In my recent hunt to find a game that quite satisfied all my desires for a supers game, I somehow hit on re-reading Heroes Unlimited.

And well, for all it's many faults, I like it, or at least, it's closer to what I'm looking for than anything else I've looked at.  I love the lifepath-style chargen, it does randomness while still giving each origin a unique flavor, albeit with a fuck load of bookkeeping involved in certain options.

It's also, in theory, got the works of a half-decent D&D based D20 combat engine, but then you read the actual rules and they fall apart.  They contradict the hell out of each other, they punish defensive actions out the yin-yang while making hits a near automatic certainty, the number ranges for many, many things show a complete failure to understand the ranges that powers and characters can produce, and on the whole, it's way, way too technical for a supers game.

But, I think it can be recovered.  The chargen is still cool, and the core idea of the D20+adds for combat, and percentiles for out-of-combat, system, along with the chargen, seem salvageable.

It just needs a simpler combat system that allows for all that to actually work together in a sane way that actually feels like a superhero game and not Twilight 2000.  

But where to start ... ?   What would you do?  Obviously this needs to keep the variables, I'd only add maybe one or two minor mods to the rest of the system (attributes should add to skills), but where do you start rebuilding the combat to use the same numbers while being actually playable?

I don't know, J. I have a strange affection for this game as well, it fucking bleeds enthusiasm, even more so than usual for Palladium games. The Kevster is a comic book guy first and foremost, and in this game it shows.

But in addition to the usual Palladium problems, here my dealbreaker are the several disparate power systems. You have psionics and magic cribbed straight off BtS 1e, mutant animals from TMNT&OS, and no less tha n four concurring budget-based (as in, money budget, not some abstract point budget) build-your-own systems for robots, cyborgs, powered armor and vehicles.

Like nearly everything to come out from Palladium, it's dripping with flavor, but it's clunky as all hell. And like most other Palladium games (except Rifts and N&SS which still whisper to me from the bookshelf, "pick me up and run me", from time to time), I've written it off as more trouble than it's worth, at least for running. I'd play it in a heartbeat, though, if some brave soul was willing to shoulder the burden of running this beast.

I'd like to hear what you have in mind, though.

Regarding combat: I had an Excel spreadsheet which calculated total bonuses by level, for each of the Hand-to-Hand combat skills. A small thing, surely, but it does cut a lot of work.

Also, I don't think it punishes defensive actions by making hits too easy; if anything, I think it mandates them. The other guy hits you on a 4 unless you parry or dodge, which requires spending an "attack" (action). However, I don't remember whether this was a thing in HU, but Rifts had "automatic" parry (i.e. parry without spending an action) for some characters, which sort of fucked up this economy. Also from Rifts, the ridiculous inflation of attacks per round got pretty bad on occasion, especially with supernatural critters which were abundantly encourage to regularly engage tanks, giant robots and (on one memorable occasion) flying APC transports in bare-handed melee combat (newsflash: if you're an armored airship, the long-range weaponry you're bristling with won't do shit when a human-sized opponent who can fly and punch through MDC armor decides to gut you with his fists. True story). I get it that they're super! and all, but there is such a thing as too much... even in Rifts.

I'm in a bit of a rush right now, but I'll return to this thread later.

Quote from: The Butcher;547301But in addition to the usual Palladium problems, here my dealbreaker are the several disparate power systems. You have psionics and magic cribbed straight off BtS 1e, mutant animals from TMNT&OS, and no less tha n four concurring budget-based (as in, money budget, not some abstract point budget) build-your-own systems for robots, cyborgs, powered armor and vehicles.

See, but this is actually one of the parts I LIKE.  It gives each different origin it's own unique flavor in the system, and the decisions you make have more to do with that specific origin.

It makes it feel like origin is actually connected to powers, instead of just some flavor text you rolled randomly like in MSH.  

QuoteRegarding combat: I had an Excel spreadsheet which calculated total bonuses by level, for each of the Hand-to-Hand combat skills. A small thing, surely, but it does cut a lot of work.

Also, I don't think it punishes defensive actions by making hits too easy; if anything, I think it mandates them. The other guy hits you on a 4 unless you parry or dodge, which requires spending an "attack" (action). However, I don't remember whether this was a thing in HU, but Rifts had "automatic" parry (i.e. parry without spending an action) for some characters, which sort of fucked up this economy. Also from Rifts, the ridiculous inflation of attacks per round got pretty bad on occasion, especially with supernatural critters which were abundantly encourage to regularly engage tanks, giant robots and (on one memorable occasion) flying APC transports in bare-handed melee combat (newsflash: if you're an armored airship, the long-range weaponry you're bristling with won't do shit when a human-sized opponent who can fly and punch through MDC armor decides to gut you with his fists. True story). I get it that they're super! and all, but there is such a thing as too much... even in Rifts.

