So sell me on HU...

[Sentinel]

For myself, I like the following things:

The power level is good, without being cosmically ridiculous. While characters can be very strong, they will not be lifting battleships.

Skill oriented characters are better off here than in games with higher power levels.

The heroic character archtypes for the most part are pretty good, allowing diversity and flexibility.

I've played Champions, Villains & Vigilantes, Superhero 2049, Marvel Superheroes, DC Heroes, Golden Heroes, and Supervillains.

[Sureshot]

Petty much echo what sentinel has said. It was the second game I played with the Palladium system. Even though the GM almost ruined the experience.

That being said their are somethings I dislike about HU. While it does a great job at simulating comics it does come up short in some areas. forget about making high powered characters like Superman unless you make him a mega hero imo

The teleportation power in the game needs to be houseruled. If the pc has to make a random teleport he needs to roll on a table. One of the options is instant death. Other games usually end up having the pc badly hurt but alive on a random teleportation roll.

Forget aboput creating a Reed Richards or Doctor Doom type of character in the game as the powers that deal with gadgets are very limited. About half the powers in the core book cannot be placed in gadgets.

Lack of any real background setting. Depending on your style of gming this can be a good or bad thing. The nearest I have seen to any real background info or just great settings to use is Century Station and Granmercy Island.

That being said I recommend you pick up the book. Especially if you want to try something new. My book picks are the core book, Powers Unlimited One and Two and Century Station and the Heroes Unlimited GM's guide. Their is also Villains Unlimited second edition. Get it used as it was recently brought back into print but the stats for the villains are still first edition.

[ZEN]

I'd also advise you to get hold of a copy of the Heroes Unlimited GM's guide, as the Super Brawling rules are excellent additions to the game, and the adventures in the book are a good way to ease yourself into things.
The HU main book has sections for each of the Power Categories, from Aliens to Stage Magicians, the best thing about the book if you ask me is that you can random roll almost all aspects of character creation.
The easiest is a super powered alien (such as a mutant alien).
The most time consuming are the budget driven ones, such as the Cyborg and Robot categories.
There are new power categories and powers in the Powers Unlimited books, and for a much better system of skills and martial arts, HU combines almost seamlessly with Ninja's and Superpies.
Though the Martial arts stuff is, again, woefully complicated.

All in all, you get a lot of value for your money, and despite the soft covers, my books are still in excellent condition.

[Sentinel]

I have found over the years that HU (well, Palladium games in general) are fairly easy to add simple house rules to.
For example, I made the determination that all Natural Rolls 1-4 miss automatically (in melee or ranged comabt) without bonuses. I did this to confound the bonus-whores who had stacked bonuses so high that they would otherwise never miss.
I determined that Martial Arts OCCs from N&SS would add +2 Attacks Per Melee, the same as HU characters (and eventually, every other Palladium character).
I added a Level Advancement bonus to Teleport: it was simple really, once I made a decision about how powerful I really wanted Teleportation to be (+5 Miles per Level).

Focusing on HU for just a moment, Heroes Unlimited is really not a game about the High-End Cosmic City-Busters. It never really was.
Fans of comics like the Justice Machine (also an excellent Palladium Sourcebook) have a good command of the Palladium philosophy on power levels. Characters aren't meant to juggle tanks, move celetial masses, teleport interstellar distances, levitate skyscrapers, or run at superluminal velocities.

One of the strengths of the game however, as I pointed out in my earlier post, is its' treatment of skill oriented characters.

A game like Marvel Superheros was great if you were playing Thor, or the Silver Surfer, or the Hulk, or some other power-house.
Characters like Black Knight, Black Panther, Captain America, and similar characters however got short-changed as they hit their respective "glass-ceilings" on their power levels. There weren't enough skills to adequately represent them, and the skill system was vastly over-simplified and underwhelming.
Champions wasn't much better, and V&V was the worst (that game didn't even have a listing of skills, or mechanics for how to apply skills).
DC Heroes was a little better, but with the representation of Superman, Manhunter From Mars, Wonder Woman and others, it became a munchkin-fest of building ultera-power-houses who had gobs of skills to boot. There was no real inner-philosophy about power levels or character concepts: you simply grabbed as much as you could and multiplied.

