Sicarius

You cant use transform to turn something into something else?  Like a single organism into a sort of hive organism or living head minus a body?  I can turn a man into a frog, werewolf or needle fish but not a head?
I was thinking the transform makes whatever is left of the old creature the 'new' creature and resurrection or healing of some sort brings it (back) to life.
I know I can hand wave all the tools I just bought but I'm testing the Ultimate Tool Kit.
How do you make a mummy?  Its basically a dead body that can get chopped into parts and still live.  So upon death a 'Make Mummy' spell is triggered and now SoulCatcher is a mummy, (or Lich).
So I guess with that said, can HERO System be used RAW to devise a Make Mummy or Make Lich spell from a corpse? 
If so, that might be a logical starting point.
Now that my mind is percolating perhaps I should check the Grimoire and see it one exists.🤨   I certainly do appreciate everyone's thought I this. 
Truth of the matter is I run ideas like this through HERO, GURPS and BRP to see how and if each tool kit can built the project WITHOUT resorting to a hand wave.

Talking about the headless... here is Count Broken from Tranzor Z.

I know better, bur I am stupid enough that I am going to do this anyway, so sit back, grab the popcorn, and watch the beating unfold. 
 
can anyone point out where in the rules being decapitated means you have to die?
 
remember that not only are hit locations optional, so, too, are the bleeding rules.  Even if you _are_ using the bleeding rules, there is quite a lot of leeway to decide what results in bleeding and what doesn't.  Assuming that you are, then when you take an amount of BODY that reduces you to negative, you bleed.
 
okay; fine.
 
if you take a headshot, you suffer a BODY multiplier to your damage.
 
okay; great.
 
Problematically, decapitation is _not_ a head wound.  We can argue that later, of course.  As written, it could be considered a torso wound, so figure your damage accordingly.
 
HERO doesn't do Location X has Y Hit Points, so we don't really have a method of determining just how much damage applied directly to the neck (which is not available on the hit location chart, but let's just say that it is a Called Shot with modifiers akin to a called ahot to the head) it takes to remove a head.
 
I am not completely certain, but I am willing to bet that it is less than enough Body damage to reduce the character to negative Body.
 
This is one of thise instances where the superhero / SFX are free thing really shows itself.  Because you can declare that your character is a robot or a cyborg or a sapient tree, you do not automatically fall over bleeding when someone lips off your anything.
 
We view it as a given because we know that people tend to much sooner without their heads attached than they do if the head remains in place.  Regardless of our biases, however, the rules don't actually make it mandatory.
 
That being said, strictly by RAW, there is absolutely no power construct required to remain alive after decapitation (speaking may be impaired a not, but that isnt mandated, either, I am,afraid). Nor is that, according to RAW, any way to actually decapitate someone short of completely pulverizing their torso (again, breathing may be impaired a bit, but it is still not mandatory).
 
Granted, releasing this bit of news to your players may result in lots of decapitated heroes fighting bravely on for decades, wearing their heads on a necklace like some gruesome pendant.
 
All that being said, I would think that the options for your build are, by raw, as simpke as declaring that decapitation doesn't kill them.  Granted, this will encourage some to run to the rules questions thread and ask for a new rule regarding decapitation, so I will go further and say this is as simple as making it a perk (possibly as part of a package).  Beyond that, consider the automaton power "does not bleed" and call it a day.
 
 
Now then, go ahead.  Feel free to beat me like I was the third monkey on Noah's Ark.
 

 
 
 
 

The OP's question is how they survive after getting their heads cut off. In the books, mages of a certain power level are hard to kill and even harder to keep down.
 
Soulcatcher has her head chopped off in combat and revives sometime later(It wasn't feasible to stick around and finish her.). She has her body carry her head in a basket that she can see from and stalks the heroes for a 2 year march  using her magic to keep her under a disguise on the outskirts of towns and keeping tabs with summoned critters. 
 
The Limper was pretty much a paraplegic even before his head was chopped off. His head rolled into a muddy ditch and was dug up by a hellhound months later. He was given a wicker body and then a clay one after that was destroyed. 
 
