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The reasons I am doing a review of a decade old game is a bit odd. I have been part of a playtest for a superhero game and got inspired to look at games I already own. Now I am a bit collector from my younger days and have bought a number of rpg's that looked interesting to me, but have never played only played once or twice. I have noticed most super hero games seem variation of effect based power system and character creation tends to allow character build characters using points or some other form of highly customizable character creation. They also have rules that help balance characters of highly different power levels or provide rules for simulating comic books.
Heroes Unlimited is a very different style of game. It is made up of a mixture "old school" Dungeon and Dragons inspired fantasy rules mixed with a character creation system that mixes together almost every kind of character construction method that exist. There are e different point buy systems (BIO-E for mutant animals and money base for robotics and bionics), 4+ different super power systems (super abilities, 2 different psychic power systems, magic system and all the different technology based systems) and mixes in random with character based choices.
So in many ways this is the most unique super game I own. Now there are a number of other older games that contain random character creation, but I currently do not own those games. Superhero games I have owned include Heroes 5E (Did have hero 4E but foolishly gave it away when I bought 5), Champions: New Millennium, Truth and Justice, Hearts and Souls, Silverage Sentinels, Mutants and Masterminds and a few random bits I have on my hard drive.
When it comes to games I prefer games with less random and fairly light on crunch. Also this is not a playtest review. While I have played some Palladium (mostly Robotech), it was years ago and will not have much effect on this review.
Well I will just start giving quick overall impressions of Heroes Unlimited. It seems like an adequate super's game. From the basic rule book the players can create a wide variety of characters, but the game creates very specific types of characters The rules also focus on a narrow range of power not really covering high power characters like superman or green lantern.
Not that this is a bad thing, just do not expect the system to do high end supers. The review will be just of the main book with a few notes from the GM Guide which includes rule clarification and errata for the first few printings.
Rules: Not so much glory
Heroes Unlimited rules are a derivative of Palladium/Megaversal system. This means they are evolved from a house ruled version of early (70's/early 80's) DnD. This means the game system was developed in very different way than more modern games. It was not designed to work together as a whole unit, each part and subsystem was put together to cover a specific need and often each rule subsystem was not tested together. This creates a system that can feel confusing and have parts that do not play well together. It also makes the rule system very easy to house rule though.
At the basic level the system is fairly simple being a percentile roll for skills and a d20 roll high system for combat and saving throws. From there the general rules follow old school design including alignment, hit points, character classes and level system. For Heroes Unlimited palladium has added bits and pieces of various other subsystems designed for other game lines making Heroes Unlimited system a bit of a Frankenstein of then current Palladium rules (late 1990's).
This leads me to the basic problems Palladium has to their system: bad organization, confusedly written rules and cut and paste of the rules system. Palladium likes to spread rule components all over the game system. For example called shots (aim at specific part of a target) is suppose to be 1/2 strike bonus rolled over a target number of 12. The 1/2 part is in the ranged combat rules while the 12 bit is mentioned in robot combat section. I personally find the rules are often not that well written leaving out parts or having contradictions between rules as written and examples. For example of rules left out, the base book give multipliers for firing from magazines one for 30 to 50 round and one for 15 rounds or less but none for 26-29 rounds. The GM's Guide did fix this, but the rules should have been in the main book.
The cut and pasting of the rules can be seen with the Alignment rules. In every single game that Alignments include a "no neutrals" rant that only works if you think of pre 4th edition versions of DND. Most other games do not have same alignment system or basically ignore alignment as a rule system. This is a problem because it can introduce contradictions into the game that only exist because the rules were written for a slightly different version of Palladium rule system.
So basically you have an old school game that can be hard to understand. Also Palladium does not care for game balance. The system doesn't balance on concept of game niches with one character being more social or skilled then others. A higher powered mutant can be easily more skilled then even a character with special training.
Character Creation
This is where things become a bit more interesting with the system. In many ways all of the super aspects of the game come from. The thing is there is no real central method for creating a character. Each different character type is built a bit different and there is very little crossover in the rules for each type of characters.
That being said, the book does start with a "standard" method for building a character. This works by rolling up attributes, selecting alignment, optional insanity rules (which almost every Palladium game has), selecting skills and optional random background tables. Most part it is fairly standard except for the system for choosing skills. Here the player rolls for educational level which provides access to a number of "skill packages" and secondary skills. The skill pages contain 3 to 5 skills representing different areas of training ranging form piloting to basic military training. Some of the packages are limited to specific educational levels. Secondary skills are choosing from a list of limited choices with no bonus. Note some character types use a different system for selecting skills.
