MSH - Thoughts, House Rules, and Best Practices

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2nd session notes and questions:

- Combat went much more swiftly, though there were far fewer combatants.
- The players discovered Karma and, since I've been somewhat generous with it, it's flowing like water. Spent Karma becomes XP, so that's a further incentive. At the moment, this means they rarely fail at anything, but eventually Karma will run low. I remembered the villains have Karma too, but my dice sucked, so it didn't matter much.
- Still struggling with "encounter balance" (which I realize is only a thing if I make it a thing), because they are winning easily. At the moment, that's fun and exciting for them. I just don't want them to eventually be bored. However, it takes a lot for a player to be bored with winning.
- Struggling still to determine when a player's idea is a power use, a stunt, or even a Bullseye attempt. Our sound-projecting hero was facing an air-controlling villain. He wanted to use focused sound to disrupt the air around the villain and make him fall. I decided to rule that a successful Bullseye would force a power check for the villain. Don't know if that was "right" or not.
- I think I'm leaning too hard on Intuition and ignoring Reason and Psyche too much.
- How do you do social skill checks? The heroes are doing a lot of investigating right now and it seems the Popularity and Contacts rules don't give very good chances of success for new heroes. Furthermore, it applies even less if the heroes are questioning people in the Secret IDs. Doing computer research seemed to be a Reason check and intimidating someone seems to be a Psyche check, but are other conversational checks really Intuition? Am I missing something?

A good 2nd session. The players were taking notes, which gives me the freedom to make more detailed plots. Still liking the system very much.
 
Spent Karma becomes XP, so that's a further incentive.

Wait... What? Spent Karma becomes XP?

Is this your personal house rule? Did someone mention this upthread and I missed it? Or is this how the rule has always been and I've just been blind?

I see that and my mind is blown. Back when I ran the game players either had no Karma left because they had spent it all, or had huge piles of hundreds or even a couple of thousand, because they were saving it so they could "level up". They were scared to spend Karma because then they couldn't advance. And the ones who had spent Karma were angry they had spent it and didn't have any left to advance with.

Making spent Karma into XP solves that. Suddenly everyone would have been throwing Karma at anything and everything they could. It would incentivize Power Stunts. It wouldn't be and either/or proposition anymore.

MSH isn't on my calendar right now, but I know what I'm going to do when it comes back into rotation.
 
- How do you do social skill checks? The heroes are doing a lot of investigating right now and it seems the Popularity and Contacts rules don't give very good chances of success for new heroes. Furthermore, it applies even less if the heroes are questioning people in the Secret IDs. Doing computer research seemed to be a Reason check and intimidating someone seems to be a Psyche check, but are other conversational checks really Intuition? Am I missing something?
How much roleplaying are they doing? A lot of those things shouldn't need any rolls at all.
Wait... What? Spent Karma becomes XP?

Is this your personal house rule? Did someone mention this upthread and I missed it? Or is this how the rule has always been and I've just been blind?
No, that's definitely a house rule.
 
2nd session notes and questions:

- Combat went much more swiftly, though there were far fewer combatants.
- The players discovered Karma and, since I've been somewhat generous with it, it's flowing like water. Spent Karma becomes XP, so that's a further incentive. At the moment, this means they rarely fail at anything, but eventually Karma will run low. I remembered the villains have Karma too, but my dice sucked, so it didn't matter much.
- Still struggling with "encounter balance" (which I realize is only a thing if I make it a thing), because they are winning easily. At the moment, that's fun and exciting for them. I just don't want them to eventually be bored. However, it takes a lot for a player to be bored with winning.
- Struggling still to determine when a player's idea is a power use, a stunt, or even a Bullseye attempt. Our sound-projecting hero was facing an air-controlling villain. He wanted to use focused sound to disrupt the air around the villain and make him fall. I decided to rule that a successful Bullseye would force a power check for the villain. Don't know if that was "right" or not.
- I think I'm leaning too hard on Intuition and ignoring Reason and Psyche too much.
- How do you do social skill checks? The heroes are doing a lot of investigating right now and it seems the Popularity and Contacts rules don't give very good chances of success for new heroes. Furthermore, it applies even less if the heroes are questioning people in the Secret IDs. Doing computer research seemed to be a Reason check and intimidating someone seems to be a Psyche check, but are other conversational checks really Intuition? Am I missing something?