Palladiums' archtypes are better scaled and better thought out in terms of their construction, with a fair-to-reasonable cap on what a character can and cannot do with their respective power levels.

I heartily recommend using other Palladium books as source material: N&SS for martial arts, BtS for psychics and modern horror, etc.

[Marrowlight]

Best part about HU: The set up of Major and Minor powers and the small number of available powers to a person forces a lot of combo work and allows for some rather fun variations.

Worst part about HU: eh, not gonna get into it again.

[jolt]

I'm fairly new to HU myself but have played other Palladium games before so I'm familiar with the overall system.

Champions/Hero System(TM) is the only other system I've really liked. The problem with it was that it was so open-ended, a GM really had to monitor heavily what was going on in the game. I liked the skill system but players rarely bought skills because it was more efficient to put the points into powers. If you had 6 players and told them they had a 40-60 point cap range on attack powers, you'd end up with 6 characters with 60 point attack powers. Combat, I thought, was very entertaining but also very long; especially if you had a large group.

HU seems to do a very good job on providing completeness and flexibilty without bogging things down. As others have said, it combines very well with Ninjas & Superspies and I would highly recommend it as a sourcebook for HU. Be careful bringing in things from Rifts however, Rifts is so all over the place in power and abilities that you have to watch what you incorporate.

I really only have two issues with HU. One is that some comic archetypes are easier to represent than others. The second is that I hate variable advancement rates for different classes. I think it's a horrible mechanic for balancing classes. And this applies to a lot of games other than HU.

jolt

[Sentinel]

The variable advancement really never bothered me.

[Sureshot]

Focusing on HU for just a moment, Heroes Unlimited is really not a game about the High-End Cosmic City-Busters. It never really was.
Fans of comics like the Justice Machine (also an excellent Palladium Sourcebook) have a good command of the Palladium philosophy on power levels. Characters aren't meant to juggle tanks, move celetial masses, teleport interstellar distances, levitate skyscrapers, or run at superluminal velocities.

I disagree. HU is marketed as being able to make characters who can do that. Nowhere does it really say that you cannot have "High-End Cosmic City-Busters". Granted the rules do not allow it at the very least without house rules. Point is the game is marketed as being able to emulate any hero. Whether it succeeds imo is another matter entirely imo. Though it does in some respects come close.

Characters aren't meant to juggle tanks, move celetial masses, teleport interstellar distances, levitate skyscrapers, or run at superluminal velocities.

This to me is a fundamental flaw in the game. Superhero are supposed to be able to do all of those things you mention. Most if not all comics have them doing some or all of those things. To this day I still do not understand the design philosophy of making a superhero game that imo does not allow you to do many of the things shown in comic books. I enjoy the game do not get me wrong this has just bugged me in every edition of the game.

Though I will concede that HU does do somewhat of a better job with skill oriented characters. It's much easier imo to make them. Supersoliders are my favorite.

I also recommend using Palladium books for source material for other games. Century station for example is a great setting to use in another supers campaign. The only other supers background that comes close to it is Freedom City for M&M and Millennium City for Champions.

Champions/Hero System(TM) is the only other system I've really liked. The problem with it was that it was so open-ended, a GM really had to monitor heavily what was going on in the game. I liked the skill system but players rarely bought skills because it was more efficient to put the points into powers. If you had 6 players and told them they had a 40-60 point cap range on attack powers, you'd end up with 6 characters with 60 point attack powers. Combat, I thought, was very entertaining but also very long; especially if you had a large group.

This is not a flaw of the system but the players imo. I have yet to see any gamer not try to min-max a character for any game system. I can make a game breaker for HU easily if I wanted to or the GM allowed it. The same for D&D. I myself have done it in the past and have had to redo characters because of it.

The trick with any game system is to keep a tight rein. Though imo I find Champions/ Hero System allows me to do an easier job of it.

[Sentinel]

I disagree. HU is marketed as being able to make characters who can do that. Nowhere does it really say that you cannot have "High-End Cosmic City-Busters". Granted the rules do not allow it at the very least without house rules. Point is the game is marketed as being able to emulate any hero. Whether it succeeds imo is another matter entirely imo. Though it does in some respects come close.

