HURzombies / HURgolems

[Axelmania]

I only just noticed the "Create Zombies - Power Circle" on page 107 of Heroes Unlimited Revised. This is pretty fantastic... I mean sure we have the Create Zombie ritual in Rifts, a different version in Through the Glass Darkly, a voodoo zombie in Century Station, that new OCC in Rifter 50, the "Animation (and Control) Dead - Power Circle" in Palladium Fantasy, but this has a unique flavor to it which I like.

Features which stand out:
1) HP and SDC which scale up with the level of the caster, instead of a static amount
2) impressive AR (actually better than the Stone Golem!)
3) a level-based limit of how many zombies you can "create and control"

Also interestingly, they and golems are classified as "creatures of magic" here. It also limits creating either of them to anarchist/evil people, something I don't recall seeing in other versions of golem or zombie creation.

Golems also have a unique flavor here, they're immune to fire/cold and only heal when exposed to moonlight.

These sound like great Power Circles to float over to the Summoner OCC in Palladium Fantasy.

Page 103's "Wizards and Circle Magic" actually make HURwizards sound a lot more flexible than I've seen them elsewhere. In HU2 I don't think they can do this stuff at all, and even in Palladium RPG revised (page 55) they were only described as being able to use protection circles, not summoning/power circles like the HURwizard, who seems to be a combination of the Wizard and Summoner from Palladium RPG.

Page 106 (was that Magot artwork lifted from a previous PRPG book?) also had an excellent random monster generator, reminds me of the one the Rifts RPG had in the back. Instead of having a list of things to summon, you just randomly generated it, and could summon things with super powers! Had no built-in means of control though so I guess you'd have to use spells. Page 93 starts you off being able to do 8 per day.

Page 98's "Mesmerism" sounds suitable. The 5 melees/level might just refer to the length of the suggestible trance, the effects might be permanent! Page 101's "Words of Truth" could also be useful, because you could ask your summons to promise to serve you faithfully and return any unable to do so. Charismatic Aura on same page could be helpful to facilitate negotiations.

Sleeping inside sealed circles of power is probably also a good defense, as a creature may not want to risk injury by entering it to attack you, though it could simply run off and cause chaos...

It's not really clear if HURwizards have any starting knowledge of circles or not. Perhaps when you select 14 spells you know, you could select a circle instead? Circles of Power are rare in PF (Summoners start off knowing none) so it's hard to imagine in HU all wizards know them, even if they know all protection circles like Summoners do. Here there is only 1 kind of summoning circle which has a random effect so I don't know if you'd actually learn multiple versions or not.

Interesting to note the kind of stuff that was cut to make space for different content in HU2, whose mystic scape seems a lot less extreme/spooky by comparison to revised.

[Stone Gargoyle]

So I take it this material was left out or HU2.

[eliakon]

So I take it this material was left out or HU2.

Yes, they removed all of this stuff in HU2 and went with straight Palladium standard spell casters.
There is no longer circle magic, nor a seperation between spells and illusions.
So while these circles are nice... they are not canon anymore.

[Axelmania]

They're canon in the HUR universe. Nothing stopping you from treating these as alternate dimensions. Whether or not other dimensions/games exist is usually up to the GM anyway. The Rifts Conversion Book still has rules on bringing these guys over.

[Stone Gargoyle]

So I take it this material was left out or HU2.

Yes, they removed all of this stuff in HU2 and went with straight Palladium standard spell casters.
There is no longer circle magic, nor a seperation between spells and illusions.
So while these circles are nice... they are not canon anymore.

Hmmm, makes me think I'll be buying the revised edition for these optional magics.

[eliakon]

So I take it this material was left out or HU2.

Yes, they removed all of this stuff in HU2 and went with straight Palladium standard spell casters.
There is no longer circle magic, nor a seperation between spells and illusions.
So while these circles are nice... they are not canon anymore.

Hmmm, makes me think I'll be buying the revised edition for these optional magics.

They are quite nice.
Their addition to the Power Circles list has made my Summoners very happy.
I have also added the Circles that the Demon Hunter in Armagedon Unlimited has.

[Axelmania]

More circles is always nice to set Summoners apart from Shifters, their new abilities in RUE are a bit overshadowing.