Palladium skill system is mostly percentage based generally given as base point and then a raise per level (50% + 5% per level.) The thing is that each skill has a different starting value and raise value and there seems to be little rhyme or reason to how these values are selected. Also some skills act as containers for many sub-skills and bonuses to attributes and combat. It is really easy to stack bonuses up and there is a good amount of redundancy in the skill list. For example there is both Acrobatic and Gymnastic which are basically skill just with different values on sub-skills and different bonuses. Taking both gives you bonuses for both!
The core concept for selecting superheroes is Power Category. The power category represents both origin of characters, types of power they can access and often power source of their powers. The power categories include Alien, Bionic, Experiment, Hardware, Magic, Mutant, Physical training, Psionics, and special training. Each of these categories is built differently and many contain sub categories of character types for example mutants include both "mutant" and "mutant animals" each which is built differently.
There is another category called Mega Hero. This category is meant to modify the other categories to be a more powerful character. Realistically the version provided in the book only boosts a limited number of categories while providing no benefit to other categories (magic, psionic, hardware and tech based characters do not gain much real benefit.) This category also contains a small rant why high powered supers are boring and why Heroes Unlimited should be thinking mans game and not just an excuse to play high powered characters.
One other note: Heroes Unlimited provides options to many character types by suggestion borrowing information from other palladium games like Ninjas and Superspies.
Hardware, Bionic, robotics and General tech of the world
When it comes to technology palladium is pretty conventional. When it comes to weapons the technology is heavily weighted to common weapons of the 80's including armored military vehicles. Now this is partially due to space, in main book the equipment section is quite small. It makes you wonder some of the wackier stuff that does show up in comics.
Now there is advance technology including bionics and artificial intelligent robots, but even there the tech feels a bit restrained. There is a limited selection of energy weapons, but most part the weapons provided are conventional and most of the gear is standard optics, computers and a few other modern odds and ends. There is no way to add in super abilities or psionics into machines even though there are comic book robots with equivalent of super powers like being able to control the wind.
In some of the cases the admissions are a bit weird like for robots there are two gas engines provided for wheeled vehicle,s but no electric option even though there are fusion power plants available. One funny one is in bionic section in which a very expensive mini computer has 640K of memory, but does have full voice activation. Even then that would seem like a low bit of memory for the computer.
There are three categories for tech based characters, Hardware (guys who build stuff), Bionics and robotics. Hardware has 4 sub categories of builders (Electric, Mechanical, and Analytical Genius and Weapons Expert.) At the cost of one skill package the character becomes an expert at building stuff. Personally I wonder why they need all 4 versions when generally most comic book gadget characters would be skilled at all groups. The one thing I would keep separate is Weapon Expert since that category does get special bonuses to weapons.
The hardware section also contains building rules for weapons, equipment and vehicles. There are a good number of options available, but most feel more superspy then super hero. For example the guns are all conventional and there are provisions for exploding arrows but nothing for electric arrows or freezing arrows. Also Heroes Unlimited does not seem to have category for archer style characters.
Bionics is pretty strait forward. After rolling for budget you can buy various implants to modify a person's body. There are background to figure out why character got implants, what organization gave the implants and the characters current situation with the organization. It should be noted the pass a certain number of implants cybernetics starts making other categories abilities weaker (super powers, magic and psychic powers.)
The robot category is large and presents 4 options for characters: Piloted robots (humanoid or vehicle shape), exoskeletons, fully artificial intelligent robots and androids. To create a robot player rolls for budget and then buys equipment from a list of materials including frames (shape like man, animal or a vehicle), power source, artificial intelligence and other gear for robots. As I said there are a few weird holes in the list including no electric options for engines of wheeled vehicles. Otherwise the rules should allow construction of a wide variety of robot types. (Note that in GM's guide palladium does recount that certain items are two expensive so it is hard to build exoskeletons or fusion powered AI robots. They do give some suggestions how to handle this.)
So overall tech is fairly typical sci-fi tech, but it does not cover some of the "sillier" stuff that comes up in comic books. Also each section is separate from the other sections. Some elements or robotics, bionics and hardware construction could have been combined to save space. Also note that some of my complaints might be handled by the Aliens Unlimited Galaxy Guide, but I do not own that book so could not comment on what it does or does not contain.
