Christopher R Taylor

Sure, and that's why I put even more talents into the game to make things have greater parity in terms of build cost, but I also made spells cost money not points, because the ability to USE spells costs the points -- just like with other characters.

However its not exactly accurate to say the wizard matches the warrior with one spell.  A wizard has to also have spells to protect himself (armor purchased with money), and cover all the other wizardy stuff expected and desired by them.  So its not just a single ability comparison. Buying spells directly with points means a 100 point expenditure to be more than an energy projector with a pointy hat.

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Anyone who watched Spider-Man: No Way Home can imagine the Green Goblin being a threat.

But is he going to beat up the Hulk and kill half the universe?  He's right, by comparison having Thanos almost right out the gate makes other threats seem pathetic.  If the Avengers struggle to defeat, say, Kang, they look pathetic and inconsistent.

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Take a wizard with the ability to create a sword made of flame.   He buys it as a 1d6 HKA.  The spell has the following limitations OAF expendable easily replaced (Small piece of flint), requires a skill roll, incantations, gestures.   The sword goes against ED instead of PD and cost 5 points.  If the wizard has a 15 STR it does 2d6 damage.  Adding the advantage AP increases the cost to 6 and means I need a 17 STR to get it to 2d6.   My wizard also has a STR spell that gives him +7 STR for 2 points.   

This comes down to GM oversight and care with magic.  A warrior with 23 STR and martial arts and skill levels can push over 4d6 KA, and he doesn't have to cast a spell to summon a sword.  A good GM takes care that both don't get too carried away with stacking damage and how things are built.  For example, the flaming sword; why would STR make it do more damage?  You build that spell with RKA no range, or HKA, STR does not add.

I loved the Defenders, but they were a really weird group, with a gigantically powerful core and then random dudes the writers liked.

One of the best parts about a real RPG, a face to face pen and paper game with dice, is that game balance is a much less significant problem than a computer game.  If your mage is more powerful than your warrior than your rogue than your hunter with the wolf companion etc, then the GM can address that with what kind of adventure you are presented with and how the story unfolds.  You can tip the scales with a thumb, using equipment, types of enemies, situations, etc.  OK the sneaky gal feels weak, then you have more adventures where sneaky rules or is critical.  

Yeah you can't introduce Doom without the FF.  Which, casting looks a bit... dubious at this point.  Magneto is wrapped up with the X-Men, it would be weird for him to show up solo as well.

Thinking through the villain list of Marvel (excluding group-specific ones like Apocalips and whatever else "they were always around and are utlimate supervillain" types, there aren't a lot of really interesting world beaters.  It would have to take a solid writer to make some of them more interesting.  But they are out there:

Graviton, Mephisto, Galactus, Molecule Man, Korvac, and then there are new ones I don't care about like Knull and Enigma.  You could add in guys like Mangog, because Thor is in the Avengers.  There are a bunch of scary cosmic guys like the In-Betweener, Living Tribunal, and Grandmaster (who has shown up but was treated as a joke).  They already used Ultron, in a really mid bleh movie (what a bizarre, lame villain plot??).  Not a lot left.

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I would like to see a few more superhero movies/shows where the stakes were city wide or smaller.

I agree completely, this should be their focus except for the Avengers, who handle HUGE threats.

This has been a very, very difficult year, and I do not have any realistic estimate when this book will be done.  I apologize, but I have never been very strong or healthy and right now almost everything I have is being directed toward caring for my elderly mother and just surviving.  I get a bit of art done once in a while, but its very slow.  Maybe some time next year I can get the Player's Guide finished.  This is deeply frustrating to me, but there's only so much that can get done at a time.

Yeah film does change how you approach stories, and there's no way they could establish anything like the backstories that the Infinity Saga had in comics.  You'd need a good decade of cosmic stories with the Silver Surfer, Adam Warlock, etc.  That's just not feasible, even if you used replacement actors over time.  But the story was too big and everything after that necessarily has to be a letdown which is not great for movies, unless you deliberately focus on street level stuff.

I think that's why they went with loser Kang, because he threatens the entire multiverse!!1!!11!!  But there's a huge disconnect here.  The stakes are too abstract and ill-defined for audiences to connect to, so it doesn't really feel like much of a threat.  And having Kang be defeated and killed over and over doesn't exactly build menace.

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The only thing the "wizards spend points and everyone else spends cash" mindset does is prove the D and D is so pervasive that it can screw up HERO, too.

I solved that by making wizards pay only for the capacity to cast spells of a certain power level, but the spells themselves are purchased with money or discovered like any other equipment.  Then I added in many martial arts packages and talents that people can buy to be better with their equipment and/or spells.

