Christopher R Taylor

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.

Legion is a bit of a silly concept but honestly it works really well. When done right it has a strong Manga feel (or, vice versa, I guess, since Legion predates most Japanese comic books). Yeah the whole "they're all kids with one goofy power and are the galaxy's cops for hire" thing doesn't make much sense, but once you go with it, it works really well. And some of the best characters in comics came from that -- as well as some of the worst.

You know, when I built him I didn't give him any. He has distinctive looks, but I guess he just keeps his mask on all the time in the Island of Dr Destroyer adventure. You're right he should have had a good 2-3d6 just for being so scarred and horrible looking

Just wanted to necro this thread in case someone gets the rebuild bug. Buncha guys from the old Enemies books waiting for an update. It should be interesting seeing how these old amateur rebuilds stack up against Surbrook's official Strike Force rebuilds, there are some crossovers like Yoosoo and the Blood.

I found it! The 6th edition conversion thread! 26 pages of character conversions, most of the art sadly has been internet scrubbed but the groups can be found in the downloads section and I have a bunch of the colored images on my pinterest page.

I cannot find it right now but there is a huge thread on this forum of updated characters to 6th edition, part of them from Euro enemies (with colored pics!). We were trying to cover any that were not reprinted somewhere else. Panda, Racoon, Sledge, Wyvern, and I think one other* [ed: Hideous!] are updated in the 6th edition version of Island of Dr Destroyer as well. *Oh yeah, and Vibron!

Yeah it is not cheap to build undead, and its fine if you don't buy EVERYTHING (does it really need to be immune to radiation, zero pressure, and be immortal?)