Let's Review: Heroes Unlimited 2nd Edition

What is it?:

Heroes Unlimited is a Super Hero game by Palladium Books, with several source books, and is compatible with most of their other games (including Rifts).

The setting:

In the core book, there's not a whole lot of world building. There's only a few pages dealing with being a “legacy” hero and the history is something like “there's always been people with powers, but there's a lot more of them after World War Two.” That's it. However, in the expansions they've done, they do add a lot more to the world and the various heroes and villains that inhabit it.

The system:

As this is a Palladium game, it uses their basic system. That means percentile dice for skills, D20s for attacks and saves, and the weird wackiness of good ol' 2^nd edition D&D. But more complicated. There's also TONS of random tables. You don't get to pick what kind of hero you make, you roll for it. Then, you roll for the sub-type. Or budget. Or... You get the point. You also get to roll for your character's education level. This can lead to hilariously underpowered characters. Good luck with that Grade School Dropout inventor! The charts, tables, and powers take up the majority of the 352 page rule book.

The types of heroes include mutant animals, wizards, psionics, bionics, robots, aliens, and a whole lot more. Powers are broken down into Powers, Psionics, and Spells. In addition it rolling how many powers you have, you can also roll to see what powers you get. This, of course, can lead to hilarity. Not only can you get contradictory powers, you can also end up with the utterly worthless powers. You roll the dice, you take your chances...

Because the system is drawn from 2^nd edition D&D, each type of hero levels up on a different XP chart, which has the exact same problem as 2^nd edition had: Characters that all started out at the same level grow further apart as time goes on. Since you randomly roll what kind of character you get, this can lead to frustration among your players. You might want to give some characters a little extra XP to keep them on par with the rest of party.

Is it worth it?:

This is a real tough one. So, I'm going to go with a strong “maybe.”

Why? Because the tables are really nifty. Even if it leads to terribly unbalanced characters. If you don't use the book for the system, which is fair, you can use it for inspiration. Need a random villain for another game? Roll away. Not sure what your replacement character should be? Let the dice figure it out for you.

One thing I will say about the design of the game, is that it's quite clearly looking to create a more Marvel power level than DC. The heroes in this game have only a few powers and aren't going to be bench pressing planets any time soon. Kevin Siembieda says that he wanted to make “thinking heroes” ones that used their heads more than their fists. And I think most people find those types of heroes more fun to play.

Since the system is compatible with the whole of the Palladium series, it might be worth picking up if you have some of their other games. The first two I can think of are Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness and Ninjas and Superspies. You can include these characters in a Heroes game or do the reverse and have Heroes turning up in those worlds. There's even adventures in the G.M.'s Guide that crosses over with the Nightsbane campaign setting. So, if you have any other Palladium games, I think it makes Heroes something worth picking up.