Oh, you can have Thanos as the big bad guy, but not with the stones yet.  He's a supervillain.  Then later, he comes back to blow up half the universe.  And it should have been love with death, not the lame environmentalist thing.  Its just when you peak with him, where do you go from there?  Every villain after that seems like a weakling.  Galactus is here to eat earth?  Thanos KILLED HALF THE UNIVERSE.  It was too big, too early.

Compared to the comic, the Infinity saga in MCU was... lacking.  But because they didn't have 30 years of comics to draw on and all those epic stories, they had to cut corners and work with what they had.  Which shows again that this was too early to pull the trigger on this particular story as I see it.  There were a lot of great tales they could have hit before they did the Thanos thing, but once they started they were kind of tied into it.

I found the Kang used in the animated Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes to be impressive and a credible threat to the team.

That was the best portrayal of him I've seen but he still was a weak villain, a huge letdown from Thanos.  I mean, they shouldn't have freaking STARTED with Thanos to begin with, but still.  Kang is pretty pathetic in the MCU so far as well.

Where have you drawn inspiration from?

Yes.

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Rumour is that Marvel has not changed any plans regarding Kang. 

Time will tell which rumors are correct.  If I were in charge of MCU I'd dump him because he's a lame character.  They blew their chance on the Kree-Skrull war by making Skrull basically good guys and turning the entire thing into a slight backstory for The Marvels, so you can't really do that one.

I will let a player pay points for a special item and if the item is taken, destroyed, etc they can then over time repurpose those points into something else or a replacement.  But just regular gear you can get off the rack?  No.

There are rumbles that they are moving away from Kang as the big enemy.  He's always sucked in the comics, I cannot figure out why they wanted him as the villain for this sweep.  All of their movies and TV shows have either been canceled or delayed, my guess is they are doing a lot of retooling and rethinking after the poor performance of the last bunch of efforts.

Yeah its not much different than fighting a speedster, who uses their movement to get away after hitting or has specialized moving strike maneuvers.  They can be annoying, but can be defeated.

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We've played with attacking not ending a phase.  It did not change much. 

Yeah, if you don't have super tactical, smart players who try to maximize everything, you can probably get away with the change and not much will be different -- although as usual probably things would come up nobody has thought of yet.

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I'm saying, if you can move after attacking, you can complete the Haymaker, then dart away.

Not under the rules.  It lands the segment after the phase you attacked on.  Unless you have a held half phase you cannot then move, because your phase is over and the only thing you can do off your phase is abort to a defensive act.

I have been pondering this a while and have come to the conclusion that if you add this into the game, it changes so much about when people take what actions in what order that it creates the need for a long and complex list of rules that have to be added to the way combat works.  I understand that if you do it simply it works well and easily -- Savage Worlds allows this for example, because it is a super, super simple combat system.  But with the flexibility of Hero and the combat maneuvers and the speed chart and DEX rank and all the rest, it becomes much more complex.

It starts to become, as I noted above, a system of who goes in what order, and how do you determine who interrupts what action and when do you move and how far, and what facing you have.  Which appeals to me in one sense -- it makes combat more dynamic and allows a lot of interesting things to be added in like bonking someone to stop them from doing something -- but it also would slow down combat massively, add another book of rules, and make things a lot less free wheeling and fun.

I played Aces & Eights, an award winning system.  They had some neat ideas like the shot clock and adding poker cards into the game and so on.  They break down combat into 1/10th second intervals in which you basically write down what you intend to do like Magic Realm, and then the clock very slowly unwinds as everyone tries to execute their actions at the same time.  This all sounds brilliant on paper but is  virtually unplayable in actual practice, and took freaking ages for a short gunfight.  The whole timing of events thing is a source of continual fighting, rule changing and frustration in games like Magic: the Gathering.

So, basically while it sounds kind of harmless I think it would avoid it.

I understand that the girl playing Kamala does a good job, but sadly her character doesn't grow beyond squeeing fan girl.

From Hawk the Slayer?

I'd just do a limitation on it, as Doc said.  Maybe a side effect, it doesn't always go off but its triggered by circumstances, slows you when you hit harder material.

I would consider different duplicates to have different personalities and motivations etc only if they were bought that way.  Its a special effect thing, for one build they are obedient "shadows" of the real character, for another they are copies teleported in from other dimensions, etc.

The main effect, if 6th had not turned 0 into the lowest you can go, would be on characteristic rolls.  The formula still works, at -5 INT you have an 8- perception roll, and so on.  Since they made STR power down to no lift whatsoever at 0, the main benchmark for stats wouldn't do anything at negative except STR Rolls

If you get the "Complete" versions of the books, you get 4th edition level brevity with 6th edition detail, I think its the best of both worlds.  Could do with a bit better presentation and tone, but they do the job for rules.  Hero's biggest problem is lack of market presence and too few adventures.  We independent people are trying to fill in the gaps, but the company really needs to step up.  You cannot even find Hero on the shelf anywhere, sitting on line and offering POD is not good enough for a game company.