotions about this - I’ve dreamt of this kind of fame and now I can’t even use my name. 
 
Civilla notes that among the Stupid Laws Thrune has enacted, is one that would give the Skum a lucrative opportunity to ship materials and messages from ship to shore, without risk to the ships’ various captains. The Skum seem cautiously diplomatic, despite their suspicion about overlanders.
 
Chieftain: How do you feel about.. Well, it’s probably easier to just show you.
Civilla OoC: OK, now I’m getting nervous.
 
There’s a Drowning Devil in the next chamber. Very unpleasant.
 
Shurshogot: *telepathically* Ungol-pagh! What have you brought me today?
Ungol-pagh: *in Undercommon* These adventurers may be able to help you, sir.
Rajira: *in Infernal* It’s certainly possible - if we have good enough reason.
Shurshogut: *in Infernal* Finally someone I can talk to!
 
The negotiations are even more cautious than they were earlier, not least because some of Civilla’s patrons would be annoyed with her making deals with a Devil, but Shurshogut was bound here by the Grey Spiders and he offers us some boons if we can get find that contract, destroy it, and set him free. Civilla will make sure that the new contract she negotiates includes the order that it immediately returns home as soon as our business is done. 
 
Civilla: It CLAIMS that it wants to go home, but it might be lying. 
 
Civilla actually has quite a few advantages over your average Chellaxian diabolist - for one thing she’s more flexible about where she looks for power. 
 
Shurshogut does offer some potentially interesting information - somewhere in Kintargo is a corruption in the River of Souls. A Soul Anchor. That someone could theoretically use to retain their memories after they die, and become a lingering genius loci. 
 
Rajira: Pharasma won’t like that.
Civilla: Pharasma doesn’t like immortality, period. 
Shurshogut: May I suggest ‘Not return to the Material Plane for a year and a day’? 
Civilla: Acceptable.
Shurshogut: I mean I don’t WANT to stay, but everyone always wants it in writing.
 
Civilla OoC: Under most versions of contract law, the Little Mermaid had an out on her contract. 
Ayva OoC: Hmm?
Civilla OoC: She closed her eyes and looked away when she signed. Although there’s a limited pool of arbitrators that could contest it for her. King Triton is out of the question, of course.
 
Shurshogut: The guildmaster that bound me here went into his strongroom, closed the door, and didn’t come out. 
Rajira: So he’s probably hungry.
Shurshogut: Or dead. 
Rajira: I was assuming dead, as well as hungry. 
Ayva: We have that kind of luck. 
 
After we’re well out of telepathy range of the devil, Terzo speaks his mind.
 
Terzo: We REALLY need to figure out exactly what Thrune is doing in the opera house.
Civilla: Oh, you think? But why is the Soul Anchor HERE?
Rajira: There’s a lot we don’t know about Kintargo.
 
Civilla explains where she actually gets her power - by making small deals with a wide variety of eldritch beings.
 
Civilla: I do favours for them, they do favours for me.
Terzo: *nodding approvingly* Good social networking.
 
Unfortunately the traps on the strongroom door are quite vicious, and poor Rajira nearly gets bisected like the Skum that tried earlier. 
 
Terzo: *patching her up* Watching you trying to pick that lock wasn’t doing my blood pressure any good, but it doesn’t seem to have done yours any good either.
Civilla: That is a REALLY good lock.
Ayva OoC: Just so you know, we’ll be stealing the door and taking it home. And hanging it up as a trophy.
Civilla OoC: Are you kidding? We’re going to set it up as the entrance to our base under the old livery. 
Rajira OoC: Inside a small anti-magic field. 
Civilla OoC: ‘sure you found the secret entrance, sure you come down the ladder, now you come around a corner and find a big F*** OFF door.’
 
The Grey Spider’s strongroom contains three heavy iron chests sit against the north wall of an otherwise empty room—empty, that is, save for the desiccated corpse of a human woman with eight long spidery legs protruding from her back, and the shambling, continually bleeding, skinned skeletal corpse of Guildmaster Baccus, his eyes rolling in his head as he seeks his prey. It would nice to get more opponents like Thrune's late, unlamented, rumoured-to-have-fled-the-city-i-have-no-idea-who-starts-these-rumours bodyguard. She went down with one stab. This thing is considerably more of a problem, but eventually succumbs, and indeed has the devil's contract on its person. 
 
