What is the best superhero system?

What is the best superhero system?

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Wild Talents.
Because Wild Talents.

GURPS

G U R P S
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S

Weren't the powers like super unbalanced? Also, the one roll thing seems a bit complicated

Depends what kind of superhero story you want to tell. It's a broad genre.

I really like Masks myself

Currently doing D&D 5e mystics only and reflavored/themed into modern superheroes. It's going pretty great. Dunno if it's the best though, definitely having a better time with this than Mutants and Masterminds.

Honestly, with a couple of custom moves, Dungeon World would be perfect. It's fast, with a focused core mechanic that encourages fast paced action and interesting character actions. It's also built for the story first which is important so that you are not bogged arguing over falling damage or other babby 3.5 shit. The last time I used Dungeon World for a supers game, my hero dive bombed an alien tank using pieces of the Statue of Liberty to destroy it. Thats some real roleplaying, and everyone at the table thought it was awesome. In most systems (like GURPS, which is overburdened bloated shit) you'd have to do 30 rolls and check the rulebook to see if you could that. In Dungeon World? One. Fucking. Roll.

Why the fuck would you recommend DW when Masks exists as a vastly superior superhero PbtA system?

This is actually the first thought I had when I read the class. Tell me, do you have any discipline restrictions or did you change anything around at all?

Ew. GURPS is a stretch for supers even though it has the books. GURPS is calibrated for normals.

Go classic Hero System.

This.

>Also, the one roll thing seems a bit complicated
How?

Because dungeon world is better.

Agreed.

DW is casual garbage, it's the same as having an imaginary tea party with all of your stuffed animals.

We tinkered with the class a bit, no real restrictions other than removal of the telepathic communication ability unless that works for your character concept. We allowed to choose a casting stat instead of limiting it to INT. Also, we're allowed to change the damage types and flavor of the disciplines and talents so long as it fits into the theme/concept.

He's just shitposting this pasta again

Why would you use DW when you could just use Worlds In Peril?

Proof you don't know what the fuck you are talking about, please read this before you comment further.

dungeonworldsrd.com

It's not out yet, but the Sentinels of the Multiverse quickstart preview looks pretty cool. is a download for a cleaned up version.

The tl;dr of the system is that your Qualities, Powers and Status (how badly hurt you are) all have a dice associated with them, different sizes for different ones based on how strong or significant they are. This also applies to status, with some characters getting weaker as they're beaten up, and others getting stronger.

Rolling the three dice, usually you take and resolve the middle result, but there's various powers and interactions that make use of the low or high die of the three. We don't yet have chargen, just basic rules and pregens based on the biggest hero team from the card game, but if the system overall resembles the preview I think it'll be pretty fun to play.

> Hero System 6th Edition Trove
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#F!06Q2kY7I!r2JY-moVxFUGl90w6LDa2A


> Hero System 5th Edition Trove
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#F!Ym5RHIJL! Qk1NgisxONlZbCQdbNYBZg

No 4th trove unfortunately but hopefully these work just fine. Enjoy Veeky Forums.

Nice, I've been waiting for this one since I heard Cam Banks was at the helm. I've been a big fan of his Cortex Plus games. Haven't gotten into the .zip yet (boy this download is slow) but an early con preview made it seem like it was a sort of spiritual sequel to Marvel Heroic.
Speaking of:
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. Simple core mechanics, robust options for execution, flexible ways of representing elements of characters, their abilities, and the setting.
XP is earned by acknowledging, and then executing on and resolving, character arcs via Milestones. Like, one of Tony Stark's Milestone sets is "Demon in a Bottle" for his alcoholism being an issue.

This is the only real option. HERO has ruined me for other systems, any time people try to get me to play DnD or anything I just think "This would be so much easier in HERO." Hell even when they try to run trendy ruleslite games like Wild Talents or something, "We could be playing HERO right now..."

Icons is my goto,

that FASERIP OSR wrapped up in a FATEish package.

Heard Wild Talents was great but have never actually been able to put a game together for it, players are always too braindead to understand the system.

FATE is a good choice if you're focused less on feeling powerful rolling dice and more focused on creating a good story arc.

GURPS is good for just.. Stupid shit.

I myself use Savage Worlds with the Super Powers Companion.

That being said no matter what system you choose to run, in my experience, balancing supers games is a pain. Good luck and make sure you thoroughly evaluate what the PCs are capable of doing.

>balancing supers games is a pain
That's because the genre has imbalance and shenanigans inherently baked into it.

I really would not suggest playing Savage Worlds. It is a badly designed system with terrible meta-mechanics that encourage not only metagaming but ending session early, it also makes it near impossible for characters to fail at anything. The gun mechanic are broken, and literally do not make sense. The only thing it is good for is being a miniatures wargame, and it even sucks at most of that. Exploding dice make stupid shit happen constantly, the damage is way overkill for 90% of the threats allowing characters to one-shot massive creatures with tiny weapons. On the other end, characters literally cannot fail, because they have three bennies per session which allow them to reroll whatever the fuck they want (not damage rolls, to be fair, but still). And the GM is told he is a piece of shit if he doesn't hand out more bennies for "good roleplaying" (in other words, stupid nat20-lolz bullshit). Also the characters get to roll a wild die with their normal roll and take the wild die if it is higher, thus making them even less likely to fail at anything. Not to mention the cancer of the bennies being basically a safe-space for retarded character actions, CAN and WILL spread to other RPGs you play with this group. Just count down the sessions until your character asks during D&D after failing a roll "can I have a bennie"? No, get fucked faggot. Failure is an important part of RPGs and Savage Worlds throws that shit out the window.