Mutants and Experiments:
These are the two categories that can main power comes from super abilities. For super abilities are broken into minor and major abilities. Minor generally provide only a single ability or have a focus set of powers while major abilities give a host of different powers or provide a more powerful form of minor ability. A single energy blast (energy expulsion in HU terms) is a minor ability while weather control or super powerful energy blast that provides secondary powers is a major ability. Note that the powers must be taken as written and there is no official in game method to customize powers.
Now each category has one major version and provides one alternative version. For mutants this is "mutant" and "mutant animal" while experiment includes optional super soldier. Honestly the base versions of mutant and experiment a very similar and include rolling non-human traits, rolling for powers and providing the origin of the characters powers. Now there are differences, the experiment provides background on the group that did the experiment and can allow for more powers while mutants can gain some psychic powers. Honestly I think these two categories could be combined with little change in total scheme of the game. (For one thing "mutations" can be caused by radiation which is one of the categories for experiments to get their powers.)
The super soldier option changes method of getting powers. In this instance it works by providing one minor ability plus a roll on a special table for extra abilities. The table includes physical improvements and bionic implants.
Mutant Animals provides a completely different character construction system. These rules are an adaptation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle rules and deal with creating mutant animals. The basic rules use BIO-E points that are spent to build characters and can be used on animal powers, animal psionics (which work different from normal versions), minor powers and how close to human the character looks/works. The thing is that the rules was originally built to match a typical human so the more powers a character has less human they look and act. Also the balance can make these characters weaker then humans so they should get bonus BIO-E points to better match the abilities of other characters in the game.
Mutant animals also have separate background tables and education tables to roll.
From here is easy to see some of the comics that influence Heroes Unlimited. With the mutant category is directly inspired by Marvel Mutants while experiment category was pretty normal way to get powers (Flash, Hulk and Captain America are examples of these types of characters).
Supernatural:
Well here we discuss magic and psionic categories. Of the two Psionics is the easiest since it provides only two real options: Natural Psychic (more powerful version) and Latent Psychic (weaker). The natural psychic gets more energy points to spend and more powers. The latent represent powers acquired by another category (mainly aliens in this case.)
Psychic abilities are represented by a number of different powers built into 4 categories: sensitive, physical, healing and super. Sensitive includes senses powers and telepathy, physical affects body and includes telekinesis while healing well heals bodies. The Super are just higher powered versions of the weaker categories. Each power must be activated by use of energy points (in this case ISP: Inner Strength Points). Options are mentioned for other types of psychics from other game systems.
This does shows one of Palladiums methods for dealing with balance: characters with many powers must spend some form of energy to fuel them while characters with few powers get unlimited use of their abilities.
The magic category actually has 4 distinct types of powers. This includes enchanted weapon, enchanted object, mystic studies (wizard) and mystically bestowed. Enchanted weapon is a magic weapon that provides a character with special powers, magic costume and is a powerful weapon. The weapons are grouped into good and evil weapons (or order or chaos). The character can gain access to a few minor super abilities or some spells and each weapon type provides six extra abilities that are distinct to the weapon type. To be honest the first thing I think of with this type is He-man and the Master of the Universe.
Enchanted Objects are similar to enchanted weapons, but have no alignment and provide different abilities. Still they can provide either magic or super abilities or provide a mixture of the two. Unlike enchanted weapon super abilities do cost energy to use (PPE) with all the energy coming from the object. Note the object can be almost anything.
Mystic Study is a modification of wizard style characters converted into super hero form. For casting this character is fairly generic western style spell caster and can cast spells and has a few innate magical abilities including sensing magic, astral projection and creating familiars. These abilities are all powered by PPE energy. There is an option mention of brining in magic from other game lines like rifts or Mystic China.
The basic magic system is adaptation of rifts/beyond supernatural magic system. Spells are powered by PPE which each caster has certain internal amount. The caster can also draw energy from others or from natural "ley lines" that crisscross the planet. The spells themselves are drawn from the Palladium Fantasy game with a few spells for more modern wizards. Spells are grouped by level ranging from level 1 to 15.
Mystically Bestowed powers are ones provided by an outside force to a normal human. To use the powers the human most transform into a magical hero who gains bonuses to stats and access to special abilities, spells or a mixture of both. There is an option to have the human form be much weaker like being really old, be a kid or have physical disabilities which go away when character becomes a hero.
