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cosmicspear) wrote2022-07-08 02:57 pm
cosmicspear) wrote2022-07-08 02:57 pm
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Heroes Unlimited Character Creation Series - Episode 3: Experiment
Welcome back to the wonderful (?) world of Heroes Unlimited character creation. Last time we saw just how absurdly constrained the budgets for bionic characters are, but now it's time to move on to the next power category: experiments!
This is probably the single broadest category because it covers both Captain America-style intentional attempts to give people superpowers and random accidents in the vein of the Flash. I'm not sure how they could've avoided that with how Heroes Unlimited does things, but it's certainly a noteworthy aspect of the system. This category also includes what it calls the "Supersoldier option" where you get a few options from a fairly constrained list, but we're gonna be skipping that because Powers Unlimited 2 expanded supersoldiers into an entire full power category with more options.
First up, gotta get our stats. Rolling as usual I get IQ 12, ME 11, MA 10, PS 9, PP 11, PE 10, PB 5, Spd 12. Nothing special, though that PB certainly suggests some very unfortunate things about our character's appearance. I only rolled a 1 for HP for a total of 11, but fortunately this power category gives us a nice 40 base SDC to make up for it.
Next up is education, and on a roll of 86 I managed to create a character with a bachelor's degree! This is actually pretty exciting because I get four full skill programs all with a 20% bonus, along with ten secondary skills. Who knows, maybe with those kinds of skills I can make a character who actually vaguely resembles a functional adult!
It's worth noting, though, that the options that provide a bachelor's degree, a master's, and a doctorate are all equally likely at 5%. Apparently in the world of Heroes Unlimited grad school is no more difficult than regular university.
I'll be honest, skill selection is the dullest part of any Palladium game. Just to make it a bit more interesting I did something a bit unusual and chose the journalist skill program. Twice. Since there's no journalism skill category the second program gives you picks from a few different categories, notably including the otherwise rare espionage and rogue skills (albeit at half the normal education bonus for the latter). As such, I spent the second skill program getting Escape Artist, Pick Locks, Prowl, and Streetwise. Because you can totally learn how to pick locks as a journalism major.
(The other two skill programs I chose are physical and science, BTW. Just assume that I'm always going to be getting a physical program whenever it's even remotely available, since boxing is just that good.)
One thing that amuses me is that because I get Basic Mathematics by default and Advanced Mathematics is part of a skill program, the latter gets a 20% bonus that the former does not. Thus, my character is reasonably good at integral calculus but fails at simple subtraction more than half the time. That's Palladium for you!
Anyway, now that we've got our character let's do a science at him. First up we get some random tables of background information. Rolling a 41 on the first table, for the nature of the experiment, tells me that it involved radiation. The next table, for the "general type of experiment," tells me on a 52 that it's the "unexpected side effect of an experiment." The experiment is a side effect of an experiment. This is why this category including both intentional and accidental stuff is a bit of a thing.
The next table is for how many powers our character gets, and on a 19 he gets four minor powers. After that we get a table full of side effects from the procedure! You remember all those stories about Captain America having to deal with increased blood pressure or whatever due to his enhancements, right? ...right? Anyway a roll of 75 means our character can breathe without air, but loses his ability to smell or taste anything.
After that we get a table for our sponsoring organization, which just sounds silly in this context. I forget the roll for this one but it translated into a medical research facility, which on a roll of 24 on the status table doesn't know our character has any powers. Imagine rolling that after the background tables say the organization was actively trying to give you powers, or using the supersoldier option. "Why yes, General, we stopped monitoring the subject after she appeared to get no benefit whatsoever from the top-secret bionic rocket punch system we installed."
Anyway, we've got some powers to roll for now. My first roll is a 27, giving my character Radar. This sounds and initially looks boring, providing a few skills related to using our radar to sense things, but it also gives some very good combat bonuses, including an extra attack per melee! It also provides a strike bonus, which is pretty rare so it's always appreciated.
For our second power I rolled a 96, which gives our character the power of Horror Factor. This makes every character he runs into have to make a saving throw that when failed makes you move last and lose one attack, repeating every single combat round until you make the save. So now everyone our character runs into is scared of him for no reason. He also gets a really good bonus when saving against Horror Factor himself.
Rolling a 20 for our third power gets our character Supervision: Nightvision, which just lets him see in the dark. That's it. No other bonuses.
