Jhamin

I agree with Hermit. An area of effect (possibly megascale depending on how bad you want this to be), probably invisible, transform (normal person to slave of the crown). The image of the crown on them is a special effect of the transform, although it might be a distinctive feature if you really care. The number of dice in the transform would depend on how long you want it to take to enslave everyone. Technically the Crown doesn't have a speed score so it can't actually ever use the power unless it was on someone's head, but I'd probably handwave that unless you want to really complicate the crown's writup by making it a full character.

I think that the needle has moved on such things. Lots of kids are driven around by their parents until they are almost ready to drive themselves and anecdotally I hear that they aren't as driven to get the permit the way me and my friends were back in the day. It also makes a lot of difference where you live. In my state unless you were a farm kid you had to be 15 and have a learners permit before you could drive with an adult and you had to be 16 before you could drive without one. I grew up in the city in the 90s and got my license at 16. There were only pubic roads to drive on around me. My wife (who grew up in the same city) didn't get hers until she was 19 because she mostly used public transit. In this case, My game takes place in Horizen City (think Seattle) and the PCs live in a fairly urban area. They either come from wealth or are literally 6 months old so none have learned how to drive. Learning Permits will become a plot point once we get back from christmas break. (Assuming the robotic duplicates currently impersonating them don't muck it all up first) If someone chose to get behind the wheel I'd let them of course, then demand lots of dex rolls to avoid disaster during their madcap drive across town filled with fruit stands, guys carrying panes of glass, and similar all while screaming "I don't even have my permit!".

Our teens are sophomores in High School and thus are 15. They will start turning 16 2nd semester. So far a surprising numbers of super-things have been arrived at via Uber. The Wealth ($200/Week) and Fake ID perks that one of my players bought is giving them access to some things they might not be able to swing otherwise.

We are drifting a bit from the original question, but here are the campaign guidelines for my current Teen Champions game. Teen Heroes: Characteristics 10-30 Spd 4-6 (5 is average) Combat Value 4-8 Standard Damage 6-14 DC (8 DC for most normal characters, higher is possible for difficult or dangerous powers but should not be what you throw around in most phases) Active Points 40 goal, higher if needed for unstable/dangerous powers) Typical Skill Rolls 8-12 Def/rDef 10-18/4-8 Base Points 250 Matching Complications: 60 In this Game all characters should take Social Complication: Secret Identity with values depending on who would care (Frequent/Major is the common value) Everyone effectively has Social Limit: Minor, Under age 16 but gets no points for it (it’s a campaign standard) Most characters should have 1 "main" power with any other powers being related. The Main power should have a total of -1 in limits associated with it, at least for any power at or above 40 Active Points Most characters should be capable of a main attack in the 7-8 DC range In some cases a particular power that is unreliable or dangerous can go as high as 14 DC Skill levels (combat or otherwise) require special character concepts Teen Heroes do not get TF: Common Ground Vehicles or PS: Hobby as everyman skills Otherwise Teen Hero Everyman Skills are as follows: Acting 8- AK: Home Area 8- Climbing 8- Concealment 8- Conversation 8- Deduction 8- Language: Native Idiomatic, Everyman, Literate Persuasion 8- Shadowing 8- Stealth 8- The Power skill represents a familiarity with the characters power that is usually not appropriate for Teen characters but can be bought over time as the game warrents

I actually really love that idea. It feels like less of a handwave & still lets you have the prisoners mixing. You can also still have the "ultramax" wards for the super prisoners that for whatever reason resist the power dampers.

