Monick51

Thanks! I'm excited to see how it shakes out at the table

Ok so I had an idea for a mechanic that I like: each time the PC's take the drug they get a certain boost to all stats and they get powers. However, once the drug wears off they notice not only does the boost wear off but it takes some of their original stats with it. Once they take the drug again they are back up to their boosted state but once it wears off they find they are even further depleted. I'm thinking of it almost like if every time Billy Batson says the magic "Shazam" he's buff and strong but once he turns back into regular old Billy he's gaunt and has hair falling out. So, it's a multiform with a funky custom limiter, that much is obvious. That's all well and good but as I thought about it more something bothered me: if they can just pop the drugs to regain their superheroic stats it doesn't really matter how bad their stats are in their civilian identity. They'll need to pop the drugs if they want access to their power, so they won't really have to worry about their decay because they won't be caught out without their powers... unless they burn through the drugs in their system mid-combat. This is what I'm trying to figure out: how long should the powers last? A round? a few phases? What I want to achieve is that their multiform only lasts a little while in combat. This forces them to resort to risky methods to end fights early OR to snort the possibly contaminated drugs off the floor, quaff some unstable reagent, or spend their move action frantically searching for the villain's stash in order to continue fighting. If they don't get their hands on more then they risk reverting back to their increasingly frail civilian identities.

Agreed! I don't want to fall into the old batman trope of "He's evil because he's CrImiNAlLy InSanE!". I was actually thinking it would be less of a sanity mechanic and more of a "basic order functions are being lost" until you're just a shambling husk, a vessel for your power

Hi, I'm brand new to the Hero system and I really like it! I've been making characters in hero designer and slowly wrapping my head around the rules with Champions complete. I have a campaign idea that I want to run but I need help mechanically realizing the higher concept stuff. The premise is that people gain powers via a new drug that temporarily gives powers based on genetics (hence why the same drug can give different powers to different people). Each time they use the drug they gain powers but at the cost of slowly eroding their humanity. I realized that I want the characters to almost be like lovecraft protagonists and the powers they gain are the equivalent of eldritch knowledge, miraculous and defying logic but also slowly degrading their body and mind. The reason I am making this post is because I have the vision, but I don't have the fluent knowledge of the rules to make it work. Any ideas on how this sort of thing could be portrayed mechanically? I know that there's an old source book called Horror Hero, I have not looked into it yet, would that be a good place to start or would it be a waste of time?