Actually, it claims to be able to make any type of hero (strange visitor from another planets, etc), but it never lays claim to those power levels.
Again, I point to the Justice Machine: read those comics, and you will see the sorts of characters Kev must have had in mind in terms of power levels.

Take a close look at the level of damage the higher end powers enable.
then look closely at the SDC of a tank, or a vault, or a skyscraper.
It's harder (admittedly not impossible) to destroy stuff on a wholesale scale.

This to me is a fundamental flaw in the game. Superhero are supposed to be able to do all of those things you mention. Most if not all comics have them doing some or all of those things.

There are far and away many comics past and present in which the characters did not possess those sorts of power levels.
not merely specific characters, but in general: there are comic universes that simply support a lower level of power.
Justice Machine.
THUNDER Agents.
Codename: Danger.
Badger.
DNAgents.

In the same way that Marvel supports a lesser level of power than DC (compare Superman to Thor, Flash to Quicksilver, Ant-Man to The Atom, and so on), so too does Heroes Unlimited speak to a lower tier of powers than other systems and continuums.
This is why the Mega-Hero is a comparitively recent addition, why Teleportation has a range of five miles, why Supernatural PS won't allow you to lift a battleship, and so on.

In general, I have seen far less min-maxing in Palladium than is common to GURPS and Champions.
Both point purchase systems have open-ended character creation structures, far and away different from the archtypes found in Palladium in general (and HUII in specific). the archtypes have in-built limitations, and aren't skirted as easily as they could be in a system in which one simply buys their way past their vulnerabilities (In Champions, we referred to this as "spot-defending").
By the rules, (strictly) there are simply limits as to what certain characters can and cannot do, and those limits aren't easily violated 9if at all). Of course, the power-munchkin would simply avoid those, but it is simply easier in GURPS to build the functional equivalent of a Sea Titan/Gunslinger/Mutant/Eugenic/Ley Line Wlaker/Cosmo-Knight than it is in Heroes Unlimited.

[Sureshot]

Actually, it claims to be able to make any type of hero (strange visitor from another planets, etc), but it never lays claim to those power levels.
Again, I point to the Justice Machine: read those comics, and you will see the sorts of characters Kev must have had in mind in terms of power levels.

I still will disagree. The game is pushed as being able to do any hero. While I myself personally agree with your description of what it can do it still not marketed like that.

Take a close look at the level of damage the higher end powers enable.
then look closely at the SDC of a tank, or a vault, or a skyscraper.
It's harder (admittedly not impossible) to destroy stuff on a wholesale scale.

Very true and thanks for pointing that out as it was something I had forgotten.

There are far and away many comics past and present in which the characters did not possess those sorts of power levels.
not merely specific characters, but in general: there are comic universes that simply support a lower level of power.
Justice Machine.
THUNDER Agents.
Codename: Danger.
Badger.
DNAgents.

In the same way that Marvel supports a lesser level of power than DC (compare Superman to Thor, Flash to Quicksilver, Ant-Man to The Atom, and so on), so too does Heroes Unlimited speak to a lower tier of powers than other systems and continuums.
This is why the Mega-Hero is a comparitively recent addition, why Teleportation has a range of five miles, why Supernatural PS won't allow you to lift a battleship, and so on.

Then again they are not the norm. You may see the low level hero once or twice at most a few times but more often than not they usually reappaear in a "crisis" events. More often than no they end up being overshadowed by the more powerful heroes.

In general, I have seen far less min-maxing in Palladium than is common to GURPS and Champions.
Both point purchase systems have open-ended character creation structures, far and away different from the archtypes found in Palladium in general (and HUII in specific). the archtypes have in-built limitations, and aren't skirted as easily as they could be in a system in which one simply buys their way past their vulnerabilities (In Champions, we referred to this as "spot-defending").
By the rules, (strictly) there are simply limits as to what certain characters can and cannot do, and those limits aren't easily violated 9if at all). Of course, the power-munchkin would simply avoid those, but it is simply easier in GURPS to build the functional equivalent of a Sea Titan/Gunslinger/Mutant/Eugenic/Ley Line Wlaker/Cosmo-Knight than it is in Heroes Unlimited.

