Chapter One: Character Creation

This chapter starts by touching on the possible origins of speedster characters, along with their archetypical personalities. The latter include not only the typical prankster-thrillseeker, but the Claustrophobe (who fears enclosed areas because he knows his movement-based powers are limited in them) and the Grouch who chafes at having to deal with a world of slowpokes (brilliantly illustrated by a quote from Marvel’s Quicksilver on page 58). There are a couple of useful sidebars that illustrate the comic-book speed benchmarks and how they translate in both real and HERO System terms (a .22 bullet is 783 MPH, or 2100 game ‘inches’ a Turn). After going over basic concepts the book then discusses Characteristics, mainly the ones most important to speedster characters, Dexterity and Speed. Given that these Characteristics are also primary for the combat efficiency of any HERO System character, they’re also the most expensive stats. Options discussed for changing this include cutting DEX into two or three separate stats (the way Fuzion did) and buying SPD with Power Limitations. This is problematic, however, because of the way Speed works. In this system, Speed is a Figured Characteristic that costs 10 points per SPD with a base of 1/10 DEX plus 1 (a 20 DEX yields base 3 SPD). SPD rating determines how many Phases a character gets over a 12-second combat Turn. Changing the cost ratio of DEX changes how SPD is bought, and making SPD rating variable forces the GM to account for a character that might be able to change his place in the Turn order at will. One of the options discussed is an old Monty Haul idea of allowing PCs to buy SPD above 12, which would let a character move on every Phase *and* have double move at least once during each Turn. Not only is this a bit overkill, but it touches on one of the issues some people have with HERO System combat; even though the Speed Chart means that faster characters can get more things done in a given section of time, the amount of real time it takes to adjudicate a game action doesn’t change, which means that the faster a HERO System character is, the more actions he gets and the longer it takes to resolve the same 12-second combat Turn (a phenomenon I refer to as ‘The Hero System Combat Time Inversion Principle’). Of course, the absurd extreme of this is where the speedster gets to do as much as he wants in a second while the other characters don’t get to move at all… and for that, there’s the “Speed Zone” (below).

Next the chapter briefly goes over character Skills and Talents, many of which (including Martial Arts) can be justified as examples of a speedster’s power stunts. The book also notes that Navigation will be helpful for a speedster who often goes cross-country. Then Chapter One reviews the HERO System Movement Powers, in some cases expanding them (for example, Extra-Dimensional Movement, for those ‘speedsters’ whose power actually involves manipulating time and/or space). One option given in the book is a ‘requires GM’s permission’ Advantage that allows one to buy a main Movement Power as a second mode of movement (for instance, buying wings for Flight and having an Advantage that allows them to also serve as Gliding) although depending on the cost, this might work just as well as a Multipower. The book then reviews a few of the more common speedster attack/defense/miscellaneous powers, along with appropriate Advantages and Limitations; examples for how all these work together can be found in Chapter Two. Finally, the character creation chapter details a few speedster Disadvantages, including rules for the recently popular “calorie dependence” weakness and the aforementioned “Grouch” (‘Speedster Impatience’) mentality.

Chapter Two: Speedster Powers

Naturally leading from the character creation chapter, Chapter Two gives myriad examples of Speedster Powers, presented in now-standard HERO System format. Of course, years of Barry Allen/Wally West stories have demonstrated that even “generic” speedsters can do *lots* of tricks with their powers. In HERO System, these have to be bought with points, although you also get Power Frameworks to save on the cost. If the speedster can actually fly, the character has even more potential, given that his abilities access the third dimension (for instance under Flight Powers there are options for using hyper-fast flight patterns to jam radar signals and even control local weather). There are also powers lists for the more exotic ‘speedster’ types like tunnelers and dimension travelers. Some of these non-speed speedsters (like time manipulators) can still use similar abilities because of how their own powers work (with Time Powers, for instance, the character could have a very high rate of movement by stopping time and going from A to B, although this is probably represented better as Teleportation than high Running, because it doesn’t involve increased momentum).

Among the various listed powers are “speed perception” abilities to either give the character’s sight MegaScale Advantage (over large distances) or the Rapid trait, akin to Speed Reading. These come into play mainly when the character is trying to navigate obstacles with MegaScale movement, or when trying to operate in the Speed Zone (below).

Chapter Three: Speedsters Genre by Genre

To demonstrate how the Speedster Powers work, this chapter writes up some example characters, including “experienced” versions of the teleporting villain Cheshire Cat and the Millennium City hero Kinetic, along with Vector, a supervillain built on 776 points, 200 of which go into a Variable Power Pool for using Speedster Tricks. The “heroic,” lower-powered characters are in some respect more interesting, such as a Fantasy mage whose spells are all centered on travel, and who uses his abilities strictly for mercantile/transport purposes.

Chapter Four: The Hero System Movement Companion

For the most part, this chapter emphasizes that you don’t need to go into every little detail of deceleration, turn mode and so forth if it gets in the way of the game. These details are listed, however, in cases where they would matter, namely in chases and situations with vehicles, where the craft in question usually doesn’t move as freely as a runner or character with super-flight. The chapter reviews the use of the various Movement Powers, including Swinging (advice: ‘Don’t think about it and don’t look down; either action’s likely to cause the character to hesitate (or) abandon the idea of Swinging altogether as the sort of action that only a fool who doesn’t know how to use a sidewalk would contemplate.’), terrain effects on movement rate, tactics for racing vehicles and the use of riding animals in combat, and a basic examination of physics, given that speedster powers usually involve an object (the speedster or something he acts upon) moving through space at a certain velocity. Given that this is a roleplaying game, HERO System ignores some strict rules of physics (some moving ‘objects’, like astral characters, have no mass) but still uses “realistic” physics as a default. This makes sense for helping to determine the effects and limitations of a character’s powers, but it soon becomes clear that using real-world physics as a basis for speedster effects, while necessary at the basic level, runs into some clear limits very quickly.