A good 2nd session. The players were taking notes, which gives me the freedom to make more detailed plots. Still liking the system very much.

Your call on the power interaction seems reasonable. I might have called it a Power Stunt but its fairly limited (there's only certain special effects it would affect) though, so may have charged less (50 Karma?) and made the player roll his PC's power rank vs the villains.

Classic Marvel is pretty "old school" without a great deal of "social mechanics". I had/have some issues with that too, but others find that it be a feature feeling such thing should adjudicated by role playing and gms.
 
2nd session notes and questions:

- Combat went much more swiftly, though there were far fewer combatants.
This is a good way to baseline it for you. This way you can slowly ratchet up and down based on your experience with these particular PC's and it'll pay off HUGE later. You'll know intuitively how to answer some of these other things below...

- The players discovered Karma and, since I've been somewhat generous with it, it's flowing like water. Spent Karma becomes XP, so that's a further incentive. At the moment, this means they rarely fail at anything, but eventually Karma will run low. I remembered the villains have Karma too, but my dice sucked, so it didn't matter much.

This is where you'll be really keeping an eye on things. General Rules I live by
1) do not screw the players on their Karma. If they earn it, give it to them.

2) DO NOT give them Karma they didn't earn. One of the things that should keep them hungry is the accrual of Karma to improve things.

3) A subtle but powerful thing is keeping those Karma awards narratively in context. So if they do something cool enough to earn Karma - put some game elements in there to signify it. It makes the players *feel* more heroic. They save a cat from a tree? +5 Karma. Have the owner of the cat show up on the news talking about it! The PC defeats a villain in a bank Heist? Maybe they saved someone important in the crowd that could be a springboard to other adventures later/sooner. This gives you room to manuever and expand your game. Your world will start breathing to the PCs. AND it will give you another leash that can become intensely powerful if you play it right: Popularity.

4) Karma Control: The key to keeping Karma from getting out of hand is Karma Penalties. Enforce them with *ruthless* abandon. Tearing up the city fighting a villain? that's -5 Karma per area destroyed. If you're enforcing their civilian lives in your game - they should be wracking up Karma losses from missing engagements due to superlife interference if their identities are secret. Play your Villains intelligently. Want to drain some Karma? Frame the PC's for shit they didn't do. OR they did, but it's put into context in the media that the PC's are to blame. J.Jonah Jameson-like characters are Karma destroyers!!!! (And that popularity loss! UNGH). The great equalizer: Death. An innocent bystander getting killed in a fight is *extremely* easy. And if it happens in an encounter - that ZEROES the Karma pool. You need to be judicious about this stuff. You don't want to set up every single fight as a Kobayashi Maru - but sure, put your PC's into tight situations where beating the villain isn't the first priority. (Besides saving people is a NICE Karma award! Plus all the other permutations I mentioned above). But yeah - accidental death is a Karma killer. And it's makes your players better superheroes to be aware of it.

5) Karma Insurance - One thing I do that ties up ALL of these situations together is I allow what I call Karma Banking. Basically I let my players bank Karma into three pools: Power Pool, Stat Pool, Talent Pool. At the end of each session, they can bank as much of their Karma into those pools for their characters. Once banked that Karma cannot be touched. They can't use it for *anything* other than Stunts and/or Progression in those categories. It also means that those Karma pools can't be hit by Karma losses from accidental death etc.

This has a two-fold effect: a) It lets the players deflate their large Karma pools which vastly limits the "never failing" issue. b) it lets you be as judiciously ruthless with Karma loss potential as you want to be since it will only *affect* their non-banked Karma which *REINFORCES* a). c) It lets the players feel like they're making consistent progress even if they get setbacks in-game. The Karma is banked. It's safe. Even if they've been screwing up.