It is possible to stop their regeneration by burning them to ash  or pulverizing and scattering the remains and their are greater magics that will kill them.
Their toughness is more 3/4 Damage Reduction for PD and ED as they can be killed by a determined mob of soldiers willing to take casualties in close quarters. But the intact heads will revive at a diminished power level and seek their old or replacement bodies.

All interesting ideas. I suggest putting them into an entirely new game system rather than go the D&D route and redesign the Hero System in an attempt to stay ahead of some mythological design curve.

That's one way to handle it!  Make them speak German and you could sell it to Netflix. 😉

Odd how I started this post and now I have no idea what it's on about.🤔

Well, the problem is that Hero is incredibly consistent and works well across all sorts of various situations and builds.  You can take a blast and do all these different hosts of things with it and it just works that way without special rules or exceptions.  There are some but they work consistently across the rules (such as the "special attack" rule for autofire).  That's why little quibbling exceptions or rules for single instances on one power like that really annoy me: it breaks the system and requires people to look through the rules carefully to make sure they didn't violate Rule 5, Subsection III, clause A-15.
 
The way some stats work with Aid and Drain are another example of this kind of thing.  Its a kludge fix, not a streamlined rule.

Odd.  Its such a staple of fantasy and sci fi to have a Leach or Transfer power that splitting them seems more like dividing chicken noodle soup into ingredients and calling it a simplification.   I do get the desire to break everything into basic building blocks yet some things are better left whole.  Like Time Travel broken into:
 
Time Travel Power
A -Make a Time Door using Time Mastery power.
B- Link Time Door to Open Door power
C-Link to Movement-Walk power
 
If you want carrots or peas in your chicken noodle soup you can use an Advantage and if you don't want noodles then use a Limitation. 😉
Everyone has an idea of what should be the basic power molecule and Steve is the author so ultimately I have to respect his decision.  Yet being the GM I would suppose its totally fine for me to add new basic molecules if I choose.  But I'm not sure if that is necessary or even what is best without trying it so basically I'm just blowing gas at this juncture. 😝

Odd.  Its such a staple of fantasy and sci fi to have a Leach or Transfer power that splitting them seems more like dividing chicken noodle soup into ingredients and calling it a simplification.   I do get the desire to break everything into basic building blocks yet some things are better left whole.  Like Time Travel broken into:
 
Time Travel Power
A -Make a Time Door using Time Mastery power.
B- Link Time Door to Open Door power
C-Link to Movement-Walk power
 
If you want carrots or peas in your chicken noodle soup you can use an Advantage and if you don't want noodles then use a Limitation. 😉
Everyone has an idea of what should be the basic power molecule and Steve is the author so ultimately I have to respect his decision.  Yet being the GM I would suppose its totally fine for me to add new basic molecules if I choose.  But I'm not sure if that is necessary or even what is best without trying it so basically I'm just blowing gas at this juncture. 😝

Legal shemgal.  Take a page from the politicians and do whatever you want safe in the knowledge you will not be prosecuted. Prostituted most definitely. But never prosecuted. 🤐

Legal shemgal.  Take a page from the politicians and do whatever you want safe in the knowledge you will not be prosecuted. Prostituted most definitely. But never prosecuted. 🤐

I think your right.  Like a D&D starter kit or GURPS boxed fantasy set.  Right now Hero is not really geared towards the casual or new player. It is geared towards a subset of the most aloft, egotistical, megamonicial control freaks in the rpg community who want mastery of every nook and cranny of the universe in question.  BWAHHH Haha... where did that come from? 😯

They went from publishing actual playable RPG's to publishing the rule structure to create your own RPG.
 
 
Exactly.  But I would propose that in addition to those two product types, "Hero Toolkit" and the "RPG  built using the Hero rules in the background".  Another one is a smaller "introductory" product that contains a "starter" game designed to allow the players to actually play a few sessions using pre-generated PC's and a pre-built adventure.  This allows them to "test drive" the game such as a generic Fantasy adventure.  Game play would present everything without any annotations or costs on the character sheets or stat blocks.  An appendix at the end would have full write ups for reference later.  
 
