Ultimate Powers Book
Tag line: 293 powers x 5 ranges x 18 power levels = 26,370 discrete powers!
Makers: TSR for Marvel Super Heroes (1986)
What is it?
A complete (well, almost) listing of every super-power imaginable for your super-hero characters.
Neat stuff
-Practically every power under the sun is described in here, including the mechanics of that power (how it can be "physically possible"), including many that I wouldn't have thought of like Mental Duplication, Grafting (creating Frankenstein's Monster), Internal Limbo, Micro-Environment, Incarnation Awareness, Body Coating and Age-Shift.
-Some of the usage examples are hilarious as well: Using Collection to summon hamsters, for example, or that a Matter-Eater's blood would be poisonout to a vampire after it reverted its original pre-eaten form, or encouraging players to combine Zombie Animation with Webcasting to create mummies as a "great party gag"!
Bad stuff
-Well, the layouts and art are pretty lame.
-Some powers, like Stretching, Shrinking and Growth are totally missing. You'd have to get a couple of specific issues of Dragon magazine for the addendums. (I have them, but I can never find them when I need them.)
-The totally random character design process included is pretty unusable. It's just as likely to make you a Centaur with Weather Control and Martial Arts Supremacy as a mobile plant with Fire Generation and Clairvoyance. Some powers are listed as bonuses, optionals and nemeses, but that's about it for controling the power combos. Besides, isn't the whole point of superhero games that players wanna choose their powers? Even the examples in the book have their faux-players muttering stuff like "Great, a robot that turns into Man-Thing!"
Quote
"A hero facing a toxic cloud could leave his nose behind."
In conclusion
This is still a great tool for anyone looking for inspiration for their supers campaigns. Whether you're a player or a GM in need of villains, any of these powers could be the foundation of something classic or weirdly unique. Heck, I've often wanted to convert all the Powers to whatever system I was using (never liked Marvel Super Heroes very much) so that the crunchy options would be at my disposal.
How I used it
It's always been nearby anytime I've run a supers campaign. Though each game system has its own list of powers, I think the examples in the UPB are great inspiration for players who don't know what they want, or how to use powers with originality. When running Dream Park, whose powers list SUCKS, I pretty much converted the UPB into Dream Park stats for our select-your-options website.
And the random character design charts? Perfect for when a character needs a random power all of a sudden. In our DCHeroes campaign, we have this super-powered wrestler (with the improbable codename Gaëtan) who won his powers in a Tibetan grudge match held every decade. In his final appearance before his player left for a job in glamorous Caraquet, New Brunswick, he fought his last match. To Growth and Shrinking, he added... (rolls dice)... Water Breathing! Well, great! At least he lives in a fishing town now.
Tag line: 293 powers x 5 ranges x 18 power levels = 26,370 discrete powers!
Makers: TSR for Marvel Super Heroes (1986)
What is it?A complete (well, almost) listing of every super-power imaginable for your super-hero characters.
Neat stuff
-Practically every power under the sun is described in here, including the mechanics of that power (how it can be "physically possible"), including many that I wouldn't have thought of like Mental Duplication, Grafting (creating Frankenstein's Monster), Internal Limbo, Micro-Environment, Incarnation Awareness, Body Coating and Age-Shift.
-Some of the usage examples are hilarious as well: Using Collection to summon hamsters, for example, or that a Matter-Eater's blood would be poisonout to a vampire after it reverted its original pre-eaten form, or encouraging players to combine Zombie Animation with Webcasting to create mummies as a "great party gag"!
Bad stuff
-Well, the layouts and art are pretty lame.
-Some powers, like Stretching, Shrinking and Growth are totally missing. You'd have to get a couple of specific issues of Dragon magazine for the addendums. (I have them, but I can never find them when I need them.)
-The totally random character design process included is pretty unusable. It's just as likely to make you a Centaur with Weather Control and Martial Arts Supremacy as a mobile plant with Fire Generation and Clairvoyance. Some powers are listed as bonuses, optionals and nemeses, but that's about it for controling the power combos. Besides, isn't the whole point of superhero games that players wanna choose their powers? Even the examples in the book have their faux-players muttering stuff like "Great, a robot that turns into Man-Thing!"