Eeyup. As hard as you try it will not work-out. The big finale of the last supers game I ran ended with the PCs confronting a psionic nazi who hoped to lead a fourth reich opening-up a portal to what he believed was Valhalla only for a demonic monster to fly through the portal. This was planned but what was not planned was the demon's appearance called for a fear check which, again, was expected but I had overlooked the fact that Psycho Nazi was not fearless and had to make a roll as well which he failed and collapsed to the floor in cardiac arrest. The PCs ran from the demon and the day was saved but damn if my plans weren't completely destroyed. Still everyone had fun so hooray!.

>Vert has stopped even trying to take part in discussion and just drops Gish Gallop walls of text the moment anyone mentions SW

Thank-you for your pasta but do you have any original ideas you would like to share with the board? Perhaps you could address OP's question while you are at it?

Well, you could have just pretend he had it or lied about what roll you got on the check. But I suppose it wasn't all that important if everything turned out alright

TBF I can run HERO in my sleep and I just cannot wrap my mind around Wild Talents.

>Well, you could have just pretend he had it or lied about what roll you got on the check.
I prefer not to myself though fudging can be a valuable tool and looking back it fit with the tone a bit more. The PCs are a bit of a rag-tag bunch of weirdos: a Rorschach inspired schizophrenic Russian super soldier neet who is so incredibly ugly that he can terrify even hardened criminals, a bomber-jacket and aviator sunglasses clad racistm (Atlantians who I fluff as fish-like people) diner blogger whose only real skills of note are teleportation and self-destructing, and Superman if he were running a martial arts dojo and had a clone daughter who was far more viscous than him and collected badguys' credit cards for impromptu shopping sprees.

I think the outcome fit and they liked the demon fight. If we pick-up the game again I will most certainly be having them fight a demonic incursion.

Dope. That's basically what I was thinking of doing. Didn't even occur to me about the casting ability thing. Makes a lot sense. Thanks for the reply. I hope I one can run it hah.

It can be seriously unbalanced, but if everyone's a good sport and not breaking the system, it's perfectly viable.

I've been running a Marvel Heroics game for a DC Young Justice for about a year now and it's great. I basically give new heroes 4 d8s to make their powersets and let them grow them with the XP they earn. Best part is the game allows players to buy new heroes that they recruit and let them play them, which has allowed them to create a season 2 type situation where you have multiple teams to deal with different missions. Real good system.

Aberrant is pretty good.

I've been enjoying this

housedok.com/category/games/metahumans-rising/

We've been playing it for a couple of months now. Good customization options.

Although if you run one good Superhero RPG, you'll become the forever GM.

>Although if you run one good Superhero RPG, you'll become the forever GM.
God, don't I know it.

That's a great use of the unlock system, I think I might try that next time I find myself in the position of running Marvel Heroic.
Although I might not go back to it, I don't normally prepare enough all at once to make proper use of the Act structure, unlocks, and event-specific milestones.

Wild Talents
Champion
Mutants and Masterminds
In that order

GURPS if you want extra complicated rules, FATE or Savage Worlds if you can't into rules heavy games

You can never go wrong with Mutants&Masterminds

Wild Talents is also pretty good

4th and 6th are quite different, but I've heard good things about 6th as well.

Not really. Mostly just written differently, and some somewhat destructive simplifications of the rules but not in a bad way.

Hero deserves better than it got.

HERO System. It's like GURPS only less retarded, less autistic, and more balanced.

Care to elaborate please?

Speaking of sequels to Marvel Heroic, an actual sequel was Kickstarted earlier this year in the form of Cortex Prime, designed by the guy who did Marvel Heroic. Back in July the devs at Magic Vacuum said they'd have pre-orders up in the fall of this year. Missed that deadline already, and there's not much of 2017 left. I'm getting anxious over here, both because I want to see the game and because I don't like it when devs miss deadlines.

It also predates GURPS, don't let anyone lie to you saying otherwise.

What makes it so good? I've only heard it mentioned in passing

Personally I like MHRPG, but I've never had the opportunity to run or play a real non-D&D game for more than one session.

GURPS is from '86. HERO is from '89.

Predated by a few years, my man.

Exactly. In fact they both are derivative of Champions (1981)

It can do anything in a simple but deep way. It can do a guy working a nine-to-five and a demigod in the same system and both are fine to play alongside each other.

It perfectly straddles the line between abstraction and simulation. I can't really work in other systems anymore due to how frustrating it is to not be able to do effect-based powers - without getting too abstract, like Wild Talents et al.

Also I find the 3d6 bell curve deeply satisfying, as opposed to say d20.

The action system is great - combat is divided into a bunch of segments and the faster you are the more of them you can act on. This does tend to be divisive based on how capable your group is of focusing on the game and whether or not you have a huge speed imbalance, but fortunately upping your speed to the point it will cause big issues is pretty expensive so you'll have fewer other things to do than a character who invested in everything else.

It can handle weird-ass abstract superpowers that other games struggle with.

The character advantage and disadvantage systems are great.

Speaking of, character building tends to be complained about by people who can't do 6-th grade math. If someone complains, ignore them. I was able to build fully functional HERO characters at age nine, entirely self taught - I kept stealing the books off my dad's shelf to read the fluff bits.


GURPS was explicitly based on Champions. It shouldn't even count as its own game.