You got this!

- Still struggling with "encounter balance" (which I realize is only a thing if I make it a thing), because they are winning easily. At the moment, that's fun and exciting for them. I just don't want them to eventually be bored. However, it takes a lot for a player to be bored with winning.

Let the PC's be heroes! Let them smash villains. It's okay if they're ROFLstomping bad guys. Put it all in context - they beat the badguys then what? Well play it from the villains perspective - they now HATE the PC's. They will eventually escape right?RIGHT? Maybe some Mastermind-type villain knows the PC's will be a thorn in their side if/when they decide to pull their Big Move(tm) and the PC's need to be dealt with first... so THEY break those beaten villains out... and they form a villain super-team to kick the crap out of the PC's. Oh the PC's are still too formidable? They're not hanging out together all the time are they? Spiderman gets trashed by the Sinister Six all the time. Pick them off when they're alone! Maybe the Mastermind starts researching the PC's - and goes after them in their civilian identity. Heck you can make adventures around the Mastermind just trying to figure out WHO the PC's are. "Crimes" that are intended to probe to isolate where the PC's come from etc.

Then when the PC's have their guard down - the Mastermind strikes. Or the Villains of their own accord come down hard and give the PC's an ego-deflating ass-whipping. Public defeats do wonders for deflating player egos.

- Struggling still to determine when a player's idea is a power use, a stunt, or even a Bullseye attempt. Our sound-projecting hero was facing an air-controlling villain. He wanted to use focused sound to disrupt the air around the villain and make him fall. I decided to rule that a successful Bullseye would force a power check for the villain. Don't know if that was "right" or not.

Easy! A Bullseye attempt has nothing to do with a Stunt. It merely is when a Player wants to target something specific. That's it.

A Stunt is mechanically self-explanatory in terms of how it unfolds. The key is the leverage the in-game conditions and effects. So in this example - Sonic Projecting hero wants to "disrupt the air around the villain". To me, that sounds like he's trying to do some kind of Sonic Stunning effect that causes the Air-villain to lock up? So I'd get clarification from the Player - if that's what he's trying to do? Sounds reasonable since Sonic generation could do something like that. So let's say for discussion the Players says "Yeah!" So then you just do the "Stunt creation" rules - Stunt: Sonic Stun (then I'd set the parameters with the player) - so stunts that are potential focused powers in their own right I normally (but not always) give it -1CS in effect. Then I pare down from there - so is it Area wide? Is it Single Target. Area effects usually get another -1CS. So let's say it's Single Target.They spend their 100 Karma to do a new stunt, then they have to get a Red Result to pop it off (and so forth until it becomes a routine ability).

Permutations - So I make stunts as specific as possible to leave the PC's open for other alternatives. In this case - single target Power-Rank Stun -1CS. If later they wanted to do an Area-wide version - that would be another Stunt. If they wanted to use their single target version with Multiple Actions - that's another Stunt.

What it looks like: So if your Sonic-PC has AM(50) Sonic Generation - he wants to "disrupt" the Air-Villain - he blows the 100 Karma to try the Stunt. Let him describe what it looks like - then add some narrative fun to it "all the windows in the area vibrate with the Brown Note" and he had to get a Red result for his first attempt (which makes him spend that Karma!!!) and if it succeeds - the Air-Villain has to make a Stun check against IN(40) intensity. Or be stunned... or "disrupted"... which will cause him to shit in his pants as the Brown Note does its thing.

- I think I'm leaning too hard on Intuition and ignoring Reason and Psyche too much.

Easy mistake to make. But without context I'd need to know more. Intuition is a VERY powerful stat. It's all your awareness, gut reactions, instincts, Initiative bonus etc. rolled into one. Reason, however, is great for giving PC's clues that might be beyond the Player's own understanding of what their Intuition finds for them. For example - a PC is looking around an area for a clue. Their Intuition check might find something "Odd" - but a Reason check might allow them to force some strong deduction that the Player might not piece together on their own. This is a great way to let smart characters BE smart.