Civilla’s player: Does Pathfinder have stats for a falx?
Terzo’s player: This isn’t D&D and Gygax listing every kind of pole-arm.
Civilla’s player: Glaive, Guisarme, Glaive-guisarme, Guisarme-voulge, Bill-guisarme -
Terzo’s player: Spam, spam, spam, spam -
 
The Drowning Demon tells us that the Soul Anchor is at the bottom of a lake. That lake with the apparent nuclear reactor on the grounds of the Victocora estate. Civilla’s letter to her family, weeks ago, to buy up the estate before anybody else can is suddenly much more important than we knew. Apparently there's been quite a bidding war over the remains of the estate, not that any of that would stop Thrune just stepping in and seizing it if he needs to. 
 
GM: And you have all that loot to carry home.
Rajira’s player: Just as well we have more hands now.
Terzo’s player: Minions are good for that. 
 
It’s nice to have a new potential lair and hideout - especially with live-in security in the form of the Skum. Unfortunately, we all also receive personal invitations from Barzillai Thrune. A very public invitation for us to join him before the Kintargo Opera House, to receive honors for their outstanding service in promoting safety on the streets of Kintargo, and for rescuing a pair of young men from a group of kidnappers!
 
Ayva: We need to decline this honour.
Civilla: We can’t.
Ayva: We need an escape plan.
Civilla: We can plan one, but we still can’t avoid this. It will also put a spotlight on Terzo for the first time in a long time. 
Terzo: True true, there is that bonus.
Civilla: It’s not a bonus. Terzo, you need to understand, you’re on the stage playing a role, and that role is ‘sneaky bastard’, not ‘flamboyant git’.
 
We dress in our best outfits - although avoiding Thrune’s Proclaimation about embroidered clothes in public - and take care to carry no more weapons then decorum insists upon. After the bells on the Church of Asmodeus toll once for each of us, Barzillai emerges into the plaza with full entourage, and studies us with an intensity that belies his political smile. He’s looking a bit more haggard than he was when he arrived in Kintargo.
 
Civilla notes that Thrune’s symptoms are those of somebody who’s been the personal blood bank of a vampire for a while. Rajira points out that those are also the symptoms of prolonged stress. 
 
Terzo: Can’t imagine what has him so stressed.
Civilla: Maybe all those rumours about his bodyguard fleeing the city.
Terzo: Or the ‘Let Dogs Beware’ graffiti on his front door.
 
Thrune: Well done, well done! Would that more of the citizenry were as keenly observant and helpful as you intrepid citizens! I’ll have my eye on you, trust in that, for I have no doubt you have great works still ahead of you. Perhaps you may again be of service to your government. Please take these gifts from the city of Kintargo as Thrune’s thanks to your services rendered, and please continue to work to ensure, as I do, this grand city’s safety and proud legacy.
Civilla’s player: … and now come the Bluff checks.
Terzo’s player: Yes, or my face will be going through some interesting contortions.
Rajira: Master Thrune, thank you for this honour. Please call on us if there is anything we can do for the city.
Thrune: Perhaps I will, but for now I must return to my other duties.
 
The gifts are stat-increasing belts and headbands. They're not cursed, and they’re not marked with any symbols of Asmodeus. What they DO have are symbols of ravens, done in silver. 
 
Civilla: IDENTIFY
 
Barzillai might have suspicions. Especially if he has access to the same kind of spells that Civilla has been using in her own activities. 
 
Terzo: Maybe he’s hoping we’ll panic.
Civilla: So let’s not. 
 
The raven sigils could certainly be used as a target in a Locate Object spell, but Civilla is confident that won’t help him find our safehouses. Locate Object is blocked by sufficient amounts of soil, rock, or metal.
 
Civilla: So we’re going to get these gold-plated. 
 
And some cloth-of-gold to use as a sash over Rajira’s new Belt of Dexterity.
 
Civilla: You know that Murder Kit I came up with? As cute as it is, I want to include Oil of Decompose Corpse. That way I can melt the flesh off Huge corpses and reduce them to a skeleton in minutes. Much easier to compact and dispose of. Although the skeletons will be a bit juicy. Although you can get everything for the basic Murder Kit is a small village. 
 
Terzo: If Thrune is so busy, we really need to know what he’s actually up to in the Opera House.
Rajira: The bigger question is ‘How Do We Find Out’?
Terzo: We still have no idea what happened to the previous Mayor or the Songbird of Kintargo.
Civilla’s player: That reminds me, GM, are you ready to cry? I have an ability called ‘Planar Contact’
 
Rajira has also recruited a team she’s calling the Dacoits. It’s unclear just what she intends to do with a gang of armed robbers. 