For our last power I rolled 11, which gives our guy Flight: Glide. This is the worst of the flight powers, with the lowest possible speed and the weakest bonuses, but it's still something. Still, it's a bit of a raw deal considering this is the one flight power that doesn't grant an extra attack.
For available money we get to roll 5d6x100, which gives me $1,600 in cash. We also need to roll our very carefully balanced 84% chance of owning a car (I succeeded), which is described as "conventional" and is 1d6 years old.
The background tables tell me that my character is last born (out of how many children, I couldn't say), thin, tall, and hot-headed. He has $5,000 in savings, and is from a lower class family in a small town somewhere in the US.
Last thing to do before filling in character details is buying some stuff. Experiments don't get enough money to buy a lot, but I was able to get a set of lockpicks, a phone, and a computer. The lockpicks are interesting because you can tell this is something Kevin Siembieda knows a lot about. Any other game designer would just make a single entry for lockpicks, but Kevin has to throw together a section taking up half a page detailing exactly what kinds of tools you need to pick locks and what kinds of sets you can get them in. It's interesting to say the least.
I also dipped in the first edition Heroes Unlimited rulebook because we finally have a character who you'd expect to wear a costume, and the first edition rules have a list of regular clothes that doesn't appear in the second edition.
All that's left is to fill out basic details. I've already decided that this is gonna be another male character, and of course his alignment's gonna beDefault Palladium Character AlignmentScrupulous. His codename's The Seeker because he's a journalist with radar powers, but his real name's Bill Lafayette Belvedere IV because those kinds of excessively fancy names are hilarious to me.
And that's the Seeker written up. He's not exactly great at dealing damage, but the extra attack and strike bonus from Radar count for a lot. The fact that I've actually got a halfway decent rogue character out of the Palladium skill system is also worth mentioning. But he'll probably spend most encounters hiding behind his tougher allies.
Next time, we step into the land of Maximum Palladium Bullshit and start talking about Hardware characters!
Character Sheet:
Name: Bill Lafayette Belvedere IV
Hero Name: The Seeker
Age: 23
Gender: Male
Alignment: Scrupulous
Level: 1
XP: 0
IQ: 12
ME: 11
MA: 10
PS: 19 (+4)
PP: 13
PE: 15
PB: 5
Spd: 25
HP: 16
SDC: 95
Attacks per Melee: 6
Strike: +2 (+3 when gliding)
Melee Damage: +4
Parry: +5 (+6 when gliding)
Dodge: +5 (+7 when gliding)
Roll with Punch: +10
Pull Punch: +3
Initiative: +6 (+7 when gliding)
Knockout Punch: 20
Pin/Incapacitate: 18-20
Horror Factor: 10
Save vs Horror Factor: +9
Power Category: Experiment
Nature of the Experiment: Radiation
General Type of Experiment: Unexpected side effect of an experiment
Number and Type of Super Abilities: 4 Minor
Side Effects: Breathe Without Air
Sponsoring Organization: Medical Research Facility
Status with Sponsoring Organization: Organization doesn't know
Super Abilities:
Radar (50%/60%/60%/40%/50%)
Horror Factor
Supervision: Nightvision
Flight: Glide
Education: Bachelor's Degree
Skill Programs: Physical (+20%), Journalist/Investigation (+20%), Journalist/Investigation (+20%), Science (+20%)
Secondary Skills: 10
Skills:
Acrobatics (80%/80%/90%/70%/+15%/+5%)
Advanced Mathematics (65%)
Analytical Chemistry (45%)
Antrhopology (40%)
Athletics
Basic Mathematics (45%)
Biology (50%)
Body Building & Weight Lifting
Boxing
Chemistry (50%)
Climbing (60%)
Computer Operation (60%)
Cook (35%)
Escape Artist (40%)
First Aid (45%)
Fishing (40%)
Gymnastics (70%/80%/80%/90%/+5%/+5%)
Hand to Hand: Martial Arts (counts as 3 secondary skill picks)
Language: English (98%)
Literacy: English (98%)
Photography (55%)
Pick Locks (50%)
Pilot Automobile (60%)
Prowl (55%)
Research (70%)
Running
Streetwise (40%)
Wrestling
Writing (45%)
Money: $130
Items:
Car (conventional, 4 years old)
Superior lock pick set
Basic phone with answering machine
Value priced personal computer with basic colour monitor
Dancer's leotard
Short cape
Background Info:
Birth Order: Last Born
Weight: Thin
Height: Tall
Disposition: Hot-head, quick-tempered, emotional, but basically nice
Life Savings: $5,000
Land of Origin: United States
Childhood Environment: Countryside, small town or village
Social/Economic Background: Laborer/Lower Class
This is probably the single broadest category because it covers both Captain America-style intentional attempts to give people superpowers and random accidents in the vein of the Flash. I'm not sure how they could've avoided that with how Heroes Unlimited does things, but it's certainly a noteworthy aspect of the system. This category also includes what it calls the "Supersoldier option" where you get a few options from a fairly constrained list, but we're gonna be skipping that because Powers Unlimited 2 expanded supersoldiers into an entire full power category with more options.
