So I'm trying to get used to the idea of building characters in Hero by working on various characters from different forms of media. One of my first stops was the old Blue Bomber, Megaman.
...And there I hit a dead end. His classic weapon, the Mega Buster, is an energy weapon (takes in solar energy, releases pellets of solid sunlight. Seriously.) and that's simple enough. Energy Blast, OIF, problem solved. But it's got two gimmicks to it.
The first gimmick is that it can be charged for two extra stages, providing two higher levels of damage. I figure bumping them up a die for each level ought to be fine, with the final one also having an AoE element I'll figure out later. But, since it doesn't run on Charges that can be Boosted, I'm not entirely certain how to create a mechanic where you hold back an attack for a Phase or two to make it more powerful. Charging it also doesn't take any extra energy to fire than a normal shot (that is, 0 END either way. It's kind of a broken weapon for tabletop.)
The second gimmick is what's called in-universe the Variable Weapon System/Variable Tool System. When he defeats boss robots, he gains either one of their weapons or a weapon based on the weapons they were using. These have Charges, unlike the main weapon, and most of them are gonna be barriers of some kind or repainted Energy Blasts. But I'm uncertain of what the best way to represent that would be. A Variable Power Pool with a series of blank slots, OIF, and a limitation on max number carried and another limitation saying "Must be claimed from another Robot Master" or something along those lines?