Psyche is the Great Leveler. Remember that there are Push the Limit optional rules. Optionally a player can push the limits on a Strength check with a Red Psyche feat. So I extend this out to an Physical Feat check. (gets the player spending Karma). I also make PC's make Psyche checks against events that are simply outside their experience - like a Fear check of sorts. I don't make them pass out or anything. But I might level a -1 to -2CS for a few rounds if they don't make it.

Lastly - and most importantly. Psyche is the only defense against Psionics. Dude, let me tell you, Psionic powers will run through a party with TRIVIAL ease. Without the Talent of Psychic Training, a PC needs to have a Psionic power to defend against a lot of mental attacks with their Psyche. Most characters don't have high Psyche in general. Emotion Control, Telepathic attack, etc. blasts right through most PC's. You want to humble a player... this is your ticket in.

- How do you do social skill checks? The heroes are doing a lot of investigating right now and it seems the Popularity and Contacts rules don't give very good chances of success for new heroes.

Treat Popularity as a discrete stat by the number that fluctuates. Assign a color shift to the requirement commensurate to the request. GET THEM SPENDING KARMA. When you look at Popularity this way - you'll see how powerful it is. Make your PC's guard their popularity with a vengeance. Civilian and Hero identities should be guarding their Popularity because if you shut enough doors in their faces - they'll be forced to realize that getting their Popularity up will make life a LOT more easy. Used in conjunction with what I posted above about making Karma gains/losses relevant is exactly where this comes into play. Use Popularity as a carrot, leash and stick. Contacts usually need Green results. Non-contacts need Yellow. Red is for assholes.

Furthermore, it applies even less if the heroes are questioning people in the Secret IDs. Doing computer research seemed to be a Reason check and intimidating someone seems to be a Psyche check, but are other conversational checks really Intuition? Am I missing something?

Well for Intuition - I'd use that to "read" someone before they make a Popularity check. In this case if they had some Talent that might make someone that doesn't know them personable (Green result) otherwise it remains Yellow. Also give your PC's CS bonuses/penalties based on the situation. Talking up someone at a club about something sociable is probably worth a +1CS or so. You can play with it.

A good 2nd session. The players were taking notes, which gives me the freedom to make more detailed plots. Still liking the system very much.

Awesome man!!! I'm starting up my own campaign in a couple of weeks. I might make some posts about it too. Keep it going![/quote]
 
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Wait... What? Spent Karma becomes XP?

Is this your personal house rule? Did someone mention this upthread and I missed it? Or is this how the rule has always been and I've just been blind?

I see that and my mind is blown. Back when I ran the game players either had no Karma left because they had spent it all, or had huge piles of hundreds or even a couple of thousand, because they were saving it so they could "level up". They were scared to spend Karma because then they couldn't advance. And the ones who had spent Karma were angry they had spent it and didn't have any left to advance with.

Making spent Karma into XP solves that. Suddenly everyone would have been throwing Karma at anything and everything they could. It would incentivize Power Stunts. It wouldn't be and either/or proposition anymore.

MSH isn't on my calendar right now, but I know what I'm going to do when it comes back into rotation.

I haven't read all the other responses after this yet, but yeah, I discovered this house rule in another forum and immediately thought it sounded perfect. The PCs earn Karma, which they use in-game, and THEN that spent Karma becomes XP. It really incentives the use of it.

Now off to read the rest of the comments I missed.
 
- How do you do social skill checks?


I'll just quote myself from another thread:

"
I'm going to jump ahead a bit to a quick digression regarding one of the more frequent criticisms/houseruled additions I've encountered over the years; namely the lack of a "social stat" such as Charisma/Presence etc. Granted, I'm not one for complex social interactions being codified in mechanical form, but to those who complain that the only Ability you have to cover any communication is the Popularity rules, to that I say "Poppycock! Banana Oil to that, sir!"

It all comes down to three simple questions:

Are you making a rational argument, trying to convince others of the correctness of your POV?

This is a Reason FEAT

Are you appealing to other's emotions, attempting to inspire, incite, or provoke them?