It should be noted that there seems to be no method of mixing psychic and magical abilities in Heroes Unlimited. Though many psychic abilities do have spell equivalents.
Aliens and Normal Humans:
The alien category is interesting because it provides access to other categories to gain powers. The alien characters are built by rolling for alien features, planet type they evolved on, education (which is different form humans) and high tech weapon and vehicle. When it comes to powers they draw on almost any of the other categories for abilities/powers including mystic, mutants, experiment and robots. There are some modifications for more advance technology the alien posses. Aliens are focused around humanoids which are only slightly different from humanity or look like humanoid animals. Do not expect something really alien or weird.
There are two categories to represent normal humans, physical training and special training. Physical training represents someone who has trained themselves to super human levels of abilities. Physical trained characters can focus on either strength and endurance or on agility and speed. Each focus gives different bonuses and includes slightly different minor super abilities related to strength. The characters also get special hand to hand combat skills and special power punch and power kick abilities and can survive injuries that would kill a normal person. This character will have limited skill selection, but are good in hand to hand combat.
Special training basically represents classic character classes. Each one has a set skills and special abilities. The special training provided are: Ancient Master (old super martial artist), Hunter/Vigilante, Secret Operative, Stage Magician and Super Sleuth. Most of these sub-categories do not have special abilities beyond some special skills and access to some gizmos. For example stag magician only really gets a special juggling skill and some gimmick clothing and gear. There are options that allow some characters get minor psychic powers, gear or even some minor cybernetics.
Ancient Master is the only one that gets a good amount of special training. The ancient master starts at a higher level and is fully trained in the hand to hand : martial art skill so starts with 8 attacks per melee and has high bonuses. Besides that the character has access to some "chi" based special abilities including picking a single minor super ability from a list.
Of all the character categories the special training is the weakest and most would get dominated by the other categories. That being said having a stage magician hero is perfectly workable and could be very fun.
Closing Thought
Well I have covered a good amount of the main book. Heroes Unlimited is not a terrible unplayable game, but it does not really live up to its name. The main book limits on the specific types of characters that can be created and does not allow for some of the crazier super heroes to be created. There are also some strange limitations built into the rules system and no real balancing mechanic for mixing powered heroes with unpowered ones.
There have also been a number of other books published. One such book is the G.M.'s Guide. This book is not really aimed at GM, but provides a mixture of rules that did not get published with the main book, expanded list of equipment (weapons), rules clarifications, optional rules and some adventures. Now it does contain some useful advice for GM for building adventures and for dealing with different character types and the law of the land. The extra spells and equipment are useful while the adventures are of limited use.
The rule clarifications do show some the weird bias that game does have. In the basic game aliens are limited to latent psychics while some Aliens Unlimited aliens can be master psychics or are far more powerful then what can be created with the base game system. It also contains modifications to mega hero so that category is useful to all of the different basic categories.
The GM's guide also helps to build the Heroes Unlimited world.
There are also three Powers Unlimited books which add new super abilities and categories.
There are the two Aliens Unlimited books. The first one describes a bit of the galaxy and provides a large number of different aliens while second one describes galaxy and has rules to build space ships. I only own the first one and it is first edition version.
There are a number of books describing aspects of the world including Villains Unlimited which describes first edition villains and villain groups. There are two books by Bill Coffin which are popular world books (Century Station and Grammercy Island.) I do not own these books so can not really describe them.
There is also Skrappers, a super hero game set in an alien system which has a human world that was conquered by evil aliens. It is an interesting setting which was developed originally by an artist who has done many rpg covers for Palladium, Steve Jackson games and other companies. Note the book is also duel stated for the Rifts Phase World setting.
As I mentioned there is a good number of options to bring in aspects of other palladium games into Heroes Unlimited. Adding in elements from the Palladium games can have interesting experience. For example adding in Ninjas and Superspies does have things to add in like martial arts and more cybernetic. One thing cybernetics are different, but in many cases are more primitive then HU bionics. The martial arts provided are much more detailed and provide much more power. There are rule differences then need to be thought about, plus the game adds in whole new mystic power system with another type of energy to track (chi, which comes in positive and negative versions.)
In many other cases the conversions are greater because of difference in rules (Some Palladium games use "Mega-damage" which is a 100 times greater than normal damage. HU does not use this system so anything using will require conversion of the points.)
So that covers the basics of Heroes Unlimited and my thoughts on it. To be honest I have plenty game systems I prefer over it, but it does contain interesting ideas and can be used to generate background of characters.
