Christopher R Taylor

Its not a matter of "putting in," its a matter of stopping progress during the night. This was historically standard for galleys and even some sailing ships.

The thing is, going first isn't necessarily an advantage. Often, going after others allows you to better react to their moves. With things like delayed phase, delaying, aborted phases, blocks, and so on combat ends up a lot more dynamic than it might seem with rigid speed and DEX numbers.

It depends a lot on what sort of games you are wanting to run. For example, there are quite a few interesting Pulp books out there for early 20th century adventure like Indiana Jones. I have a bunch of Fantasy Hero books available in pdf and in print, and Michael Surbrook has a terrific tall tales book called Larger Than Life

Honestly, figured characteristics made Hero for me, but I'm willing to work without them. It was just one of the big selling points when I learned about the game, it just made sense.

This is a big thing for me, because it lets me codify how things fit together. There are some rare exceptions but almost always you can get a finger on how the power or item compares to others. D&D you have Create Light and Magic Missile in the same "spell level" or Cure Light wounds and Sanctuary. Hero shows the way these things don't work out when just the GM or game designer insists they do in other games.

Yeah unless it does something special, like fly and go underwater, has guns, is bulletproof, or something... its just a car. Maybe 1 point to make it impossible to connect to the superhero and recognized or something.

I've never had any trouble with how Hero scales down to normal people from superheroes. Its just a matter of turning some dials and flicking some switches. With how games have borrowed elements and concepts from Hero so much, its harder these days to make the argument but I used to be able to convert D&D players to hero pretty easily by the various superior mechanics.

Evidently they wanted her in black too, and she insisted on purple, because that's what the comics had. I've heard that Magneto kills hundreds of millions of people by destroying multiple cities, but the X-Men are all buddies with him anyway, that sounds troubling.

I agree, I left that off but Body/Stun/END is a big Hero thing for me.

Point buy, complications, constructing abilities from the ground up with modifiers and powers, the speed system, defenses rather than avoidance, and the OCV/DCV conflict

Hearing really mixed reviews of X-Men, some think it was impressive and interesting, others think it was a jumbled mess that was full of "what the??" moments.

Blade guns are a good idea for apocalyptic scenarios. A bit front-heavy but it makes sense to have something at hand when you run out of ammo. Just get to the gunsmith after using, because you probably bent that barrel

I would like this fifty times if I could.

Those are pretty creepy It is worth including, have to come up with something they do other than look macabre.

Yeah its a design disagreement on my part. I have quite a few minor changes in my weapons list from the 'official' one (which is in the text described as 'optional' and 'examples').

Or, I have players that roll poorly a lot, and some that roll very well a lot, thus gaining an advantage in power without paying anything for it.

I guess its a house rule, but I allow a dispel to "heal" mind control on characters, even if its considered an instant power, mostly because of its continuing effects. This isn't body damage, its mental assault that is ongoing.

In the end, that's where I ended up with this kind of thing. Its not that people are penalized, its that they never get to take advantage of a bonus, which sucks. Its not that I think everything should be all fair and socially just and equal, just that it shouldn't be needlessly antagonistic and depressing.

Sadly, THUNDER agents is pretty obscure despite being such a great concept and comic.

Many of them do, yeah. However, I'd suggest that the staff used for martial arts isn't a quarterstaff. Those are pretty heavy and not just the long stick used in a lot of martial arts. I would probably give those 2d6 or 3d6 max. The problem with using weapon breakage is that you still get the damage in, several hits worth. Does the staff break eventually? Sure, but I just did 12d6, so the guy I was fighting broke, too.

You can always tell when you're being affected by a power unless it has invisible power effects (mostly, someone shooting you with a silent gun still hurts, so it varies). But you can't tell its cumulative until the second tick goes off without some kind of detect analysis ability or something really obvious like being lit on fire.

Doubling limits are a useful tool to control damage stacking but it can still get pretty huge

Yeah Invisible power Effects would make someone never notice the effect on them.

You're right, and that's an issue to be careful with as a GM. Add skill levels in (2/damage class add) and it can become completely out of control in a very big hurry. So you cannot just look at a few numbers and decide if a character is safely within your preferred limits in a campaign. Others have suggested mitigating issues (damage to the weapon, etc) and I would suggest an absolute hard cap. No matter what, at this power level, you cannot go over x damage classes. Players understand that and can work with it.

Backstab, vanish, escape (puff of smoke, he's gone!), sap, walk without leaving tracks, etc are all classic stealth tricks