Divunal in HERO
Warning: The following will probably be even more boring than usual to most people.
I've been preparing to GM a HERO game for exarkun, glyph, cyli, and hopefully someone else when I move to Boston. It'll be set in Divunal, with all the players playing as Divunids, the freaky lightning-golem characters from that world. I've spent a few days of free time coming up with a decent model of the Divunid in HERO terms, and have created a sample character sheet for a starting Divunid (OpenOffice 2 spreadsheet). Explanations follow. If you're trying to learn this stuff, open up your HERO Sidekick and the Divunid spreadsheet and read up on the references.
First: Divunids are unstoppable. They can use their strength to run, jump, lift, and fight without getting tired. I've bought them a Characteristic power (see Sidekick p45) to bring their Strength up to to 30, and added the "Costs No Endurance" modifier s.t. it applies to even the base STR characterestic. I've done similar things with their Leap, Swim, and Running characteristics so they don't have to pay END to use these. Then, I sold off all of their END, since they don't need it given those powers. To players, this all basically means that you don't have to worry about ENDurance at all for physical activities. Hooray simplicity!
The STR figure in the spreadsheet is slightly hacked: I put it at 30 to represent their total STR, but changed the cost (which was automatically calculated) to 0, since the actual points were spent on the power, not the Characteristic. Everything else in the Characteristics and Movement sections are pretty straightforward. They have an extremely high CON, BODY, etc, to represent their incredible physical power. Their PREsence is fairly high to represent their scariness to most humanoids, etc.
As for their powers, in addition to the set that represents their unstoppability, there are two interesting ones. First, their bodies can hold quite a bit of electricity, making them something of a Human Battery, or Lightning Golem. This is represented by an Endurance Reserve of 500 points (Sorry, this power isn't shown in Sidekick).
Second, they can discharge this electricity into devices with capacitors or batteries in them. This is the complicated power. The way this works is that ALL devices with capacitors or batteries (or just individual batteries) will be represented as Endurance Reserves similar to the one Divunids have, only generally with much fewer points than 500.
Before I describe the HERO mechanics of this power, I'll describe it in the way the players have to care about: Divunids can discharge up to 30 "points" of charge (straight out of their own Lightning Golem END reserve) per phase into a device in order to charge it, and it stops filling up after the device is full (it is possible to damage a device by being irresponsible with charging, but that's left up to the GM to play out on a case-by-case basis).
The "Discharge" power is a Succor 10d6 (modified Aid, see Sidekick p45) that improves the REC of the target (allowing it to RECover its END) for as long as the Divunid is touching the target. This has a lot of modifiers. First, it uses the Standard Effect rule (again not discussed in Sidekick) which means it's stable: the average of the 10d6 roll is used instead of actually rolling 10d6: that means 30. However, there's a custom advantage I've added to this power called "Extra Control". That means the players can choose to discharge *any* amount of electricity up to 30 points: useful for devices that can only handle so much charge coming to them at once. This power also costs Extra END (x5), calculated in such a fashion as to make the END cost *equal* to the amount of REC given to the target. So transferring electricity is 1:1, barring inefficient connections with the device (which will be handled by the GM :) It's also got Obvious Accessible Focus (Focus, sidekick p69), which means that they have to be holding the device they're charging in order to charge it. Lastly, it's got the custom limitation "Only to charge devices", representing the fact that this can only be used to recharge devices, not improve the REC of some meatbag to help them heal faster (which is what REC is normally used for).
So! If you've stayed with me that far, I'm impressed. To wrap up, I'll discuss the Disadvantages the basic Divunids have.
First, and most dangerous, is their nasty reaction to water. A divunid submerged in water will basically disintegrate, and if he's standing in the rain without protection it'll probably do some nasty hurt. So Divunids have a Susceptibility to Water (Physical Limitation). Every phase they're in contact with water, they'll take 3d6 damage. This should mean that a Divunid will drop with a few minutes of exposure to rain, given their 80 STUN.
Second, a Divunid has a strange physiology. Their body is made out of a material much more dense than human flesh, making them much heavier. They also probably can't feel differences in temperature quite as easily as meatbags: If they walk into a meat freezer, it's unlikely they'll notice the difference. This isn't terribly disadvantageous, but it's still worth 15 points.
Anyway, there's HERO-Divunid version 1.0. It may change after some play time, but I'm happy with what I've got for now.