Fourthed! High Tech enemies was one of my favorites from that era (and may be in my list of favorite hero products!). My old games had a fairly robust "Super Merc" thing going on with masterminds hiring teams of muscle as needed. The Destruction Company and H.A.W.K.S. both showed up frequently in those plots (and my PCs really started to hate Powertool & his callous treatment of Lifewire). I also got a lot of mileage out of Cy-Force as I had a cyborg PC at the time who got pulled into the Cy-Force/Cyberknights conflict. The Cy-Force version of Interface is one of the most hated villains to every grace my game table. (I always portrayed Doc Digital as being callous but not actively cruel. He really didn't think about what he made others sacrifice in service to his view of the future. Interface *knew* how much cruelty was involved in bringing about Doc Digital's Utopia and she Just Did Not Care.) The Anti-Tech League showed up several times in my more mutant-based plotlines as one one of the underground "rebel" mutants groups getting more and more militant about Genocide. They were zealots, but not as hateful as some of the other mutant gangs. The Wormhole Gang never seemed "high tech" enough for me, they came across more as alien than tech enemies, but that may have just been where my head was at the time. I recall retconning the Warlord into a *loyal* servant of his empire and using them as an elite taskforce for an alien empire the heroes ran into (Think the shi'ar imperial guard from the 80s X-Men) Somewhere I have a bunch of Cy-Force and the Destruction Company converted to 6th. Do we still have a thread going for conversions of bygone enemies like that?

Back in the Fourth Edition rulebook there was a section on Powergaming in Hero. They said that making a good character was what everyone wants but this is the guy who "takes Missing One Hand as a Disadvantage, but tries to get it per finger in order to get more points out of it." It then goes on to give helpful tips on powergaming builds like "PlanetMan" who buys enough shrinking to keep planets in his pocket and then throws them at people, or "LandLord" who used the base building rules to buy all the space in the observable universe. The basic point of it was that Hero lets you do anything, but that doesn't mean you should do anything. Multiform exists because there are certain characters that greatly benefit from being able to buy it rather than do all kinds of torturous things with other rules to simulate that they are three different guys timesharing one body. Hero doesn't tell you what you can't do, it gives you tools to build whatever you want and trusts your gaming group to all build things everyone will have fun with.

Regarding guidelines: A piece of advice I got many years ago was that all the characters Speed scores should vary by no more than 3. So if the slowest PC has a 4, the fastest should be limited to 7. If the slowest is a 5, then go to 8. This does not apply to enemies. The reasoning (and I've found it sound) is that if you have PCs with speeds much further apart than that it can create a lot of frustration at the table when someone has to wait for the people around them to go twice before they go again. I once saw a player convince the GM to let them play a speed 10 time manipulation guy & then had the rest of the table rebel when it felt like they spent most of their time waiting for time guy to roll all his attacks before their speed 5 characters could go again. It was mechanically valid, and the DCs Time Guy had made it not terribly over powered, it just wasn't fun.

Well, Hero simulates dramatic reality more than real reality. Hence my comment a few posts up about never seeing a spear pierce a shield. In real life I'm sure that happened but it is incredibly rare in fiction. I'd say you should let shields give a DCV bonus when "in use" to reflect what they are deflecting. If the DCV makes the difference, the attack misses. If it doesn't they got around the shield. If they actively block (as in the action), the shield helps them do so. Giving shields the old "real armor" limit can reflect the fact that a wooden shield won't stop a lightsaber or a howitzer round, thus allowing those weapons to ignore the DCV bonus. Opponents can attack the shield instead of the user if they want to actually break the shield. Use the normal rules for breaking objects or foci. If you want shield use to be an active action you are going to need to redesign the rules a bit. Hero doesn't really have an option to take defensive actions that don't use up your whole turn. It's really off topic, but have you seen how Pathfinder 2e handles shields? It sounds like it might be a lot more what you are after, but of course it is a *long* way from Hero.

This is a question of what level of abstraction do you care about and how much work are you willing to do to get there? OK, so shields require skill. Do we require a Weapon Familiarity with Shields? Probably. In a heroic game it's 1 more point on your character to use a shield. Thats probably fair. Should shields break? Probably, but current Hero rules don't have any rules for weapons or armor breaking, or really wear and tear in general. Should Shields have to track wear while weapons dont? How about Armor? You *can* buy ablative on your helmet, but that isn't the standard build that Hero has used in the past. What is the effect we are trying to simulate? This is Hero, we care about mechanics not special effects. - Does a shield absorb damage? If so it should be extra def, or maybe extra body that gets lost first. - Does a shield prevent you from getting hit? if so extra DCV is the way to do that. - Does it make it easier to block? If so it's extra OCV when making block rolls Personally, I don't think extra defense simulates the way shields work in fiction. Shields stop the attack or they don't, you never see a spear go through a shield to spear the guy behind it (implying it overwhelmed the DEF the shield added). Damage to Shields might be nice, but it doesn't easily work within existing systems. You could make shields ablative, but that doesn't take into account what kinds of damage they are resisting, and if you are using the Block rules or extra DCV to simulate the shield, how does it take damage from a negated attack? In Hero, it isn't really a thing to make a block roll but have them do so much damage it gets through anyway. A 90D6 Killing attack vorpal sword will be turned aside by a 1x2 stick of wood if they make their block roll.