This is an Intuition FEAT

Are you trying to intimidate, command, or exert control?

This is a Psyche FEAT

Unless a person is relying on their reputation and status as a superhero to make a request, which is what Popularity represents, I've never come up with any social interaction that might require a roll that wasn't covered by these three variables. They also work backwards...

Is someone trying to taunt or incite you? This is resisted with Reason

Is someone trying to convince you of something? This is resisted by Intuition.

Is someone trying to scare or bully you? This is resisted with Psyche.

And so on...

With that in mind, I've never thought that FASERIP lacked for not having, nor required a Charisma attribute or the equivalent. Though a case might be made for an Appearance attribute, In superhero comics, a world of demigods in tights, appearance only plays any sort of role when it's a specific unique quality of that character (The Enchantress, or Toad). "
 
I had read this in the other thread, but I had lost track of it. Thanks. For my group, I think this is a better framework than relying solely on Popularity. But I'm still working things out! :smile:
 
I don't punish too much, because pulling up a light post to smack someone with shouldn't cost a LOT, now if they smash a large truck or several cards? That's a bit of a difference. Sometimes I've seen players want to do things as seen in comics so don't go too far into punishment.


I've heard and suggested the Karma for Karma spent working as a single thing a few times, to both do stunts/succeed and improvement, I think it plays well.
 
Not much to report for session #3, but re: Karma Spent = XP, it has *really, really* encouraged the earning and spending of Karma in-game. In fact, it became a running joke to roll low so their greater failure would reward greater XP!

I think it's working well. They spend Karma on practically every roll...but they are also running low long before the Big Bad fight appears...
 
I'll just quote myself from another thread:

"
I'm going to jump ahead a bit to a quick digression regarding one of the more frequent criticisms/houseruled additions I've encountered over the years; namely the lack of a "social stat" such as Charisma/Presence etc. Granted, I'm not one for complex social interactions being codified in mechanical form, but to those who complain that the only Ability you have to cover any communication is the Popularity rules, to that I say "Poppycock! Banana Oil to that, sir!"

It all comes down to three simple questions:

Are you making a rational argument, trying to convince others of the correctness of your POV?

This is a Reason FEAT

Are you appealing to other's emotions, attempting to inspire, incite, or provoke them?

This is an Intuition FEAT

Are you trying to intimidate, command, or exert control?

This is a Psyche FEAT

Unless a person is relying on their reputation and status as a superhero to make a request, which is what Popularity represents, I've never come up with any social interaction that might require a roll that wasn't covered by these three variables. They also work backwards...

Is someone trying to taunt or incite you? This is resisted with Reason

Is someone trying to convince you of something? This is resisted by Intuition.

Is someone trying to scare or bully you? This is resisted with Psyche.

And so on...

With that in mind, I've never thought that FASERIP lacked for not having, nor required a Charisma attribute or the equivalent. Though a case might be made for an Appearance attribute, In superhero comics, a world of demigods in tights, appearance only plays any sort of role when it's a specific unique quality of that character (The Enchantress, or Toad). "

I really like this idea, it fits well into the spirit and logic of FASERIP, IMO and is easier to implement that creating an entirely new attribute and feels like it would seem 'natural' as opposed to using Popularity for all social interaction. Ideally, I like for Popularity to act more as a bonus (or penalty if low enough) for social actions in applicable situations but I don't know how that might work but simply using as the base in situations works out.
 
I am also using this format and I'm using Popularity more like Presence in Champions. If the hero in hero ID is trying to get a random person or crowd to do something, or to impress a villain into hesitating, that's Popularity.
 
After 3 more months of play (just about), I'm a little embarrassed to say that we're going to return to Champions for this campaign. MSH is a much better game than I remember, and none of us disliked it, but I wasn't having as much fun as I wanted and it seemed like more work than I wanted, which are both signs that maybe the system needs to be re-considered.

MSH does some things very well, and a couple things better than Champions. But Champions has been my go-to for supers for 37 years, so any "new" flavor has a lot to live up to. Since my players feel likewise, we're switching back.
 