First up, gotta get our stats. Rolling as usual I get IQ 12, ME 11, MA 10, PS 9, PP 11, PE 10, PB 5, Spd 12. Nothing special, though that PB certainly suggests some very unfortunate things about our character's appearance. I only rolled a 1 for HP for a total of 11, but fortunately this power category gives us a nice 40 base SDC to make up for it.
Next up is education, and on a roll of 86 I managed to create a character with a bachelor's degree! This is actually pretty exciting because I get four full skill programs all with a 20% bonus, along with ten secondary skills. Who knows, maybe with those kinds of skills I can make a character who actually vaguely resembles a functional adult!
It's worth noting, though, that the options that provide a bachelor's degree, a master's, and a doctorate are all equally likely at 5%. Apparently in the world of Heroes Unlimited grad school is no more difficult than regular university.
I'll be honest, skill selection is the dullest part of any Palladium game. Just to make it a bit more interesting I did something a bit unusual and chose the journalist skill program. Twice. Since there's no journalism skill category the second program gives you picks from a few different categories, notably including the otherwise rare espionage and rogue skills (albeit at half the normal education bonus for the latter). As such, I spent the second skill program getting Escape Artist, Pick Locks, Prowl, and Streetwise. Because you can totally learn how to pick locks as a journalism major.
(The other two skill programs I chose are physical and science, BTW. Just assume that I'm always going to be getting a physical program whenever it's even remotely available, since boxing is just that good.)
One thing that amuses me is that because I get Basic Mathematics by default and Advanced Mathematics is part of a skill program, the latter gets a 20% bonus that the former does not. Thus, my character is reasonably good at integral calculus but fails at simple subtraction more than half the time. That's Palladium for you!
Anyway, now that we've got our character let's do a science at him. First up we get some random tables of background information. Rolling a 41 on the first table, for the nature of the experiment, tells me that it involved radiation. The next table, for the "general type of experiment," tells me on a 52 that it's the "unexpected side effect of an experiment." The experiment is a side effect of an experiment. This is why this category including both intentional and accidental stuff is a bit of a thing.
The next table is for how many powers our character gets, and on a 19 he gets four minor powers. After that we get a table full of side effects from the procedure! You remember all those stories about Captain America having to deal with increased blood pressure or whatever due to his enhancements, right? ...right? Anyway a roll of 75 means our character can breathe without air, but loses his ability to smell or taste anything.
After that we get a table for our sponsoring organization, which just sounds silly in this context. I forget the roll for this one but it translated into a medical research facility, which on a roll of 24 on the status table doesn't know our character has any powers. Imagine rolling that after the background tables say the organization was actively trying to give you powers, or using the supersoldier option. "Why yes, General, we stopped monitoring the subject after she appeared to get no benefit whatsoever from the top-secret bionic rocket punch system we installed."
Anyway, we've got some powers to roll for now. My first roll is a 27, giving my character Radar. This sounds and initially looks boring, providing a few skills related to using our radar to sense things, but it also gives some very good combat bonuses, including an extra attack per melee! It also provides a strike bonus, which is pretty rare so it's always appreciated.
For our second power I rolled a 96, which gives our character the power of Horror Factor. This makes every character he runs into have to make a saving throw that when failed makes you move last and lose one attack, repeating every single combat round until you make the save. So now everyone our character runs into is scared of him for no reason. He also gets a really good bonus when saving against Horror Factor himself.
Rolling a 20 for our third power gets our character Supervision: Nightvision, which just lets him see in the dark. That's it. No other bonuses.