Chapter Five: Adventure At Top Speed: Speedster Campaigning

This is where the book starts to break down. Seemingly more than other characters, the comicbook speedster is often defined by the complications of his powers. As in Star Trek and other science fiction, this sort of story requires a certain grasp of real physics to be plausible (not just ‘magic’), even if it quickly diverges from reality. Star HERO referred to such unscientific physics as “rubber science,” but even if speedster stories have a certain resemblance to SF stories, this book makes it clear that the rubber doesn’t have a great deal of flexibility where “real” superspeed is concerned.

While the chapter starts with appropriate and fairly typical advice for running a speedster through certain classic “bits” (mostly based on the superhero genre), like charity races and beat-the-clock disaster scenes, one of the other themes is for the character to run into a “speed bump,” just as Wally West frequently developed complications on his powers. TUS goes into rather exhaustive detail as to how superspeed could get complicated. In particular, a human body subjected to the level of G Forces, air drag and static electricity generated by supersonic speed would very quickly get fried. Plus, if you’re a runner, you have to deal with the lactic acid from muscle cramps.

Another problem with the book’s ultra-detailed approach is that it describes exactly how high a character’s DEX (reflexes) would have to be to beat the speed of phenomena like bullets from a gun. Essentially, if a game action Segment is one second, and one sets a theoretical maximum DEX of 100, you could divide a Segment by 100 and still not have enough DEX to beat the speed of lightning (less than 0.001 second to strike). Yet the game points out that speedsters in RPGs and comics routinely have powers that allow them to catch bullets, out-race explosions, and the like. Indeed, that’s what many of the Powers in Chapter Two are for. Which raises the question: If these details cannot be simulated in a game without getting in the way of the powers, why bring them up?

It’s in this section that the book explains the concept of the “Speed Zone.” It superficially resembles “the Speed Force” of the Flash comics, or hyperspace in science fiction, and in game terms counts as a destination for the Extra-Dimensional Movement power; however, like the Microverse/Macroverse powers in The Ultimate Metamorph, this actually does involve movement in a real physical dimension, simply operating on a scale that is impossible for most characters to access. This dimension of speed (time) also means that such jaunts are of limited duration, measured between second-fractions in “real time” and in relative terms for the character. The best way to think of the power is like D&D’s Time Stop spell: For a certain amount of relative time, the character can move wherever he wants while everyone else is frozen. Naturally there isn’t much point in having such a power if you can’t affect the “real world” at the same time, so the book obliges the character to buy this ability not only with different levels to reflect how much relative time is allowed per jaunt *and* how much SPD (actions per Turn) the character gets in the Speed Zone, but also Sense Groups that reach into the given grade of speed perception. However, the details of this once again get into the realm of requiring too much detail for reality to absorb. Especially considering that at the higher levels of the Speed Zone, the increments of time are actually too small for light of any wavelength to travel, which means that trying to enforce “realism” on the power would make the character operate blind.

After the Speed Zone rules, the book discusses options for speedster combat, starting with tactics for non-speedsters to neutralize fast-moving opponents. There are also options for making both the Speed Chart and Initiative more variable (for instance, by rating SPD as a number of dice and rolling them to get an initiative total). There are also rules for great distances (e.g. the Range Modifier for hitting something across the vertical length of Africa is -40). There is also an overview of the standard Combat Maneuvers including options for using the Move-By maneuver with Disarm, or grabbing someone during a Move By and slamming him into a surface (the 5th Edition rules already have an option for ‘Grab By’, which combines the modifiers for Grab and Move By). Finally, the book has a list of several Speedster Gadgets. Given that all of these involve Movement Powers, they’re basically ‘non-vehicle vehicles’ for a character with otherwise normal speed to move around at the same rate as his flying/super-running peers. One example of such is the Flight Ring, which takes its precedent from the high tech rings that were issued to all members of the Legion of Super Heroes as transport gear.

SUMMARY

The HERO System has often been accused of requiring too much bookkeeping. The Ultimate Speedster was the first book where I started to agree with that charge. By no means is it a bad book. But again, it quickly runs into a wall (so to speak) by trying to reconcile realism with comicbook physics. Of course, that happens fairly easily - if a character has superstrength, leverage doesn’t allow him to lift an entire building with one hand, no matter how muscular he is. But then, The Ultimate Brick didn’t emphasize the small stuff as much.

However, The Ultimate Speedster still accomplishes its goal, providing players with a vast array of tricks for their speedster characters, while GMs get plenty of ideas for making those characters’ lives interesting.

Style : 3

The Ultimate Speedster is a pretty good book in terms of organization and style; it’s worth pointing out that the cover (a street chase between Kinetic and Vector) is the first wraparound art cover Hero has done in a while, as opposed to the clip-art-against-generic-white-background they were doing. The cover itself is done by the Brothers Fraim, who do a lot of the interior art, and their work in particular does a great deal to capture the dynamism of super-speed, including one picture that deliberately alludes to the origin of the Silver Age Flash.

Substance : 4

The book deliberately errs on the side of detail, and while I don’t know if that helps its presentation as a book, that level of detail is there for those who want more depth for their speedster powers.

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