I still think it all depends on the player and the gm who allows it as opposed to the system. Anybody with the right knowledge can mi-max any system. While point based systems suffer more than non point based systems because of it imo it's easier to find as wih every point based system there is a limit in the amount of points you can spend.

[Sentinel]

Sentinel wrote:

There are far and away many comics past and present in which the characters did not possess those sorts of power levels.
not merely specific characters, but in general: there are comic universes that simply support a lower level of power.
Justice Machine.
THUNDER Agents.
Codename: Danger.
Badger.
DNAgents.

In the same way that Marvel supports a lesser level of power than DC (compare Superman to Thor, Flash to Quicksilver, Ant-Man to The Atom, and so on), so too does Heroes Unlimited speak to a lower tier of powers than other systems and continuums.
This is why the Mega-Hero is a comparitively recent addition, why Teleportation has a range of five miles, why Supernatural PS won't allow you to lift a battleship, and so on.



Then again they are not the norm. You may see the low level hero once or twice at most a few times but more often than not they usually reappaear in a "crisis" events. More often than no they end up being overshadowed by the more powerful heroes.

You're still thinking of universes where those high end characters exist at all: you need to look at universes where the most powerful characters have less power.
Marvel and DC are not the examples for HU.

In the DCU, you are right, the lower-powered characters are somewhat overshadowed by the powerhouses.

The structure of HU and HU Revised supported characters who possessed very few powers: HU original (IIRC) only allowed for at most one Major and one Minor power.
There was no Supernatural PS: there wasn't even magic in HU original, and very limited magic in Revised.

The Justice Machine sourcebook featured characters who possessed Growth (and no other powers), APS Flame (and no other powers), APS Electricity (and no others), Karmic Power (and no others), and so on. There were no mega-powerhouses to overshadow them: that's how the comic was as well. The characters of THUNDER Agents also fit the scheme very well (althopugh they were never actually given Palladium stats, you could easily extrapolate by comapring to the Justice Machine characters. They appear together in the JM Annual, in which the Elementals by Bill Willingham also appear).

In HUII, characters on the higher end of power are still not the equal of concentrated military force (look at the speeds of jets, the armament of helicopters and tanks, the rules mechanics on dodging missiles, and the level of damage done by conventional weapons vs. super-powers).
This is a sharp contrast to Marvel and DCs' respective universes, in which characters like Iron Man or Superman are easily capable of toppling military might with impunity.

Language being as imprecise as it is, read the fluff texts in HU Revised and HUII: you will get Kevs' constant reminders on how little he thinks of mega-super-beings, and how he envisions HU as a "Thinking Mans' Game", in which great power equates to dull and uninteresting play.

While I disagree with several of Big Kevs' points, I do like the fact that there are sharp in-built limitation on what characters can do, and how dramtic and encompassing their powers are.
I could do with a greater diversity of powers (for example, I'd like to see Molecular control powers), but the overall scope of should be reasonably limited (I don't want to see characters able to alter the molecules of the Sears Tower, for example).

Going through the Main Book and the Sourcebooks like Powers Unlimited, you can see that creating characters similar to those of comics is quite possible, but re-creating specific characters is not.
(I will not actually be converting any characters here, simply using names for comparitive sake).
You can create a character like Batman: skilled, resourceful, well-equiped. But, you cannot make The Batman himself.
A shapechanging telepathic alien from a high gravity world is quite possible, but you can't actually make J'onn J'onzz.

This si what Kev means when he says you can make any kind of hero (and , in fact he has over-estimated his game in the past: in terms of magic, megas, and others like super-powered robots who could burst into flame, and so on).

[Sentinel]

The names of powers and skills are far better than any game. In Marvel RPG (the original version) every "big" character had Body Armor. Colossus, Hulk, Ironman, Thor, Hercules, Wonderman, Human Torch, Mr. Fantastic, ect. Heck, without the little notes under the characters powers, you couldn't even tell what the difference was between the Torch's body armor and the Hulk's.