It sounds like we are getting into specifics. So for what it's worth: Samurai Jack's magic Katana had this exact limit, The sword worked fine on inanimate objects and animals, just not against the truly good. It comes up like half a dozen times across multiple seasons of the show (Once when an evil clone tried to use it on *him*). As such I think *he* maybe got a -1/4 for the limit. I had a player that ran an Angelic PC for years in a Champions game that had a "smite" type power which only affected "the Guilty". As the character was pretty christian it worked on those who were guilty in a non-denominational religious sense and it didn't work on robots or inanimate objects (Or, to her frustration a couple of zealous fanatic villains she kept running into). She got a -1/2 on it as it affected *most* of the enemies she ran into but there were enough robots and such running around that it limited the power a fair amount. To take another tack: In the Film Excalibur, the titular weapon shatters when King Arthur strikes Lancelot with it. It refuses to harm a good and holy man (which Lancelot still is at this point of the story) and can only be repaired when Arthur repents for misusing the holy weapon to win a fight out of pride. The fact that mis-using the sword can break it probably does raise this to a -1/2 or even a -1.

Inspired 100% by Ninja-Bear a few posts up, A pair of "villains" showed up in my last few Teen Champions sessions: "Mista Finsta" and "The GOAT" (Greatest Of All Time). They are a pair of 15 year old mutants that are using their powers to become internet stars. They are social media influencer wannabes that are committing very splashy crimes and posting them online for the attention. They haven't taken anything expensive and no one has gotten hurt (yet) so they are low on the authorities priority lists, but their antics have spilled over into the personal lives of my PCs. Mista Finsta is a teen-hero level speedster with some social media skills, and is honestly the brains of the operation, but is totally over-awed by his partner The GOAT (not Goat, The GOAT!) believes he is the best at everything he does, and his powers have even fooled him into thinking that's true. Mista Finsta is a pretty generic speedster and I'm basically re-using El Salto's stats from the 5th edition Ultimate Speedster with all powers being "Speed" themed, dropping the Skill Levels (a no-no for most Teens), a couple DCs and with a few other numbers tweaked. Here are my stats for The GOAT _____________________________________________ The GOAT Izan Soto VAL CHA Cost Roll Notes 10 STR 0 11- / 19- HTH Damage 2d6/10d6 END [1] 10 DEX 0 11- / 14- 10 CON 0 11- / 15- 10 INT 0 11- / 13- PER Roll 11-/13- 10 EGO 0 11- / 14- 10 PRE 0 11- / 14- PRE Attack: 2d6 / 5d6 6 OCV 15 6 DCV 15 3 OMCV 0 6 DMCV 9 5 SPD 30 Phases: 3, 5, 8, 10, 12/2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 11 PD 6 11/31 PD (3/23 rPD) 11 ED 6 11/31 ED (3/23 rED) 8 REC 4 40 END 4 15 BODY 5 40 STUN 10 Movement Cost Meters Notes RUNNING 0 12m/27m,/48m/108m END [1] SWIMMING 0 4m/13m/16m/52m END [1] LEAPING 0 4m/13m 4m/13m forward, 2m/6 1/2m upward Characteristics Total: 104 Cost Powers 121 The Greatest: Multipower, 121-point reserve 4f 1) No Beam can Burn me: Damage Negation (-4 DCs Physical, -4 DCs Energy) 4f 2) No Blades can cut me: Resistant Protection (13 PD/13 ED) 4f 3) The Fastest: Running +15m (12m/27m total), x4 Noncombat plus Swimming +9m (4m/13m total) (x4 Noncombat) plus Leaping +9m (4m/13m forward, 2m/6 1/2m upward) (x4 Noncombat) 4f 4) The Quickest: +15 DEX plus +1 SPD 4f 5) The Smartest: +10 INT plus +15 EGO plus +15 PRE 4f 6) The Strongest: +40 STR 4f 7) The Toughest: +20 CON plus Resistant Protection (7 PD/7 ED) 10 It all works out for me: Luck 2d6 - END=0 Powers Total: 159 Cost Skills 0 AK: Horizen City 8- 3 Acrobatics 11- (14-) 0 Acting 8- 3 Climbing 11- (14-) 0 Climbing 8- 0 Concealment 8- 0 Conversation 8- 5 Cramming 0 Deduction 8- 0 Language (idiomatic; Everyman, literate) 1 PS: Internet Personality 8- 0 Persuasion 8- 0 Shadowing 8- 0 Stealth 8- 3 Streetwise 11- (14-) 3 Teamwork 11- (14-) Skills Total: 18 Cost Perks 2 Positive Reputation: Hardcore Online Star (A