Marvel Super Heroes (role-playing game)

Players resolve most game situations by rolling percentile dice and comparing the results against a column of the colorful "Universal Results Table". The attribute used determines which column to use; different tasks map to different attributes.

All characters have seven basic attributes:

Fighting determines hit probability in and defense against hand-to-hand attacks.

Agility determines hit probability in and defense against ranged attacks, feats of agility vs. the environment, and acrobatics.

Strength determines damage inflicted by hand-to-hand attacks, grappling, or lifting and breaking heavy objects.

Endurance determines resistance to physical damage (e.g., poison, disease, death). It also determines how long a character can fight and how fast a character can move at top speed.

Reason determines the success of tasks relating to knowledge, puzzle-solving, and advanced technology.

Intuition determines the success of tasks relating to awareness, perception, and instinct.

Psyche determines the success of tasks relating to willpower, psionics, and magic.

Players sometimes refer to this set of attributes and the game system as a whole by the acronym "FASERIP". Attribute scores for most characters range from 1 to 100, where normal human ability is Typical (6), and peak (non-superheroic) human ability is Excellent (20). The designers minimize use of the numerical figures, instead preferring adjectives like "Incredible" (36-45) and "Amazing" (46-62). A "Typical" (5-7) attribute has a 50% base chance for success at most tasks relating to that attribute. As an attribute increases, the chance of success increases about 5% per 10 points. Thus a character with an "Amazing" (50) attribute has a 75% chance of success at tasks relating to that attribute.

Beyond the seven attributes, characters have superpowers that function on a mostly ad hoc basis, and each character's description gives considerable space to a description of how their powers work in the game.

Each character has an origin which puts ceilings on a character's abilities and superpowers. The origins include:

Altered humans, normal people who acquire powers, such as Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four.

High-tech wonders, normal people whose powers come from devices, such as Iron Man.

Mutants, persons born with superpowers, such as the X-Men.

Robots, created beings, such as the Vision and Ultron.

Aliens, non-humans, including extra-dimensional beings such as Thor and Hercules.

The game also features a simple skill system referred to as Talents. Talents must be learned and cover areas of knowledge from Archery to Zoology. A Talent raises a character's ability by one rank when attempting actions related to that Talent. The GM is free to determine if a character would be unable to attempt an action without the appropriate Talent (such as a character with no medical background attempting to make a pill that can cure a rare disease).

Characters also has two variable attributes: resources and popularity. These attributes use the same terms as the character's seven attributes ("poor," "amazing," "unearthly," etc.), but unlike the seven physical and mental attributes, which change slowly, if at all, resources and popularity can change quickly.

Resources represent the character's wealth. Rather than have the player keep track of how much money the character has, the advanced game assumes the character has enough money to cover basic living expenses. The resources ability is used when the character tries to buy something like a new car or house. The game books note that a character's resources score can change after winning the lottery or having a major business transaction go bad, among other things.

Popularity reflects how much the character is liked or disliked. Popularity can influence non-player characters. A superhero with a high rating, like Captain America (whose popularity is unearthly-the highest most characters can achieve), might use his popularity to gain entrance to a club. If he were to try the same thing as his secret identity Steve Rogers (whose popularity is only typical), he would probably be unable to do it. Villains also have a popularity score, which is usually negative (a bouncer might let Doctor Doom or Magneto into the aforementioned club out of fear). Popularity can change, too.

The game is intended to use existing Marvel characters as the heroes. The basic and advanced sets both contain simple systems for creating original superheroes, based on random ability rolls (as in Dungeons & Dragons). In addition, the basic set campaign book allows players to create original heroes by describing the desired kind of hero and working together with the GM to assign the appropriate abilities, powers, and talents.

The Ultimate Powers Book, by David Edward Martin, expands and organizes the game's list of powers. Players are given a variety of body types, secret origins, weaknesses, and powers to choose from. The UPB gives a greater range to characters one could create. The book suffers from editing problems and omissions; several errata and partial revisions were released in the pages of TSR's Dragon magazine in issue #122 "The Ultimate Addenda to the Ultimate Powers Book", issue #134 "The Ultimate Addenda's Addenda", issue #150 "Death Effects on Superheroes", and issue #151 "Son of the Ultimate Addenda".

The game's equivalent of experience points is karma, a pool of points initially determined by the sum of a character's three mental attributes (reason, intuition, and ssyche).

The basic system allows players to increase their chances of success at most tasks by spending points of karma. For example, a player who wants to make sure he hits a villain in a critical situation can spend however many Karma points are necessary to raise the dice roll to the desired result. The referee distributes additional karma points at the end of game sessions, typically as rewards for accomplishing heroic goals such as defeating villains, saving innocents, and foiling crimes. Karma can also be lost for unheroic actions such as fleeing from a villain or failing to stop a crime. In fact, in a notable departure from many RPGs, but strongly in keeping with the genre, all karma is lost if a hero kills someone or allows someone to die.

In the advanced game, karma points can also be spent to permanently increase character attributes and powers.