Later editions of the Marvel Sourcebooks would better utilize the power classifications of the Ultimate Powers Book.
The X-Men Sourcebook Children of the Atom, and the Fantastic Four Compendium were much better about that.
The original edition pretty much only had one type of defensive power: body armour.
The UPB gave much more diversity in the powers, but this moreso impacted original player characters than licensed characters like the X-Men and Avengers.

[Sureshot]

Sentinel I think you and I are on the same page when it comes To HU. We both like and dislike some aspects of the game. Both of us have made some good points and counterpoints. Rather than keep going back and forth to no end I will end this debate now. Let's agree to disagree on some aspects of HU.

That being said I have heard mixed review of Mutant Underground. Is it worth buying? What are the good and bad points about it?

[Sentinel]

Sentinel I think you and I are on the same page when it comes To HU. We both like and dislike some aspects of the game. Both of us have made some good points and counterpoints. Rather than keep going backto no end I will end this debate know. Let's agree to disagree on some aspects of HU.

That being said I have heard mixed review of Mutant Underground. Is it worth buying? What are the good and bad points about it?x

I took a look at Mutant Underground, but saw no compelling reason to purchase it.
My feeling at the time was that I could create my own mutants, provide my own background setting, and my players would dictate the story.

Of all the Second Edition Heroes Unlimited sourcebooks, this is the only one I don't own.

[JTwig]

Sentinel I think you and I are on the same page when it comes To HU. We both like and dislike some aspects of the game. Both of us have made some good points and counterpoints. Rather than keep going backto no end I will end this debate know. Let's agree to disagree on some aspects of HU.

That being said I have heard mixed review of Mutant Underground. Is it worth buying? What are the good and bad points about it?x

I took a look at Mutant Underground, but saw no compelling reason to purchase it.
My feeling at the time was that I could create my own mutants, provide my own background setting, and my players would dictate the story.

Of all the Second Edition Heroes Unlimited sourcebooks, this is the only one I don't own.

I ordered this book directly from Palladium, so I didn't get a chance to browse through it before purchase. Something I greatly regret, while it wasn't a terrible book, it wasn't very good. For a book about an underground mutant society, I don't understand why most of the NPCs were from the Alien category. What surprised me the most is that most of the stuff that I didn't like, and flat out did not mesh with what has been written in previous books (like S.H.O.C.K. having nothing against mutants so they pretty much leave the Underground alone) was written by Kevin S. himself.

It kind of made me feel that Kevin had lost track of his vision were HU is concerned, and I actually feel some aprehension when I pickup a Palladium book and see that Kevin wrote most of it.

[Sentinel]

Yeah, once I had Powers Unlimited I and II, I was feeling like I had what I needed.

[Sureshot]

I ordered this book directly from Palladium, so I didn't get a chance to browse through it before purchase. Something I greatly regret, while it wasn't a terrible book, it wasn't very good. For a book about an underground mutant society, I don't understand why most of the NPCs were from the Alien category. What surprised me the most is that most of the stuff that I didn't like, and flat out did not mesh with what has been written in previous books (like S.H.O.C.K. having nothing against mutants so they pretty much leave the Underground alone) was written by Kevin S. himself.

It kind of made me feel that Kevin had lost track of his vision were HU is concerned, and I actually feel some aprehension when I pickup a Palladium book and see that Kevin wrote most of it.

Thanks JTwig. This book has gone from a must get to buy from the used pile. Having a large of part of Npc the Alien category does not bother me too much though it is really strange since you figure that an underground mutant society would be run by mutants.

The whole S.H.O.C.K. angle is a big turn off for me. Considering how they are portrayed in the books a mutant underground would be an enemy at the top of their hit list. A typical response from one of them imo would be "super powers and they look like freaks! They must be destroyed". There have been only two games which did a good job imo of portraying mutants. Marvel Faserip as they had the comics to draw from and Champions with their IHA or institute of human affairs. Both organizations hunted mutants mercilessly.

I like a lot of KS stuff sometimes though I wish he would stop ignoring his own canon.