The actor who played Sonny Corleone in The Godfather has passed away.
 
May he Rest In Peace.

The Dungeons & Dragons toy display must have had a profound impact, inspiring me to complete character write-ups with some back story under Hero System 5th Edition. Included in this WinZip file are listed below. Enjoy! 😉
 
Ringlerun - 200 pts (Hero Designer file and Microsoft Word)
Teresa Lysander - 150 pts (Hero Designer file and Microsoft Word) - Entirely new character I created
Spectral Bear (Microsoft Word only)
Strongheart - 175 pts (Hero Designer file and Microsoft Word)
Marengo, Strongheart's Destrier (Microsoft Word only)
Turan, Strongheart's Bronze Dragon (Microsoft Word only)
Warduke - 175 pts (Hero Designer file and Microsoft Word)
Hesperos, Warduke's Nightmare (Microsoft Word only)
Kelek - 200 pts (Hero Designer file and Microsoft Word)
Skylla - 175 pts (Hero Designer file and Microsoft Word)

For 6e, the Advanced Player's Guide (pp 188-190) has the chase rules that appeared in the 4e and 5e core rulebooks.
 
For vehicle chases, my favorite HERO chase rules are in Danger International (pp 84-85). This optional chase system offers a risk/reward system where in the driver can choose to take greater risks in return for a greater chance of achieving their objective.

True.  Every now and then, some ability or combination of abilities in D&D turns out unbalanced as well (and the more abilities they publish, the more likely some unforeseen combination arises).
 
 
No question on the complexity and the need.  For Supers games, I find military hardware is statted out much too powerful.
 
Defenses reducing both STUN and BOD makes it tough for Supers to take BOD damage. If I were going for a Supers game where BOD damage was more likely, I think I would require most defenses be in the form of Damage Negation.  If you have 25 defenses, a 12d6 Normal attack literally can't do BOD - even 24d6 (massive against 25 defenses) needs above-average BOD.  On average, that 12d6 will roll 42 Stun (17 past defenses) and 12 BOD.
 
But if you instead had 8 levels of Damage Negation and 3 Defenses, a 12d6 attack drops to 4d6, rolls 14 STUN (11 past defenses) and 4 BOD (1 past defenses) on average.  Bump the defenses to 5 and BOD damage will still creep through on occasion.  And an opponent with just a few more DCs does a lot more BOD.

Although I've never used it for this purpose, I think that the Champions Universe dimension of Tatterdemalion would be... interesting... to traverse:
 
This Qliphothic dimension might be better described as an agglomeration of leftover dimensions. As planes of reality decay or corrode and become Qliphothic, sometimes they tear apart or shrink. By a process not even mystics understand, dozens of these “dimensional fragments” have become attracted to one another by some gravity-like extradimensional force and coalesced to form a patchwork reality Humans would call Tatterdemalion.

In Tatterdemalion, the “landscape” (such as it is) can change entirely over just a few miles as a traveler crosses from a fragment of one dimenstion to a fragment of another. Where the two fragments were previously similar or have “knitted together” well, this change may be gradual and subtle, but in most cases it’s as abrupt as a cliff ’s edge. And since they’re rotten pieces of ancient dimensions, none of the “zones” of Tatterdemalion are in any way pleasant.

The creatures and beings who once inhabited the various component realms of Tatterdemalion have mingled and interbred throughout the eons, creating things monstrous and strange even by Qliphothic standards. Some of them that Champions Universe Earth superheroes have encountered include: Carrionites, whose semi-undead flesh constantly remolds itself into different forms; the Foul-Skinned Men, humanoid warriors whose very touch is corruptive both physically and spiritually; Orons, invisible things who seem to be composed entirely of fanged mouths; Skeinrippers, who have the power to harm living beings by attacking their destinies; and Zodiac Beasts, predators said to be made of the stuff between constellations.
 
Passage quoted from Book Of The Empress p. 146. The creatures mentioned above have full write-ups in a mini-book, Tatterdemalion Terrors.

Me personally I would buy it as two-three tiers of a power. Say 10d6 total. 6d6 normal, with the next two as 2x End and then the last two as doing body DMG. The player should be made aware thenpoints are going into a "sink" that if they don't use it they're just wasting the points.
 
I keep going back and thinking about "Gotham" from the Batman New 52 era of books (and his sister Gotham Girl). Using their powers were slowly killing them/driving them crazy. The more they used the faster it killed them. He used his to near-Superman levels and died from them.
 

You could just take those extra few dice and build them with the additional limitation. That’s probably the most accurate way to present it.