Ockham's Spoon

While I understand it in the context of this discussion, it sounds bizarre to classify Homeless Person as a profession 🤨 For a role-playing game you can hand wave enough to say that being a Youtube star is a viable profession, but in reality it is like becoming a famous actor. For every A-list star making millions, you have piles of people struggling to even get seen. Even for Youtubers that make a decent living with lots of followers, it is time consuming because there is intense pressure to constantly post new material, and if you don't you will lose your following.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever had a character that was a bicycle repairman? 😁

So when you say 'best' jobs, you mean for the purposes of keeping a secret ID or for role-playing? Being filthy rich is convenient so you can set your own schedule and pay for whatever you need, but then you lose out on the role-playing opportunities when you have to explain to your boss why you showed up for work an hour late and smelling of brimstone Real estate agent is a good one, since they set their hours with their clients, can easily be placed in any given neighborhood, and still gives role-playing opportunities when they have to temporarily ditch their client to deal with some super-powered threat. Also, because of the feast or famine nature of real estate, the GM can be lax about the character's work schedule when it is convenient to the story-line by saying the character scored some big commissions, or the GM can turn up the pressure on their secret ID if they haven't gotten a sale in a while. One I always like for mystic-type heroes is antiques dealer. Again, the schedule is flexible, it lets them be eccentric without anyone batting an eye, and who knows what kinds of artifacts, treasure maps, or McGuffins they might find in their line of work.

Whenever I have a player that wants to run a PC that could be problematic for me as GM, I will usually tell them that they are welcome to do so provided that the character background fits in with the campaign I am running. For instance, I had a player that wanted to run a character with huge bat-wings in a world where winged people didn't exist as such. I said that that was fine provided they could explain why this particular character had wings and that the character has some reasonable way conceal the wings so that the heroes could walk into town without drawing the attention of everyone there. I would do the same with your child PC. If you don't want to deal with the parents, make the player come up with the backstory so that you don't need to include them.

Relatives show up most frequently as DNPCs, I think because blood is thicker than water. This allows for more conflict between the hero and DNPC without breaking the relationship; no matter how awkward the relationship becomes, you can't change the fact they are family. That just makes for more role-playing opportunities and more development of the DNPC because they aren't being rotated out periodically when their relationship with the hero falls apart. The most unusual DNPC I have ever had was for a PC sorceress who had gotten trapped in a hellish dimension as part of her origin story. In order to escape, she made a pact with an incubus that brought them both back to Earth, which established a link between them that was like the Corsican Twins - they shared emotions and injuries. They had to keep each other safe lest they die or return to hell, but they constantly fought with each other as well, having dramatically different sets of morals. The incubus was not particularly violent, and usually more interested in debauchery than viciousness which kept their relationship from completely disintegrating, although the sorceress was never quite sure how evil he would be were she not effectively part of his life. She was always trying to reform him and he was always trying to corrupt her. It was a complex relationship that was constantly shifting about, which made it a lot of fun. I was disappointed when that campaign ended.

Most non-human races have builds with a standard set of 'Everyman powers' - mostly low-level stuff like Enhanced Senses, a point or two of armor, a small HKA, etc, but nothing that couldn't be explained with basic biology. I had one campaign with time-traveling, dimension-hopping characters where Universal Translator was an Everyman power, but that was for the sake of convenience. I throw this one out because I think most Everyman abilities exist for the sake of convenience so that you don't have to think about buying every little thing. As such, unless it has some significant impact on the lives of your average Everyman, I think I would hand-wave it for the most part. Write the build up, just to attach some numbers to it, but don't sweat it.

The Mark Williams version of Grond (3e or 4e, I forget) had two torsos, one for each pair of arms. Had the artist gone with that style, I expect the extra chest would have raised more eyebrows than the one arm pair behind the other.

I see the primary use of the proposed Dilettante talent as a boost for someone with Cramming, which effectively allows you to get better than 8- on any skill in a short time, which sort of circumvents one of the primary restrictions on Cramming. I would consider allowing it for some characters (like a mentalist that can absorb skills), but probably not for a heroic level campaign.

It depends on the setting. If you can't use your defenses without blowing your Secret ID or offending the lord of the castle or whatever, you might be able to argue for a -¼ limitation, because otherwise you could have it on all the time and keep yourself safe from unexpected attacks. But only if that sort of thing is a real concern in the campaign, so again, setting dependent.

I would do this as an explosive Blast or RKA as you like, with Boostable charges, and then a custom limitation: Can only generate one charge per day. You will be limited by the total number of charges you can afford, but that could be quite a few (up to the GM's discretion). Also, since each additional charge only boosts the overall damage by 1 DC each, it keeps it from getting out of hand too quickly.

A friend of ours had to call a plumber in because his toilet was backed up. While the plumber was trying to get the clog out, they were hypothesizing what it might be. His 4 year-old son offered "I don't know what it could be, but I bet it isn't a bar of soap." He lost that bet.

Thanks for the warning. There are always trade-offs, but the great part of the Hero system is we get to choose which ones we want to make.

I never played a Danger International game, but I am intrigued with the Resource Pool concept as a way to manage 'experience' and money. I may have to give that a try in my next campaign. That does make it a little more D&D-esque as you note, but if I give a warrior a big chunk of character points via a magic sword, then I can more easily justify letting the wizard buying an expensive new spell without having to resort to a multipower and trying to balance it.