Heroes Unlimited. >_>

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Judging__Eagle
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Heroes Unlimited. >_>

Post by Judging__Eagle »

Someone that I know might be running a Heroes Unlimited game. Most of the players have known the GM and the system for years.

Honestly, I don't know the rifts/palladium mechanics (very well/at all), despite having bought a sourcebooks b/c I liked the cover and it was heavily discounted, and then bought more b/c I like the inside content (the fluff, not the crunch).

The GM suggested something about picking up energy/physical-power absorbing/ablating powers to pretty much be unkillable.

The idea of just playing a hobo immortal that looks like a human is one that I'd try to run by the GM.

Really, I'd rather just play a mage that maybe packs a gun and wears kevlar body armour (no metal, right?)

Also, would something like an Atlantean ley-line walker mesh mechanically with the Heroe's Unlimited game (born on Wormwood b/c, well, I've got the Wormwood book and it's interesting/awesome, but if not w/e)?
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Hey_I_Can_Chan
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Post by Hey_I_Can_Chan »

Also, would something like an Atlantean ley-line walker mesh mechanically with the Heroe's Unlimited game (born on Wormwood b/c, well, I've got the Wormwood book and it's interesting/awesome, but if not w/e)?
There's no balance in Heroes Unlimited. The game expects you to roll for pretty much everything, and if one player happens to roll up a super-powerful cyborg killing machine and another rolls up a stage magician in a domino mask, that's how things go.

That said, there are wizards in the core Heroes Unlimited game already. In fact, there're alien wizards (who, of course, are better than regular human wizards… lucky you, you rolled well!), so that's not a stretch. The wacky bonuses from being a True Atlantean (as opposed to a False Atlantean… whatever) are probably functionally equivelent to just being an alien.

You won't have MDC, though, no matter what you do. Unlimited's an SDC only thing.

You're better off with a regular Unlimited wizard over a line walker, if only because the Unlimited world's ley lines aren't active, so your shit-hot powers around them don't do squat.
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

The Palladium system is a pile of artifacts left over from the first era of 'not D&D' gaming. In my opinion, it is balls. That said, it's totally possible to have fun with such a system. People have been doing it for years.

As I recall, the Rifts/Wormwood stuff is compatible with HU, as long as you swap out the MDC for SDC. Once that's taken care of, you're probably as balanced as anything's going to get, considering. You'll want to talk to the GM if he feels like dealing with ley lines, of course...
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Post by Username17 »

Heroes Unlimited gets even more ridiculously unbalanced when you run it through the Rifts Conversion. Not only are you rolling dice to see whether you get skin made of metal or stone (hint: metal is better), but if you end up with some powers (like super toughness or iron body) you end up as an MDC character, and if you don't you end up as an SDC character.

The correct choice in HU games, RIFTS conversion or not, is to sit back and not stress about it and just try to have fun. If you just focus on the roleplaying it is entirely possible to have fun if one of you is a dude in a mask and another of you is a planet saving space tank.

Which is good, because that's the kind of power discrepancies you are actually likely to see in a real team.

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Hey_I_Can_Chan
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Post by Hey_I_Can_Chan »

Yeah, unlike Villains and Vigilantes--another old-school, randomly rolled superhero game--Heroes Unlimited isn't even balanced by the other people at the table.

There are no skills in Villains and Vigilantes and you're supposed to play yourself, which means if you can do it in real life, you can pretty much do it in the game (give or take, really--you won't be better at shooting a gun because you are good at shooting one in real life, but the GM should permit you to take one apart, clean it, and modify it, and junk if you're a gun freak), which means that if you happen to roll up Green Arrow or the Wasp and another guy at the table happened to roll up Superman or Thor, he doesn't immediately have 1,000 years of Kryptonian history or ties to Asgard or whatever unless the GM gives him that in play.

Which is totally why Superman and Green Arrow team up and even more totally why the Wasp can lead Thor into battle… they're sitting at the same table with the same stupid, early 1980s character sheet with different numbers looking back at them.