[Sureshot]

In Heroes Unlimited, those protections are now named and grant different bonuses! Alter Physical Structure Ice does NOT protect as well as Invulnerbility, but more so than Alter Physical Structure Electricity. You have different levels of speed now...sonic speed and extraordinary speed. Every blast is a different catagory and many of them have different abilities that they can do, rather than Marvel's generic "energy blast" power. HU's power catagories are also, IMO, supeiror to Marvel or DC (DC didn't even have catagories! Unless you were specific and gave your guy limitations, anyone with enough hero points could eventually become better than Anti-Monitor!)

I have to agree about the Alter Physical Structure powers they do help in visualizing a character. My own complaint though is that I wish they would have a general all purpose Alter Physical Strucutre category. With all the possilbe choices from the existing ones.

Basically give a set number of choices to pick from so that one can custom build their own APS powers. The same could be done for the Energy Expulsion powers.

[Marrowlight]

There are few Palladium Books I regret purchasing as much as Mutant Underground -- heck, Recon is a more useful book.

[Nekira Sudacne]

In Heroes Unlimited, those protections are now named and grant different bonuses! Alter Physical Structure Ice does NOT protect as well as Invulnerbility, but more so than Alter Physical Structure Electricity. You have different levels of speed now...sonic speed and extraordinary speed. Every blast is a different catagory and many of them have different abilities that they can do, rather than Marvel's generic "energy blast" power. HU's power catagories are also, IMO, supeiror to Marvel or DC (DC didn't even have catagories! Unless you were specific and gave your guy limitations, anyone with enough hero points could eventually become better than Anti-Monitor!)

I have to agree about the Alter Physical Structure powers they do help in visualizing a character. My own complaint though is that I wish they would have a general all purpose Alter Physical Strucutre category. With all the possilbe choices from the existing ones.

Basically give a set number of choices to pick from so that one can custom build their own APS powers. The same could be done for the Energy Expulsion powers.

what for? this meathod allows for more varaity.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Oh--On mutant underground: Virtually worthless. it gives a little more information on mutant animals, and nothing I found of value.

Note: I'm not saying there's nothing of value there, just that nothing _I_ would use.

[Sir_Spirit]

Actually, it claims to be able to make any type of hero (strange visitor from another planets, etc), but it never lays claim to those power levels.
Again, I point to the Justice Machine: read those comics, and you will see the sorts of characters Kev must have had in mind in terms of power levels.

I still will disagree. The game is pushed as being able to do any hero. While I myself personally agree with your description of what it can do it still not marketed like that.

While the outside claims it can do anyhero, the inside clearly states that it is a thinking man's game.

[Marcantony]

Sentinel I think you and I are on the same page when it comes To HU. We both like and dislike some aspects of the game. Both of us have made some good points and counterpoints. Rather than keep going back and forth to no end I will end this debate now. Let's agree to disagree on some aspects of HU.

That being said I have heard mixed review of Mutant Underground. Is it worth buying? What are the good and bad points about it?

The bad? It was printed.
The good? I no longer own a copy.

Id actually rate this below Lancer's Rockers.

[Sureshot]

what for? this meathod allows for more varaity.

I never said it did not. Too many APS powers will eventually become redudant. Let's face it not much difference between APS snow and APS Ice as an example or APS Earth or APS stone for another example. Also some of the APS powers have very similar abilities with some or no variation. Not to mention missing some abilities that certain APS should have while giving too much to others.

Same thing with the Energy Expulsion powers except even more so. How many version of it can you have? The essentially all do the same thing except the damage and visual effect is different.

I guess what I am trying to say is that some powers should be unique where as those with many similar effects could and imo should be regrouped into one category.

It would also save space in future books. Maybe they could make it an optional rule in a Rifter.

[Sureshot]

Thank you to everybody who responded to my inquiry about Mutant Underground. Boy am I glad I asked. I came very close to buying the book and after reading through it yesterday at my FLGS store I have come to the conclusion that I will buy it used.

[Sureshot]

Why have so many APS powers?

Flavor...Style.

Style counts for a lot in my games.

I've often let characters get away with absurd tricks, or certain character combos that I might be leery of, just because it struck me as very stylish.

