Christopher R Taylor

I do like that concept, and I'll probably work something like that into my Dearthwood aventure whenever I get back to working on it.  But I agree, environment is a major part of adventure and play that doesn't get touched on often and is an exciting part of play if handled right.

Apparently there was no sheriff of Nottingham at the time of Richard and King John as Nottingham was not yet given a charter (Henry IV did that).  There was a High Sherriff of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and the Royal Forests.  So that's an anachronism if you technically wanted to include that bit.

I really like the Rolemaster version of resurrection.  You can only be raised within a short time of death, before the soul leaves the body.  However, if you use certain rituals, magic, herbs, etc you can extend the amount of time a soul remains in the body before you can be raised again.

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I think you'll want the spells to have evocative names... "I then beseech the wind to Destroy My Enemies!" with the latter three words being the name of the spell in question. 

Of all the games I have played,  Tunnels and Trolls has the most evocative spell names.  Immersion destroying, but evocative.  You can actually imagine a mage yelling "TAKE THAT YOU FIEND!!!" and blasting an enemy.

Most of what magic feel magical in Hero is focusing on the special effects and description rather than mechanics.  I mean you can buid all the D&D spells with Hero, but there's a big difference between "8d6 blast vs ED (fire) Area Effect Radius Explosion -3 to Magic Skill roll" and "a spark of fire flies from his fingertips and erupts into a gigantic ball of flame!"

As for non-replicable, what I mean is less that you cannot do the same thing twice as that its not science, it cannot be broken down in a lab an analyzed.  So its not so systematic and well understood that you can break it down to its components, and sometimes it just doesn't work no matter how careful you were (skill roll, for instance).

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The biggest question is how you pack all of those things into a game, where not only might you want players to use magical characters, you dont want the magic use to take up a whole session or leave you, as GM, being castigated for being arbitrary or biased.  There needs to be an element of system in there around which you wrap the trappings of magic in the setting

Thankfully the Hero system takes a lot of the heavy lifting of balance out of your hands.  The point system and power builds makes magic vs melee easier to control and keep in check.

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Well, not quite.  10 points of CON gave 2 ED, 2 REC, 20 END, and 5 STUN.  That's 21 points...for +10 CON.

So around 3 points (the 1 point of CON, plus the 1/10th of all that) per +1 CON.

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Another consideration is how high to buy CON. I’ve seen a number of brick types built with a 40 CON

Constitution is relatively cheap these days but still, that's 30 points on just not being stunned (and minor side things like change environment, etc).  But yes that might be more a holdover to when a point of CON bought you like 4½ points of stats.  With good defenses, 30 should be more than enough to prevent a stunning attack in most cases.

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I just can't see that person, no matter how trained, have a SPEED higher than 5

I agree. Given that normal untrained people have a 2 speed, 5 is overwhelming.  4 is very well trained, and 5 is extreme top level human ability.

The keys to making magic feel magical in my opinion are:

keep much of it mysterious -- we don't know exactly how it works

don't worry about consistency -- yes, you can turn beans into peas, but not peas into beans

make it inconsistent or untrustworthy -- yeah I can blow up those orcs but it might not go exactly as I planned

let it be whimsical -- I can make you stronger, but you have to tie this toad to your forehead

don't make it too systematic or scientific -- my magical experiments are not always replicable

put limits on it -- magic cannot make your hair blonde, I'm sorry

make it difficult -- I studied 18 years to transform this block of wood into stone

make it have a cost -- yes, I can bring him back from the dead but it ages me a year, and he will have no memory

focus more on flexibility and utility than power -- no I cannot blow the orc horde to pieces, but I can conjure up siege engines and food for your armies

Make sure it feels magical -- I cannot fly like Superman but I can sprout huge bat wings and fly at night during the full moon

This kind of thing makes magic feel set apart from science or superpowers or mutant abilities, etc.  Magic only feels magical if it is made to seem that way.  If you can do the same things with magic as a superhero, or vice versa, you've lost its special sense.

Yeah Tarzan could use Van Helsing for a shot put, even the awful recent movie he's not remotely as physically gifted as Tarzan.

With all the optional rules in place, Hero combat is plenty lethal, particularly if you are careful about defenses.  Most heroic games you won't even have defenses; Western Hero, maybe Clint Eastwood wears a cast iron vest, but that's pretty much it.  Cops and robbers, Indiana Jones adventures etc, your defenses are not being hit.  Fantasy you tend to have more, but a good GM will keep a close eye on it, so you don't see that stack up too much.