For our last power I rolled 11, which gives our guy Flight: Glide. This is the worst of the flight powers, with the lowest possible speed and the weakest bonuses, but it's still something. Still, it's a bit of a raw deal considering this is the one flight power that doesn't grant an extra attack.
For available money we get to roll 5d6x100, which gives me $1,600 in cash. We also need to roll our very carefully balanced 84% chance of owning a car (I succeeded), which is described as "conventional" and is 1d6 years old.
The background tables tell me that my character is last born (out of how many children, I couldn't say), thin, tall, and hot-headed. He has $5,000 in savings, and is from a lower class family in a small town somewhere in the US.
Last thing to do before filling in character details is buying some stuff. Experiments don't get enough money to buy a lot, but I was able to get a set of lockpicks, a phone, and a computer. The lockpicks are interesting because you can tell this is something Kevin Siembieda knows a lot about. Any other game designer would just make a single entry for lockpicks, but Kevin has to throw together a section taking up half a page detailing exactly what kinds of tools you need to pick locks and what kinds of sets you can get them in. It's interesting to say the least.
I also dipped in the first edition Heroes Unlimited rulebook because we finally have a character who you'd expect to wear a costume, and the first edition rules have a list of regular clothes that doesn't appear in the second edition.
All that's left is to fill out basic details. I've already decided that this is gonna be another male character, and of course his alignment's gonna be
And that's the Seeker written up. He's not exactly great at dealing damage, but the extra attack and strike bonus from Radar count for a lot. The fact that I've actually got a halfway decent rogue character out of the Palladium skill system is also worth mentioning. But he'll probably spend most encounters hiding behind his tougher allies.
Next time, we step into the land of Maximum Palladium Bullshit and start talking about Hardware characters!
Character Sheet:
Name: Bill Lafayette Belvedere IV
Hero Name: The Seeker
Age: 23
Gender: Male
Alignment: Scrupulous
Level: 1
XP: 0
IQ: 12
ME: 11
MA: 10
PS: 19 (+4)
PP: 13
PE: 15
PB: 5
Spd: 25
HP: 16
SDC: 95
Attacks per Melee: 6
Strike: +2 (+3 when gliding)
Melee Damage: +4
Parry: +5 (+6 when gliding)
Dodge: +5 (+7 when gliding)
Roll with Punch: +10
Pull Punch: +3
Initiative: +6 (+7 when gliding)
Knockout Punch: 20
Pin/Incapacitate: 18-20
Horror Factor: 10
Save vs Horror Factor: +9
Power Category: Experiment
Nature of the Experiment: Radiation
General Type of Experiment: Unexpected side effect of an experiment
Number and Type of Super Abilities: 4 Minor
Side Effects: Breathe Without Air
Sponsoring Organization: Medical Research Facility
Status with Sponsoring Organization: Organization doesn't know
Super Abilities:
Radar (50%/60%/60%/40%/50%)
Horror Factor
Supervision: Nightvision
Flight: Glide
Education: Bachelor's Degree
Skill Programs: Physical (+20%), Journalist/Investigation (+20%), Journalist/Investigation (+20%), Science (+20%)
Secondary Skills: 10
Skills:
Acrobatics (80%/80%/90%/70%/+15%/+5%)
Advanced Mathematics (65%)
Analytical Chemistry (45%)
Antrhopology (40%)
Athletics
Basic Mathematics (45%)
Biology (50%)
Body Building & Weight Lifting
Boxing
Chemistry (50%)
Climbing (60%)
Computer Operation (60%)
Cook (35%)
Escape Artist (40%)
First Aid (45%)
Fishing (40%)
Gymnastics (70%/80%/80%/90%/+5%/+5%)
Hand to Hand: Martial Arts (counts as 3 secondary skill picks)
Language: English (98%)
Literacy: English (98%)
Photography (55%)
Pick Locks (50%)
Pilot Automobile (60%)
Prowl (55%)
Research (70%)
Running
Streetwise (40%)
Wrestling
Writing (45%)
Money: $130
Items:
Car (conventional, 4 years old)
Superior lock pick set
Basic phone with answering machine
Value priced personal computer with basic colour monitor
Dancer's leotard
Short cape
Background Info:
Birth Order: Last Born
Weight: Thin
Height: Tall
Disposition: Hot-head, quick-tempered, emotional, but basically nice
Life Savings: $5,000
Land of Origin: United States
Childhood Environment: Countryside, small town or village
Social/Economic Background: Laborer/Lower Class