But, seriously, in a Heroes Unlimited game, your character sheet could be one page of just skills and gear, while your buddies could be pages and pages and pages of skills, spells, gear, vehicles, and superpowers (if you're the aforementioned alien magician). You aren't even playing the same game as that guy.

So, yeah, of course Frank's correct: You can have fun in any game system with the right GM and the right players ("Woohoo! When are we playing Lords of Creation again? That game was awesome!"), the game rules themselves aren't inherently fun or anywhere near balanced.
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I just glanced at the aliens rules from Unlimited (3rd edition, I think--published 1998), and, wow, I'd forgotten how seriously fucked up they were. Okay, so you want a humanoid mineral alien (+4d4+10 PS, +180 SDC) from an abrasive atomosphere (+3d6x10 SDC and if PS is above 20 add 2d6+6 to PS) who was trained as a military specialist (which gets you the Hand-to-Hand: Martial Arts combat mode in addition to all that shit you'd want to do anyway) who wields his pair of energy wrist blasters and possesses an antigravity ring capable of transatmospheric flight… oh, yeah, and $120,000.

That's without superpowers.

And, yeah, that's the maximum amount of cash--but that's three times as much as the Special Training (Hunter/Vigilante) gets as his maximum and twice as much as the Special Training (Stage Magician) and (Super Sleuth).

Damn.
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Post by Optimator »

I remember playing HU a lot when I was younger (middle school, early high school). Looking back, all of this stuff about imbalance rings so true. I also remember character creation taking for-fucking-ever. Was that just me?

It also seemed like there was very little incentive to level up. Lots of powers didn't really get better, and the ones that did sucked way bad early on and nobody wanted to roll them. I also recall some trait that gave you new powers the higher level you became. THAT was fair...
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Post by Koumei »

It took ages for me, too, and left me with a general dislike of skills and other "not a big deal" stuff.

And yeah, in most of the Palladium things, gaining levels doesn't do that much. Spellcasting OCCs in non-HU get a benefit from it, but it takes them so long to stop sucking that there's no point anyway. Psychic PCCs tended to get more powers, but there was no real shift in power (as powers didn't have levels like spells did).

Everyone else... a few small bonuses.

In HU, it was almost entirely "All your powers are there at the start (to be fair, plenty of superheroes are indeed like that, not gaining new powers as they go along), each level gives you a tiny bonus."
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Post by Judging__Eagle »

gives you a tiny bonus
Skill bonuses are what I notice get increased with levels; and a some of the classes deal some extra damage with their class' special abilities.
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Post by Koumei »

Yeah. The skills get a bonus to their percentage.
Humans get an extra 1d6 HP per level. Many other races get the same thing.
Other things get anywhere from nothing to 1d6x10 MDC per level.
HU characters get +1d6 HP per level.
Occasionally you get a new skill.
Because you're not stupid you have a HtH skill, which provides a small bonus or, if you're lucky, an extra attack.
Weapon Proficiencies *occasionally* scale the bonus or give you another trick.
Some powers/spells/whatever are 1dX damage per level or something similar.

Oh, and serious psychics (not the AD&D-style "Hey, I rolled well so I get psychic powers for free!") get more ISP per level and spellcasters and their ilk get more PPE per level. In most cases, no-one really cares.

Sure, there is occasionally an exception - Tattooed Warriors get extra magical tattoos as they go along, but really, that still depends on them being loyal servants to Splynn and being rewarded with them (as opposed to being rewarded with execution, tentacle rape or bio-augmentation (always bad)). And nothing's actually stopping them from just starting with extra ones. So it's more of a recommendation than anything else.

---

At the end of the day, my suggestion for Palladium games is this: don't frustrate/bore yourself with the long, stupid process of making a character. Instead, write random numbers and abilities down, and it seriously won't affect the (non-existent) game balance.
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Post by JonSetanta »

In short, Palladium games suck.
I've been there. It's not a nice place to be.
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