small to medium sized group) 11-, +2/+2d6 Perks Total: 2 Cost Talents 6 Combat Luck (3 PD/3 ED) Talents Total: 6 Value Complications 10 Distinctive Features: Mutant (Not Concealable; Always Noticed and Causes Major Reaction; Detectable Only By Technology Or Major Effort) 5 Psychological Complication: Doesn't understand his own powers (Uncommon; Moderate) 15 Psychological Complication: Truely believes he is Unparalleled (Common; Strong) 5 Rivalry: Professional (Anyone known for physical ability; Rival is As Powerful; Seek to Outdo, Embarrass, or Humiliate Rival; Rival Aware of Rivalry) 20 Vulnerability: 2 x Effect Attacks affecting the Metabolism (including most drains) (Common) Complications Points: 55 Base Points: 300 Experience: 0 Experience Unspent: 0 Total Character Cost: 289 Background: Izan like to maintain an image as a hardcore, street smart, man of action. In actuality, he grew up in a posh suburb of Horizen city with his middle class parents and 2 younger sisters. Already obsessed with the personas and lifestyles of Online Influencers, he now feels like it's his obvious route to the money and fame that will inevitably follow his physical and mental "perfection". He quickly made friends with another aspiring Teen internet personality in the person of Mista Finsta and the two of them are sure that the next stunt will be the one that makes them go Viral! Personality: Ivan feels like the development of his powers was the day his ship came in. He truly believes that he is in fact the best at everything. Compared to most people his age, he is and he has never really thought through the implications of his abilities. When encountering Teen Heroes he will present himself as totally out-classing them. Initially, it will look like he does. He is in deep denial that this powers only allow himself to be good at some things part of the time and that even at his best he can't compete with top tier superhumans. So far he has only tangled with normals and other teens like himself and tends to spout off whenever he runs into someone known for prodigious physical ability. If attacked in multiple ways (like someone testing his ED while he is focusing on Speed and Power) he will complain bitterly of cheating and retreat rather than deal with "whiners" It isn't so much that he is greedy for wealth or fame, he just assumes they are the next thing on the plate for him now that he is the the most perfect specimen of Man there is. The world won't deny him for long. Ivan isn't a murderer, and isn't even particularly cruel, but his raging egomania tends to make him hard to be around. Quote: "I know people think you are something, and you probably even think so too, but *I'm* THE GOAT and I'll be showing you your place! Powers: Izan has the ability to boost his physical attributes to superhuman level. He can be strong and bulletproof, or fast and smart, or strong and smart, but cannot keep more than a couple of his attributes raised at any given time. Mechanically, he can keep three slots in his multipower running at a time and shifts them frequently to give him the ability to make whatever flashy display he wants. In a Teen Hero setting, his boosted abilities should match or exceed most Teen Heroes who emphasize them. (Teen Hero Bricks tend to top out at around 40 STR, and he goes to 50 for example). Initially, it really should seem like he can out-perform everyone. His stat-boosting is an instinctive action on Ivan's part and he isn't fully aware he is doing it. He just knows when he wants to be strong, he is, and when he wants to outrun someone, he can. If he knows himself to be in danger he even instinctively aborts to turning on his resistant defenses. So far, Izan has rationalized away the times he has been caught with Multipower set incorrectly to deal with a situation. He truly believes others were cheating or that he didn't care enough about something to try. When the day comes that he challenges someone that just plain outclasses him in an obvious way his world view will shatter (assuming he survives)

I'm more worried about how free willed they are. If they have a sire that has mental influence over them does that affect their personhood?

