Palladium Systems Tools, Rules and Data

General info

I've been playing Palladium System's games and in particular Heroes Unlimited for a long time.

In that time I've developed a number of "House Rules", addendums, clarifications, tools and just general stuff to be used with the games.

One of the main things I've done, and it is referenced in my notes is to adjust the Strength bonus to be based on the character's calculated Lift, NOT the STR stat.

When they introduced the concepts of the different Strength Scales (Normal, Extraordinary, Superhuman and Supernatural) a normal human with a STR of 30 and a hero with a Supernatural STR of 30 getting the same damage bonus made NO sense.

A pleasant bonus was that suddenly guns became much more reasonable weapons. A normal guy with a typical gun could now do 3D6 damage, and a normal guy with a sword also would do 3D6 + a few STR points, not +15 or so, which was typical in our games.

This unfair balance in favor of ancient weapons, because of the strength bonus was now cured.

Of course if a Behemoth was brandishing a sword, he would see a greater than normal bonus to damage. But that is to be expected

NOTE that this revised strength damage is what is used in my character sheets etc.


The second main addition was the concept of points for powers.

Having played GURPS for a number of years, the ability to pick and choose one's power set became more important than leaving things up to random chance.

As such, many of my notes and adjustments use "Power Points" to determine a character's set of abilities. This allows players to more easily mix categories.

It is easy, with this system, to have a super hero who wields a pair of thread-shooting wrist blasters, for example.

Notes and House Rules

Updates to Power Categories

  • Weapon Based Powers - This lists powers and abilities derived from a weapon of a magical or technological nature. Includes including weapons as a "power", as well as the power category for a weapon based hero.
  • Psionics - Simply adds the Power points system to Psionic abilities, so that it is easier for a Mutant, for example, to include Psionics in thir power set.
  • Self Powered - Clarification for any category in which the hero's powers are contained in themselves. Works for Mutants, Experiments, or any other power category where the character's powers are innate to them, regardless of where the ability originated.
  • Intense Training - A complete rewrite for characters with little or no super heroic powers. This incorporates the previous categories of Hardware, Special Training and Physical Training.
  • Robotics - A complete rewrite of Robot and Bionic heroes, bringing them in line with their super powered counterparts. Allows them to use standard super powers, as exemplified by heroes like Marvel's Vision, or DC's Red Tornado. This is in addition to more traditional robotic gizmos and upgrades.
  • Technology - This is a different concept for technology based heroes. It would includes the creations of Hardware and gizmo based heroes as well as non-sentient Robots. It is very rough and incomplete.
  • Power list - This is a PDF of all the powers from Heroes Unlimited 2 and Powers Unlimited 1. It not only adds power points, but adjusts a number of the powers, and adds a few to boot. Does not include powers from PU3, as I didn't have that book at the time I wrote the list.

Tools

  • Die Roller - I found a lot of die rollers out on the net, but be warned, most of them involve bad math! Most software die rollers do not properly account for the first and last digits of a given die and you will only roll that number half as often as any other number.
  • Melee Page - This is an excellent tool for maintaining order of attacks in any game where the combatants have a different number of actions in a round. It allows for number of actions and the character's initiative value. This particular tool maintains HP and SDC for Palladium systems, but it is easily modified for other games.
  • Extended Melee Page - Same as above, but with 30 slots for characters instead of just 10. For those REALLY BIG battles.
  • Character Sheet - This is a character spreadsheet that features automatic damage bonuses based on STR class, as well as skill percentiles that automatically increase as the character levels! Please note: it is in Open Office format. If you don't have Open Office, go get it! It is a complete and free office suite and it will allow you to share your work with people regardless of whether they use Win, Lin or Mac, as it runs on all 3.

Links

  • Dan Steiner's HU Page - Awesome page, however, there are many pop ups and a web ring that likes to redirect you.