300 points is going to leave you not much room to be anything but a ghost, but it should be possible to get it done.  This is the basic block you will want to consider for a ghost:

Life Support (vs breathing, eating, sleeping, aging, disease, poison at least)

Desolidification

Takes No Stun (does not lose abilities)

Does Not Bleed

that's all around 150 points just to be a ghost

You won't need enormous defenses, because in a Champions Campaign its rarely lethal and you only have to worry about body damage.  You'll want to be scary, because you're a ghost, so high presence.  You will probably want flight, so you can float around through things.  You should have defenses like power defense because you're a ghost so a lot of attacks that are built around adjustment powers ought not work on you, or at least as well.  You'll want some kind of extra defenses to see in the dark or inside enclosed spaces you float through.

Whether you want END cost or not is up to you.  You could treat the END cost as "ectoplasm" or something, you have only x amount and have to build it back up to do things.  If you are desolid all the time, you'll need 0 END Cost on it at least.

The zap electronics thing is going to be pretty expensive because it ignores defenses and affects solid so you have a pretty hefty advantage stack right up front (at least +3).

I do like that idea, could do some crossover stuff: a mystery in London that ends up in Denver, that kind of thing

He is risen!

Here's a fun twist: if its a robot wearing alien armor, what if the armor enhances its intellect and makes it sentient and self aware, but outside the armor its just a general dynamics bot that loads boxes?  The suit might be able to put its self on the robot in times of need or for its own purposes, but the robot is just a machine until its suited up.

Although that might not be very entertaining to play.  Would make a great story, though.

Templates aren't a bad idea, but what you need is a list of the things you believe the suit should have.  Its obviously going to protect you from harm, have sensory devices as you mention, it probably enhances movement (jump jets?  anti grav flight?) and will likely have weapons systems.  You might want to add some interesting little spin to set it apart, like stretching (nanotech creating cables to grab things at a distance) or regeneration (can heal its wearer and repair its self with the right fuel or material).

With that list you can then go down the list of powers:

Defenses -- resistant protection, maybe flash defense (polarized or indirect viewing), power defense even, PD and ED from characteristics.

Senses -- Enhanced senses, like Infrared Perception, 360 degree sight, radar, etc

Movement -- Leaping, Flight, Teleportation, etc

Weapons Systems -- blast, killing attack, drains, flash, etc  You can dig into the advantages for more options: maybe you have an attack that blows up in an area, or one that is super sharp and punches through defenses.

There's your basic suit.  You can have it add stats as well: you're stronger, more agile, maybe it even enhances your mental acuity and sharpness, giving you a bonus to Intelligence.

And don't forget to give yourself a life.  What did he do before he got the exo?  What is his job, his hobbies, his background, his interests?  There are some skills and complications.  Maybe he has a beloved dog or is hated by someone in particular -- are the aliens after their suit to recover it?

That should be enough to get you started!

Again, its worth considering schtick.  Letting a character be especially great at one specific thing that sets them apart from the group is fun for the game and usually fits genre: he's so good with a knife he can beat a quick draw gunfighter!  So having a character that's just super, super accurate is okay, as long as they aren't also heavily damaging.  Hawkeye never misses with his bow, okay.  But he also isn't dishing out Thor-level damage, either.

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I wonder if one could do a supplement to play in historic Japan?

The old game Bushido did that, fantasy medieval Japan by Tyr games.  One of the longest running games in the old Game Alliance of Salem back in the 80s was a Hero Games version of it.  I have not the expertise or historical knowledge to attempt such a supplement but it would be one that people might enjoy.

One of the things you learn to do as a GM is watch out for stacking, which can get pretty outrageous.  Often, the players themselves aren't aware what they are piling up to, especially the type that build to concept or role play rather than the combat monster type.  A tool I find useful is the hard cap: no matter what you stack up to and how many skill levels you have, you cannot get higher than x OCV or y Damage Classes in damage or defenses, etc.  Its not recommended for every game, but for many campaigns it helps keep things from swinging too wildly.

It is possible that GURPS handles low end campaigns better than Hero, I don't have enough experience with GURPS to decide one way or another on that.  I just know that Hero works really well for low end in my experience.

Venom's side effects seem to be mental instability and addiction, but at least not cancer.

Yeah, Steroids don't make you stronger, they make you heal faster so you can get back to training faster and push yourself further.  And they give you cancer, so there's always a tradeoff.

I find that Hero doesn't scale well to a really, really high power game either.  It does well up to a point then things just stop working.  You can have 150 STR, which is enough to lift, I dunno, Pluto, but you're only doing 30d6 damage.  I mean, that's a lot but you should liquify entire cities with a punch at that level of strength.