It's easy to get lost in the special effects of a power and try to buy what the power is doing instead of buying the end result you want. In this cast I think you are getting stuck on the character 'changing' things so you want to buy a transform. That does make a certain sense, but transform isn't meant to work that way. It's more about the change being whats important (like a enemy into a frog) and not as a way to make yourself guns when you need them. In Hero System, you need to buy what you can do, not how you do it. If you want a wall, you buy the barrier power. If you want to shoot someone you buy blast. (If you want guns to pop up "over there" and shoot your enemies you buy blast with the Indirect advantage). Once you have a list of what you want to be able to do, you either buy all the powers or your put them into a power framework. If the character can do "anything" but really only does 4-8 things on the regular you want a multipower. If they really can do anything they can imagine, you buy a variable power pool big enough to buy all the powers they are thinking of. This will get expensive, and may not be a good move for a new player. (Nite Owl or Silk Spectre are much easier characters to play than Dr. Manhatten. How do you fit "build a city on Mars" into a Variable Power Pool? There are several ways actually, but if you all stop the game to spend 45min figuring it out it's not a fun power)

Elaine King bought reduced END for her Multipower & Widget was the OAF Focus for the END reduction. If you grabbed it she had to pay full END for everything. It didn't have stats per se and just sort of floated around her. Her description says she listens to it and sometimes responds but that no one else can her it. I took it to be a big of a fun roleplay bit that it was alive to her but it didn't do anything other than reduce the END spend when she used Magic.

Clearly there isn't one right way. This is Hero, that's the point. I was expressing the opinion that for most cases a power skill is probably fine. I think lots of times a power skill roll is fine rather than an extra slot in a multipower that gets used one game in 20 or buying weird defenses "only when ready, only vs X thing". It's fine. If you plan on stabbing people with arrows frequently, then the Hero way is that you have to pay for it. Just like you have to pay for all your standard abilities, in which case yours is a good way to handle it. It just isn't what I typically would recommend for the occasional stab.

I'd leave the writeups as is & let the archer user a power skill roll to stab someone with his ammunition. It usually only happens once or twice at most, so a power skill "trick" is a clean way to do it without really over-complicating builds for the sake of something that happens rarely.

I really like this as well. 6th Edition has lots of specific years mentioned throughout various character backgrounds and attached to big events. Which gets weird when the Enemies books were all printed 12 years ago.

One of the PCs in my game is the "son" of Mechanon and the Engineer, after one of their fights did weird things to one of the Droids in Mechanon's base. He has some parental issues. I'm seriously kicking around doing "FoxBat Beyond". FoxBat has been Fox-Batting for years, is pushing 50, and after developing shin-splints decided it's time to pass on the Ping-Pong gun to a worthy heir. He stages a loud and ridiculous death, and then a few months later "FoxBat Beyond" shows up, clearly getting prompts on his villain speeches and spending half his time arguing with someone over his earpiece. Meanwhile one of the students the PCs know at school starts looking tired all the time & has weird bruises in the locker room. He also starts citing old episodes of "Omegas" as historical documentaries. Is he being abused at home? No, his new job as a personal assistant to Mr. Foswell involves a *lot* of extraordinary service. For "Old" Foxbat I'm picturing a cross between Julio Scoundrel from Order of the Stick, someone roleplaying a wise mentor but who is really just spouting fortune cookie koans, and someone playing an MMO.

I actually played a lot of FACERIP Marvel back in the day, it followed the conventions of the comics at the time that (say) Cyclops was just a guy in good shape who shot eyebeams. Now that is clearly crazy if you assume he is getting kicked around by Blob or Avalance an not dying. Marvel's system covered it by giving everyone "Health" that let them soak 2-4 hits from equal opponents before they went down and maybe one from a superior one. Body Armor or Force Fields were *really* powerful in that system as it let you ignore damage from every attack up to a certain level, which was amazing under that rule set and standard under Hero. I also seem to remember the system breaking down hard when you got down to Daredevil or MoonKnight level adventures. Daredevil was just too fragile and did too little damage to deal with the groups of street thugs he was supposed to be able to school. I'd say the conversion rules are fine as far as they go, the just don't account for the different assumptions between the systems. Which makes them like all conversion rules: Fine as a guide but useless as a bible. If you can convert between two systems perfectly then they are probably not really two different systems.