I'm in a bit of a rush right now, but I'll return to this thread later.

The parry thing is actually one of the game's contradictions.  It implies at one point that parrying consumes an action, but then at another point, in an otherwise unrelated section, it specifically states, in italics even, that parries are free against opponents you are facing.

And the 4+ thing is another.  It contradicts itself again in several places as to whether the 4+ thing is a natural, or a modified target.  If it's the former, then it means everyone still has a chance to miss.  If it's the latter, then it means just about anyone even marginally competent is going to hit his opponent no matter what, and means the attack roll is just providing a target number for defensive rolls.

But then those defensive rolls ... OK, so parry may or may not be free, but that's fine for melee attacks, but what becomes a problem is ranged attacks of any sort.

Whether you're Captain America with his vibranium-alloy shield parrying bullets, or the Flash just getting out of the way, there are huge penalties to attempting to parry or dodge a ranged attack, despite this being really the only use of dodge since parries are free while dodge uses an action.

So the whole existence of a dodge bonus literally becomes irrelevant unless yours happens to be higher than your parry, and you're still sacrificing an action to use it.

Even the Sonic Speed power doesn't let you dodge ranged attacks with bonus intact.

So, you have a guy shooting you with his full bonus to hit, and since aiming is free and a +3 just to start, he's going to if the 4+ rule is on a modified roll, while you've got a penalized, no-bonus roll to compete with that.  

I basically see no reason why any villain wouldn't just blast the shit out of the heroes from range first chance they got.  Batman would be dead in a week.

I'll admit that I'm not the hugest math nut, but I've run a lot of palladium over the years, and if it came to pruning the Palladium combat, I would do the following:

- I'd ignore the 4 or more to hit. Like you said, the choices between modified, and un-modified are kinda goofy. Either you essentially never miss, or you have 1 chance in 5 of missing? I think that making it a simple opposed attack vs. defense procedure is just fine.
- When it comes to the combat actions, I never-ever remember my players ever rolling with attacks or pulling punches (caveat, we usually played RIFTS, when it comes to MDC, pulling attacks was pointless).
- When those two options go out the window, you have the different varieties of attacks, parry and dodge.

Regarding Parry, maybe I misread the rules, but I could swear parries only cost an attack if you did not have a HtH combat skill. If not, that's the simplest fix.

I actually like that Dodges cost an attack, but to balance that, they really should have better cover rules, so you don't have to jump around and get shot to pieces. Even guidelines bestowing an AR based on the substance and level of coverage would be enough.

I also agree with your solutions to mitigate the other advantages in ranged combat. You have a shield, you should get to parry without any penalty, I think it's enough that the shield is subject to damage and wear. You get to keep your dodge bonus against ranged attacks. Powers that indicate super speed or reflexes can not only maintain the bonus, but allow automatic dodges (ala RIFT's juicer).

The big problem is a series of contradictory generation schemes.  For the sake of sanity, insist that players determine Power Category first- always.  Get that done, and a lot of things will start falling into place which reduces complexity in practice (to varying degrees).

Quote from: J Arcane;547315See, but this is actually one of the parts I LIKE.  It gives each different origin it's own unique flavor in the system, and the decisions you make have more to do with that specific origin.

It makes it feel like origin is actually connected to powers, instead of just some flavor text you rolled randomly like in MSH.  

I can see how this can be a selling point. It increases complexity but it does gain in flavor. I'm usually a fan of subsystems, but here for some reason I find it unwieldly.

Quote from: J Arcane;547315The parry thing is actually one of the game's contradictions.  It implies at one point that parrying consumes an action, but then at another point, in an otherwise unrelated section, it specifically states, in italics even, that parries are free against opponents you are facing.

And the 4+ thing is another.  It contradicts itself again in several places as to whether the 4+ thing is a natural, or a modified target.  If it's the former, then it means everyone still has a chance to miss.  If it's the latter, then it means just about anyone even marginally competent is going to hit his opponent no matter what, and means the attack roll is just providing a target number for defensive rolls.

But then those defensive rolls ... OK, so parry may or may not be free, but that's fine for melee attacks, but what becomes a problem is ranged attacks of any sort.

Whether you're Captain America with his vibranium-alloy shield parrying bullets, or the Flash just getting out of the way, there are huge penalties to attempting to parry or dodge a ranged attack, despite this being really the only use of dodge since parries are free while dodge uses an action.

So the whole existence of a dodge bonus literally becomes irrelevant unless yours happens to be higher than your parry, and you're still sacrificing an action to use it.

Even the Sonic Speed power doesn't let you dodge ranged attacks with bonus intact.

So, you have a guy shooting you with his full bonus to hit, and since aiming is free and a +3 just to start, he's going to if the 4+ rule is on a modified roll, while you've got a penalized, no-bonus roll to compete with that.  

