Christopher R Taylor

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.

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.

I question the premise, I have no problem running low powered games with Hero and have done so for 30+ years.

Well and its not unreasonable to say that the mutation causes a signal of sorts, something that can be detected rather than a molecularly scan of the target. If you want to have such a concept in your campaign.

EDIT: heck, we can go with something incredibly classic....NO ONE seems to connect that Clark Kent is Superman? They have done a decent job of dealing with that over the years, particularly in the Silver Age when they did stuff like have Batman, his good buddy, dress up as Superman to fool Lois Lane. And I think Chris Reeves did an amazing job showing how it could work. But yeah after a few decades, even the slowest person would work it out. But they don't because its internal consistency for comics. That is the part that too many people don't get: the comics have internal rules that you follow to make them work. If you start arguing that Batman clearly would be spotted going into the Batcave or whatever, you start to challenge what makes everything hold together and work well.

Yeah I like this. There's no reason every hero would know why they are the way they are -- most probably ought not. "how come you can lift a car and fly, mister?" "I dunno, maybe I'm a mutant or something?"

You don't. The GM can just hand wave it and say "it finds mutants." But in a campaign like this one, it does make sense to me for a complication that makes you specifically targetable with these devices. And if you can be detected by a special device in a campaign specifically about the dangers of being a mutant, as opposed to anyone else, that seems to me to be a complication.

But they are not redundant. Each one has a different effect. Its like buying blast, ka, flash, and drain, not blast, blast, blast, blast. Distinctive looks just makes you stand out in a crowd. Social complication means you are mistreated for your status. Reputation makes people prejudge you and expect you to behave in a given way, etc. Of course, its campaign dependent. If you were in a game where nobody used mutant detectors or was hateful toward mutants it would not be worth any points. If you were in a campaign where men are a hated, hunted minority that has to disguise themselves, then having a Y chromosome would be a detriment. At least, that's how I understand how complications work.

Well the logic behind having two is what the complications do. Social complications cause problems for you socially, they make life difficult and affect interactions with others. Someone could have social complication: mutant and not actually be one, just be perceived as one. Physical Complications affect your character's being. Even if you perfectly pass as a human being and hence are not detectable as a mutant to most people, you still are one, so you can be detected as one with the proper technology. Its like the "some groups may not have a problem with you" choice in Social Complication: the reason you take that, even if all the heroes in the game are mutants, is because you will work at jobs, or have DNPCs, or interactions with people who are not mutants. Among your kind, you're not treated differently or badly. But your kind are just the heroes and villains, and there are a lot of other people in the world how are not that kind. So fellow mutants give you a haven, and you're treated terribly outside that social circle. Unless everyone in the world, or a vast majority are, mutants, it makes sense to take that because you'll have some places your social complication won't take effect.

I feel bad for her and her family but why not just come out and say it? Why the long silly kabuki theater and the fake pics?

The thing is, the only effect the No Hit Locations power has in the rules is "now you don't take different damage from being hit in a location." So like I suggested above, the way you simulate different areas causing different effects would be the "loses powers" option for Takes No Stun. You can still roll hit locations, you just assess what area loses power by that, not what damage is sustained. At least, that's how it seems to me.

I like Solomon Kane even better than Conan, I think he's my favorite of Howard's creations.