If I had it to do over, I'd rationalize the point totals on a lot of villains. The Mega Threats like Destroyer, Mechanon, Menton, The Warlord, etc are *way* to high to actually use in a normal game. Not every villain should be within reach of starting characters but the Destroyer is potentially straight up Killing most PCs built to standard recommended stats in like 2 hits with those 30D6 Destroyer-Beams while their 10-12 DC attacks are doing less than 5 stun to him. I keep seeing people on the forums mention that they never use most of the iconic villains because they either need to be brought way down or they will just no-sell anything the heroes throw at them. There needs to be a lot more of a range. I'd love to see a lot more solo villains that are a match for a single hero instead of being designed to take on a team. Sometimes a PC needs an antagonist more than the team needs one. I agree with the others who would like to move the timeline up a bit. Either move origins up so they started their villainy in 2017 or so or start passing the torch to a new generation. At this point all origins that relate to WWII or Vietnam need to also include longevity as part of the power suite. Someone who fought in WWII as a young adult is like 80 years old now. Someone who got their powers in 1989 at the age of 22 is now 53 years old, which is ancient in the world of most supers comics. Also: It's 2020, Red Winter has perhaps aged out as a concept. They belong in a time travel adventure or need to be portrayed as crazy out of touch. The Red & Gold Hammer & Sickle evil communists don't really work as a straight concept anymore. Even their "trying to revive the Soviet Union" thing doesn't work when it's been gone for 25+ years. Now that I think of it, Time-Travelling Communists who want to steal the tech of today to prop up the failing Soviet Union of 1987 actually sounds like a lot of fun......

I've found that since around 5th edition or so, Doctor Destroyer works better as a Thanos or Darkseid analogue than as a Doctor Doom analogue. In which case I'd probably move him full time to his hidden nation of worshipers and I'd shift his minions to be less about the mental conditioning and more about the unbridled worship of a superior, visionary master.

I'm actually running a Teen Champions game with my players. So far most of the enemies I've used are home-brewed as there isn't much official that is in the right point range. I've used - individual members of the Cirque Sinister (the whole team is *way* too powerful for teens), emphasizing the Circus of the Weird aspect. - A time solder from the future the heros eventually figured out was a possible future incarnation of one PCs very normal girlfriend. She *hates* them for all the damage their future selves have done to the world. (Sort of puts a shadow over all that potential everyone keeps telling them they have) - A Daughter of the Black Mask clan who is not first in line to take over the mantle. Calls herself Silhouette, which isn't a big hit with her Godmother. (She is actually a hero, but I"m playing her as female 16 year old Bruce Wayne stuck in High School because Alfred wants him to have a normal life instead of training with monks in a hidden fortress somewhere. Thinks the PCs are a bunch of amateurs.) - I'm also using Generation Viper as an idea but I've recast most of them with homebrews. - I stole Chessclub from Mutants & Masterminds. He is a teenager who found his dad's legion of robotic chessmen after dear old dad went to jail for holding the city hostage. Impulsive kid with *way* more firepower than he has earned or can control

If you are willing to go backwards a bit, I got a lot of mileage out of Interface from Cy-Force in the old 4th edition book High Tech Enemies. She isn't actually the leader of the team, but supports Doc Digital and will mentally condition anyone on the team who disagrees with him and is the main reason none of the Cyborgs on the team question why all their implants seem to be more useful to Doc Digital's plans than to their normal lives like he promised them. She eventually turned into a real "power behind the throne" type enemy in our games, with Doc Digital being the obvious villain but her having done a lot more actual damage to people. Especially when you consider that she had basically subverted two heroes onto their team and started working on a Cyborg PC to be the third.

That was a really well received adventure in my old Group. The Proteus from that adventure ended up being memorable enough that I've never been able to re-use the name in more modern games.