A person buys Fantasy Hero Complete but get hung-up because of the lack of pre-built spells and stuff.  I know of too many people that bought a version of Hero and then gave it up because they could not just play it.  So you have a "Intro" package, maybe via HoC, that presents a "generic" and complete adventure they can just play.  After seeing the game actually in play they will have many of their questions answered and can go on to their own ideas or just expanding on the intro.
 
 

That is what I meant by different abilities. Strength, knowledge. Skills.  It's almost like a summoning where they switch places. Some invocation with physical effects.  They are completely different physically and mentally. Other than both being good that is.
Only in alternate ID seems more like Tony Stark vs Iron Man. Or Underdog even. He pops a pill and whammy! Sweet Polly Purebred is saved!

Ya! Exactly what I was thinking. 🤔

I'm trying to look at the difference in Cap but my eyes keep Wandaring.  

We used to play the hell out of the original 3 book set of D&D with Grayhawk and Blackmoor added in.   Also 3 LBB Traveller, Metamorphosis Alpha and Stormbringer 1ed.  Great times. Even with AD&D although one of my staple players detested it as nothing but unnecessary rules bloat.  He played yet would have gladly stayed with the white box version.
 
So your right. We had tons of fun and just winged it half the time with these 'guidelines'.  That's really what OD&D amounted to. The others were a bit more of a system.  
 
It seems to me Champions Complete and FHC are enough to do the same if one wanted but are subsets of Hero for those who want maximum umph.
 
Game companies need to produce because it's a relatively small market.  Once the base has bought X 1st ed and sales decline on X adventures and X supplements you either go out of business, drop the line and move on to something completely different or reimagine the line with  X 2nd ed.  This is usually X 1st ed with rules changes and material from all the X supplements baked in.  Usually presented as bigger and better. 
 
3 decades later......Melee is Gurps 4th ed, Champions is Hero 6th ed, D&D is 3.5.  Some love it, some go the OSR route and play Swords avd Sorcery White Box. 
 
Personally, I like the variety but admit that if all I had was D&D White Box I would likely play more and contemplate less. 
 
And save money. 
 
I don't think options have hurt Hero, I think electronic video games, the loss of literacy and decline of social get togethers in the physical realm have done more damage. And let's not forget after 50 yrs of P&P RPGS, ebay resales and reprints on RPGnow there is a shit ton to choose from. 
 
Hero is really NOT for the causal group. 
 

I do because being new to Hero it explains not only the logic but the mechanics behind the talent.  These builds are similar to code snippets in a programming manual.  And Hero is a kind of programming manual for P&P RPGs.  Or toolkit, whatever lingo floats your boat. 

Its a big man that owns up.  Cheers to you, sir! 😉

I do because being new to Hero it explains not only the logic but the mechanics behind the talent.  These builds are similar to code snippets in a programming manual.  And Hero is a kind of programming manual for P&P RPGs.  Or toolkit, whatever lingo floats your boat. 

Hello!
 
The short version (without referencing the text) is that a Limitation defines a power, and an Advantage enhances the efficacy of a power; the use case you’re referencing speaks to the special effect of a power.
 
For example, a -0 Limitation (or a limitation worth no points) means that something that would otherwise be worth points becomes flavor text for an ability, but it’s also a permanent fixture. So if it has -0 Perceivable, it always generates a roll if the player attempts to be sneaky, which for fire makes complete sense. A +0 Advantage is rarer, but similarly is doing something that reasonably aligns to the special effect.
 
Let me know if that answers the question, or if you would like to deep dive on the topic, you can always post your question to the broader Hero System Discussion forum and the rest of the community can weigh in. 
 
Edited, now that I’ve eaten and I’m not merely existing between meetings: Your example, where it can have a -0 Perceivable Limitation, or, a +0 Provides Light Advantage, is actually an “and” construction; those two things aren’t mutually exclusive, so both can exist simultaneously and in fact, support each other. Just an additional point of consideration.

Yosemite Sam? I mean, c'mon, he's the rootin'est, tootin'est, gosh-darn shootin'est . . . .

I'm trying to look at the difference in Cap but my eyes keep Wandaring.  

I'm trying to look at the difference in Cap but my eyes keep Wandaring.