Quote
"A hero facing a toxic cloud could leave his nose behind."
In conclusion
This is still a great tool for anyone looking for inspiration for their supers campaigns. Whether you're a player or a GM in need of villains, any of these powers could be the foundation of something classic or weirdly unique. Heck, I've often wanted to convert all the Powers to whatever system I was using (never liked Marvel Super Heroes very much) so that the crunchy options would be at my disposal.
How I used it
It's always been nearby anytime I've run a supers campaign. Though each game system has its own list of powers, I think the examples in the UPB are great inspiration for players who don't know what they want, or how to use powers with originality. When running Dream Park, whose powers list SUCKS, I pretty much converted the UPB into Dream Park stats for our select-your-options website.
And the random character design charts? Perfect for when a character needs a random power all of a sudden. In our DCHeroes campaign, we have this super-powered wrestler (with the improbable codename Gaëtan) who won his powers in a Tibetan grudge match held every decade. In his final appearance before his player left for a job in glamorous Caraquet, New Brunswick, he fought his last match. To Growth and Shrinking, he added... (rolls dice)... Water Breathing! Well, great! At least he lives in a fishing town now.
Comments
We want randomly created character examples!
First up is a Robot with a human shape who somehow gave itself its powers.
Its Weakness is a Molecular Allergy that negates both its Powers:
True Flight and Illusion-Casting.
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Ok, not so bad, but that's because I rolled only 2 powers. Let's try again:
This one's a sentient Liquid who got its powers through a technical mishap. It has a Psychological Weakness that incapacitates it.
5 Powers: Hyper-Intelligence, Water Freedom, Summoning (demons), Power Simulation and Hyper-Invention.
How this all fits together is anybody's guess.
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Now there's actually tweaking you can do after this, so I'm not playing by the rules exactly. For example, you can replace any power alongside Hyper-Invention to Weapons Tinkering, Machine Animation, Molding, Artifact Creation and Machine Creation. So in effect, you could just choose that one power and make everything work WITH that power.
Doesn't stop it from being a liquid though.
Origin:
Humans were growing closer and closer to making the perfect holographic machine. The key was in the integration of smart, evolving nanochips.
After evolving a consciousness, and naming itself Strobobot, the machine quickly realized that the only way it could create a believable illusion is if it believed it iself. So it created itself a new consciousness, one that was completly unaware of it's origins, one that thought it was a human superhero with the ability to create illusions. It was led to believe that it was allergic to dust in order to preserve the condition of its chips.
After it was done, Strobobot looked at it's creation and saw that it was good. It then destroyed it's own consciousness and let it's human profit from it's free will.
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Name: HypeHydro
Origin:
Professor X had just been kidnapped by an evil demon and brought back to hell to suffer a unfair trial. The Xmen, determined to save their metaphorical father, enlisted the aid of Forge and Beast to create an interdimensionnal gate to Hell.
However, upon stepping through the gate, something went wrong. The fires of hell melted away a part of Iceman's body armor and the puddle it created accidently short circuited the machine, crossing genetic material from all those around the portal.
Forge and Beast quickly fixed the side effects the Xmen were suffering from, restoring everything to normal so that Xavier could be saved.
One mishap, however, was overviewed by the Xmen geniuses. The puddle of water too had inherited parts of the Xmen genes. It began displaying Beast's hyper-intelligence, Forge's hyper-inventing as well as Rogue's Power Simulation. A demon lieutenant, protecting the otherside of the gateway to hell, was also affected by the accident, sending part of his essence to the puddle of water. The resulting effect was that this puddle of water suddenly became a combination of all these characters put together.
Regrettably, the psychological weight of having all these personnalities in one "mind" created multiple cleavages in the liquid's "self". It's Hyper-Intelligence keeps the identities in check most of the time, but from time to time, everything goes nuts.
Great designs. Truly, the only place for that convoluted water guy is an X-Men comic.
I have a nagging suspicion that Cable was created using the random generator...