What prompted you to drop Champions in the first place (apologies if that was explained in a previous post)?
 
The campaign started in Champions, we played about 6 months, and then an inter-player dynamic problem canceled the game. I took about 6 months off and re-started the group without the player. By association, Champions had left a bad taste in my mouth (since I wanted to return to the same setting).

It was around that time that I started reading a lot of posts about MSH and how well it held up and I decided to re-visit it. As always, there was a great "honeymoon phase" with the new system, but I realized I started missing what I could do with Champions.

So, like I said, it was a, "Sorry, MSH, it's not you; it's me" kind of situation.
 
In terms of what you missed from Champions, was it the robust chargen?
 
Yes. I like how easy it is to make very distinctive powers and how the number and range of characteristics makes characters different.

The only thing *really* missing for me from Champions is rules for "stunting" powers.
 
I've found the same thing over the years and I like the degree of abstraction vs simulation in Hero. I find the system itself pretty intuitive. Its not perfect and everyone isn't going to love but it suits most of my need very well.
 
Bumping this topic because I've been doing some informal MSH recently.

I've realized I'd like to have some randomness to the damage. Not a lot. Just a smidge.

I found the "official" random damage fix from the Phoenix write up in Dragon Magazine. I didn't like that one much. I'm also not fond of the various solutions which cause green results to have reduced rank damage.

The one I've been working with so far is: Green result does normal damage. Yellow result does top upper value of rank damage (so yellow with an Amazing rank would do 62). Then Red shifts one rank up to do that value of damage (Amazing shifts to Monstrous for 75).

Another alternate method I've considered is using Fudge dice to randomize the final rank. I haven't actually tried that yet, as I feel it would make damage too floaty. I'd probably want to set the original power rank damage as the floor value, and also have the color result modify the damage roll, but I feel that would bog things down should I go that route.
 
Ya know... that's a pretty interesting idea I've never tried!
 
With ICONS (which is based on MSH) I used a simple house rule I found. With ICONS the equivalent of Yellow result you just +1 to the damge, with a Red, +2. It was very effective, especially in those cases which the target's opponent armour was just slightly higher the character offensive powers range, which can quickly descend into a "well, there is no point even rolling" sulk. But that was on ICONS simple 1to 10 scale.
MSH is much wider, I am not sure how much one would have to increase the damage factor by.

Maybe you could at 1d10 damage to Green results, 2d10 to Yellow and 3d10 to Red (assuming the Red result doesn't take the target out anway)? I'm just making this up as I type. I've not played MSH is a good few years so really, what do I know?
 
Most characters with superstrength are doing more than 30 damage on a regular basis, whereas it would be absurd for a normal human to be doing 30 points of damage, so you couldn't really streamline it to a set variable of dice to cover everyone.

I'd really hesitate giving a bonus that raises damage above a Hero's Strength, as it's important to remember ranks aren't a linear progression like a game such as D&D. They are closer to a "weight class" in that they represent a category . The Punisher shouldn't be able to punch through steel just because he lands a particularly good blow. The combat effects here are more important than the actual amount of points inflicted.
 
There are some definitely downstream effects that would need to be considered... but I could make it work.
 
There are some definitely downstream effects that would need to be considered... but I could make it work.

One of the first ones I'd look at is how it affects the rule for combined attacks - several heroes attacking at once
 
I thought there was also a Push action where you did some FEAT roll and got a +1CS to your effective rank or something? But when I was looking at the rulebooks I couldn't find anything of the sort. Maybe that's from one of the clone systems?
 
One of the first ones I'd look at is how it affects the rule for combined attacks - several heroes attacking at once
That's actually the first thing that came to mind. I'd fix that by saying the boost effect had to be a natural roll. This way you're not removing the impact of either mechanic.
 
When I see stuff like this... it makes me smile. Because now Spiderman could legitimately beat Firelord by the rules.

Because he DID. :smile:

spider_man_vs._firelord__11.jpg
 
I’m not sure I like Spider-Man beating up Firelord, unless he was imbued with the power of Captain Universe or whatever. Isn’t Firelord of a similar power level of the Silver Surfer?
 