I basically see no reason why any villain wouldn't just blast the shit out of the heroes from range first chance they got.  Batman would be dead in a week.

All good points. I've run Palladium (Rifts, specifically) so much, and it's been so long since I've last read the damn books, that my ability to distinguish my own rulings from the (horribly written, poorly organized and heinously laid out) actual rules is vestigial at best.

I use modifed 4+ because it forces people in a melee to act defensively, or get hit in exchange for a chance at an immediate counterattack ("opening one's guard" as it were).

Automatic parry in my Rifts games is the privilege of Juicers, Crazies and a handful of others with heightened reflexes. That means dodging is usually more interesting, since you don't have to have anything handy and whatever you have at hand doesn't take damage; from a game-mechanical viewpoint that is inelegant, but it was never an actual problem at thje game table, we just rolled with it. Speaking of which, we sometimes remembered to roll with punches (and especially with explosions), but no one ever pulled a punch in a Rifts game that I've run. "Pulling punches" and "Rifts" just do not belong in the same sentence.

I allow dodging some ranged attacks at a penalty (-2 thrown projectiles, -4 arrows, -6 bullets and energy beams), or, if you have automatic parry (=superhuman reflexes), you may spend an action to try and parry an incoming projectile at half the mentioned dodge penalty (or was it no penalty? not sure).

For a superhero game of parrying bullets with indestructible bracers and shields, you will want to allow PCs a decent chance at parrying bullets and lasers and whatnot.

One of those few Palladium games I never played.

RPGPundit

Probably a tangent but had a look through the Rifts main book and there, I couldn't find any Dodge penalty against ranged attacks. I thought it was worth looking up since a couple of the Rifts classes had 'automatic Dodge' and if I'd missed that it'd make the Juicer much less insane.
 
In answer to a couple of points in the OP:
* I think I actually like attributes not modifying skills in Palladium. The principle that seems to apply in Palladium is the reverse - your skills modify your attributes. I like that a character doesn't have to pick skills matching their best stat or suck forever. If you like, imagine that as regards the skill, the characters attribute functions at a higher level - the baseball pitcher will be alot stronger in his pitching arm than his general STR score suggests.
 
*On paring the numbers down: Its a noble aim but all the hit points/SDC and damage ratings were pulled out entirely arbitrarily. The  Palladium systems closest to making sense are the Palladium FRPG, since it didn't have SDC (but you'd need to adjust down alot of damage ratings to get it to work, e.g. bursts and the like for guns) or TMNT with its size-based SDCs.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;547670Probably a tangent but had a look through the Rifts main book and there, I couldn't find any Dodge penalty against ranged attacks. I thought it was worth looking up since a couple of the Rifts classes had 'automatic Dodge' and if I'd missed that it'd make the Juicer much less insane.

It's there in HU2.  Dodging a ranged attack incurs BOTH a -4 penalty AND a loss of one's bonus, and technically this even applies to Automatic Dodge (which also is a separate bonus from regular dodge). The only exception is that if you have Sonic Speed, you don't take the -4, but you still don't get your dodge bonus.  
 

QuoteIn answer to a couple of points in the OP:
* I think I actually like attributes not modifying skills in Palladium. The principle that seems to apply in Palladium is the reverse - your skills modify your attributes. I like that a character doesn't have to pick skills matching their best stat or suck forever. If you like, imagine that as regards the skill, the characters attribute functions at a higher level - the baseball pitcher will be alot stronger in his pitching arm than his general STR score suggests.

It's not the lack of attributes' effect on skill levels that bothers me so much as it's the crummy starting levels for skills in HU2.  Unlike in OCC/RCC based Palladium games, there's few if any bonuses from class to skills, save for certain origins, the result being that unless you're one of the skill monster origins you suck at everything.

Adding in stats is just the most logical source of an extra boost to starting skill levels.

Quote from: J Arcane;547672It's not the lack of attributes' effect on skill levels that bothers me so much as it's the crummy starting levels for skills in HU2. Unlike in OCC/RCC based Palladium games, there's few if any bonuses from class to skills, save for certain origins, the result being that unless you're one of the skill monster origins you suck at everything.
 
Adding in stats is just the most logical source of an extra boost to starting skill levels.

IIRC characters do get a plus to some of their percentages from education level in HU? I may be mistaken though, its been ten years + since since I've read the book.
 
I don't doubt what you say about the ranged attack penalty to Dodge - I'm not terribly surprised to find rules changes between HU and Rifts. Also, ouch, that's a big penalty.

Yeah, the dodge penalty rule is a stupid later rule (a good an argument as any against the idea that there should really be a "new" edition of any of Palladium's games), that I've always completely ignored.

RPGPundit