Do not get me wrong on the point of flavor and style I agree. At the same time I think they could streamline the powers without losing the flavor and style.

[Sureshot]

While the outside claims it can do anyhero, the inside clearly states that it is a thinking man's game.

Very true and I do not deny that. It just wish that what is written on the outside matches what is on the inside. That just me though.

[Marrowlight]

Actually, it claims to be able to make any type of hero (strange visitor from another planets, etc), but it never lays claim to those power levels.
Again, I point to the Justice Machine: read those comics, and you will see the sorts of characters Kev must have had in mind in terms of power levels.

I still will disagree. The game is pushed as being able to do any hero. While I myself personally agree with your description of what it can do it still not marketed like that.

While the outside claims it can do anyhero, the inside clearly states that it is a thinking man's game.

Anyone who thinks you have to be weak to be able to play in a thinking man's game needs a better GM.

[Sentinel]

Actually, it claims to be able to make any type of hero (strange visitor from another planets, etc), but it never lays claim to those power levels.
Again, I point to the Justice Machine: read those comics, and you will see the sorts of characters Kev must have had in mind in terms of power levels.

I still will disagree. The game is pushed as being able to do any hero. While I myself personally agree with your description of what it can do it still not marketed like that.

While the outside claims it can do anyhero, the inside clearly states that it is a thinking man's game.

Anyone who thinks you have to be weak to be able to play in a thinking man's game needs a better GM.

In this instance, you have to take that up with the Game Designer.

[Marcantony]

Actually, it claims to be able to make any type of hero (strange visitor from another planets, etc), but it never lays claim to those power levels.
Again, I point to the Justice Machine: read those comics, and you will see the sorts of characters Kev must have had in mind in terms of power levels.

I still will disagree. The game is pushed as being able to do any hero. While I myself personally agree with your description of what it can do it still not marketed like that.

While the outside claims it can do anyhero, the inside clearly states that it is a thinking man's game.

Anyone who thinks you have to be weak to be able to play in a thinking man's game needs a better GM.

I hear that.

[Marrowlight]

Actually, it claims to be able to make any type of hero (strange visitor from another planets, etc), but it never lays claim to those power levels.
Again, I point to the Justice Machine: read those comics, and you will see the sorts of characters Kev must have had in mind in terms of power levels.

I still will disagree. The game is pushed as being able to do any hero. While I myself personally agree with your description of what it can do it still not marketed like that.

While the outside claims it can do anyhero, the inside clearly states that it is a thinking man's game.

Anyone who thinks you have to be weak to be able to play in a thinking man's game needs a better GM.

In this instance, you have to take that up with the Game Designer.

Trust me, I'd love to. But I suspect it'd be time better spent slamming a series of railroad spikes into my forehead.

[The Artist Formerly]

I know that was such a RPG.net thread title...

Ok, I have played DC heroes, Marvel (FASERIP), Mutants and Masterminds (both editions), and of course Champions. Besides Champions Supers RPGs have always left a bad taste in my mouth, more of a love hate relationship if anything. I love supers (Golden Age even more so), but systems come and go...blah, blah, blah.

Lately I have been all over the Palladium system, PFRPG, AtB, RUE, and Nightbane and I am curious about HU (not to mention I have a copy coming in the mail). A lot of my friends have played it and have fond memories of thier games, so now I want to see what all the fondness is about.

Can some one yell out an overview?

Heroes Unlimited provides rules for a fairly well balanced super hero game. While it lacks the tools to build the cosmic heavy hitters, there are ways to play them, by adapting rules from Rifts/Phase World or the like. Heroes Unlimited is geared to a world where super powers have distinct advantages but don't out right over whelm the setting. It makes sense that a mob boss is dangerous to the super human, because very few are truely impervious to harm. It makes sense that a superhuman can't just kick in the gates in Saudi Arabia or Iran and declare that their will be equal rights for all, or else. The game really allows for a brains over brawn approch to play, a smart player and a well build character can work through any situation, and do it without having to roll a single combat die, but equally, if someone just wants to kick butt and have some NPC take names for him, the system allows for that too.