I’m not sure I like Spider-Man beating up Firelord, unless he was imbued with the power of Captain Universe or whatever. Isn’t Firelord of a similar power level of the Silver Surfer?

Yes... but the Defenders version of Silver Surfer.
 
I’m not sure I like Spider-Man beating up Firelord, unless he was imbued with the power of Captain Universe or whatever. Isn’t Firelord of a similar power level of the Silver Surfer?

He was wearing the alien symbiote suit at the time IIRC
 
Well to be clear: Firelord is a Herald stipulated. But he's not the Silver Surfer. And yes, everyone in comicdom was shocked that he beat him. But it was generally accepted as a fun truism that has forever been a footnote in Spiderman's history (Achievement: Defeated a Herald of the Big G).

Second - the symbiote suit, at least back then, didn't enhance Peter's strength appreciably.

But the FUNNY thing is... I knew very few people collecting back then that didn't readily accept that Spider did legitimately win. Those that played RPG's as well, would at some point bring up the fact that few systems ever did a good job of modeling this clear leap of power that existed between a Herald and Spidey.

It's one of the things that's always kinda tickled me to put int some really HARD means to allow for it. I've got house rules that let you "pump" a physical stat by +1 CS for one round for 100-Karma. It rarely got used, but it has happened with effects that did mirror the intent. I had a Radiation PC drop the Hulk by siphoning off enough excess gamma-radiation to slow the Adrenaline surge enough where the other PC's gang-attacked him and took him out... and a couple of other such epic achievements.

So I kinda like this rule. I plan to try it next MSH game I run.
 
One thing I don't look for in a superhero RPG, honestly, is for it to mimic every stupid writing decision that's taken place in comicbook history. I'd much prefer a consistent system that models a comicbook reality, than a system that accounts for the narrative assumption of hundreds of writers over half a century's contributions to the medium.
 
Second - the symbiote suit, at least back then, didn't enhance Peter's strength appreciably.

That he knew of - but since it did enhance a normal human's strength after that point, one can retroactively reasonably assume it has that capacity, it was simply unknown to Peter.

I mean, if one was going for a No-Prize rationality
 
The comics have never really shown Peter using his full strength. According to the Handbook, he was capable of lifting 10 tons but you hardly ever saw him lift anything nearly that heavy.
 
The comics have never really shown Peter using his full strength. According to the Handbook, he was capable of lifting 10 tons but you hardly ever saw him lift anything nearly that heavy.
That 10 ton figure has been fairly consistent for Mr P. The 30 foot jumps are a bit more dubious when you look how far he actually jumps in the art.
 
The comics have never really shown Peter using his full strength. According to the Handbook, he was capable of lifting 10 tons but you hardly ever saw him lift anything nearly that heavy.


even with his toned-down superstrength in the films, it always bothered me in the second one when he would punch Doc Ock in the face during fight scenes, and that didn't just put him out instantly. In the comics he deliberately pulls his punches, but still, he should be, even at a fraction of effort, be landing blows like getting hit by a lead pipe wielded by Mike Tyson.
 
Advancement in supers games troubles me somewhat. I'm not sure if there is a perfect way to handle that.

I agree with this sentiment, as well, in that comic book super heroes don’t typically see much in the way of change over time (outside reboots and/or unusual story considerations). What I’ve considered using for my still-as-yet-untested hack is for characters to accrue points they can burn to gain special bonuses in play. This pool would reset each session, and would reflect experience gained using powers, working with teammates, and so on. So, while, say, characters 1 and 2 both have the same power rating in, say, super speed, the more experienced hero has more “hero points” to burn in play, allowing them to use their experience to be more successful than the novice.
 
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That he knew of - but since it did enhance a normal human's strength after that point, one can retroactively reasonably assume it has that capacity, it was simply unknown to Peter.

I mean, if one was going for a No-Prize rationality
I'd have taken a No-Prize from Stan Lee over a Nobel Peace Prize any day.
 
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