What system would you use to play My Hero Academia?

[Miz_Liz]

Some friends and I are all very into the anime "My Hero Academia," which is a show about a school of kids with weird and interesting super powers. We're trying to figure out what the right system to play a game set in that world would be. The first one that comes to mind is of course the Hero System, but the books for it are staggeringly expensive. What else might work for a world where having super powers is kinda the norm?

[exelsisxax]

Mutants and Masterminds (https://mutantsandmasterminds.com/). There's an SRD (https://www.d20herosrd.com/) to check out if you don't want to make a risky investment.

[comk59]

Some friends and I are all very into the anime "My Hero Academia," which is a show about a school of kids with weird and interesting super powers. We're trying to figure out what the right system to play a game set in that world would be. The first one that comes to mind is of course the Hero System, but the books for it are staggeringly expensive. What else might work for a world where having super powers is kinda the norm?

Prowlers and Paragons maybe? It's cheap, easy to run, has a lot of narrative elements, and transitions pretty smoothly between humans and metahumans. It's biggest downside is that a human with the right equipment can go toe to toe with supers, and that might not fit the world you want to have.

Edit: P&P's other big draw is the power trick system, which lets players spend a narrative currency to do a cool thing with their power that you couldn't normally do. This is generally something like using your flight skill to lift something instead of your strength skill, or *ahem* say, using explosions generated from your hands to fly, using your Blast skill as a Flight skill for one turn.

[Son of A Lich!]

Mutants and Masterminds. full stop.

It will require your GM to look over the builds, but that is true of all Point Buy systems.

You can power stunt in M&M as well, or you could have Midoriya use one-for-all and bust a finger by having a linked damage affect with the flaw (damages Self) and exceed PL limits. You can have a boost power that gives other people low ranks of flight with the flaw of uncontrolled to make a Uravity build. You can make a ice blast, create and shield power, that is ablative until you use fire powers.

You will likely get a few GURPS suggestions here too, but M&M is literally designed for this kind of game.

Also they have a Hero High expansion book, just food for thought.

[Tvtyrant]

M&M with the caveat that it is very, very complicated to build characters well within. I would auto-max everyone's attack and defense bonuses and have them focus on powers because there is always that one person (me) who gets greedy with spending on powers and dies constantly.

[Maat Mons]

You will likely get a few GURPS suggestions here too, but M&M is literally designed for this kind of game.

Isn't Mutants and Masterminds linearly-costed?

I really prefer systems where each new rank of an ability costs more than the last one. This means that, eventually, picking up the 1st level of some new abilities is cheap compared to continuing to hyper-specialize. I like a system that encourages well-rounded characters.



It's been a long time since I player GURPS Supers. But my vague recollections seems to be fond.

[Marywn]

I have played a system called Masks, though I don't know how good it is compared to M&M because I haven't played anything with M&M(Maybe I'll try it?)

[Knaight]

Right now? Fudge - mostly because I had an idea on how to do superpowers a few days ago that work well for arbitrarily esoteric powers, and this is full of arbitrarily esoteric powers. Mutants and Masterminds will certainly work though.


I have played a system called Masks, though I don't know how good it is compared to M&M because I haven't played anything with M&M(Maybe I'll try it?)

Masks is much better for its specific niche, in terms of both style and content. This is potentially close enough to fit, but you'd have to hack it a little. Granted, it's a system extremely amenable to doing just that.

[Marywn]

It's alot more open-ended I think. Though to be fair, I've only played Masks in this type of systems.

[Son of A Lich!]

Isn't Mutants and Masterminds linearly-costed?

I really prefer systems where each new rank of an ability costs more than the last one. This means that, eventually, picking up the 1st level of some new abilities is cheap compared to continuing to hyper-specialize. I like a system that encourages well-rounded characters.



It's been a long time since I player GURPS Supers. But my vague recollections seems to be fond.

The short answer is Yes, the long answer is No (But technically, it's the opposite).

There are a number of abilities in M&M that refer to a chart so you can get astronomical numbers. The classic example is Telepathy; at rank 18, you can reach anyone in the galaxy, at 19th, you can reach anyone in the universe, and at 20, you can reach anyone in the multiverse (Or something like that, I'm AFB right now. It pops up occasionally with Bathroom Psychic builds).

Effectively, each rank doubles your previous rank. In 2e M&M, it was measured 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 50 etc.

But for a Boku no hero academia game, I would limit people at somewhere around PL 6-8. Then it's learning to use AP (Alternate Powers) on your existing powers to expand your utility belt of abilities.

So, Uravity may have a power that grants limited flight to other people, with an AP that she can use as tactile telekinesis with continuous, and an AP for flight. she could also have a power that allows her to do an area attack like shown in the tournament arc.

This could easily be done with wide arrays and allow her some advantages to show her martial arts training, with something like 20 pps. She's not going to conquer the world, but she can perform as she needs to and replicate her abilities from the show/manga.

I house rule using 3d6's instead of the D20 (Because a D20 makes for really swingy combats), and that might be more reasonable for lower level characters.

She is perfectly well-rounded with a unique quirk, she isn't over powered and she is capable of providing support to her team like the boss she is. *nod* plus ultra.

[Max_Killjoy]

HERO 5th edition, with Champions and Teen Supers, if you can find them.

[Pauly]

If you’re looking for a simple system BASH works well. It is a bit less crunchy and a bit more dependent on the GM’s interpretations,

[Martin Greywolf]

FATE. I use it for pretty much everything, but in case of HeroAka, you have an added problem of excessively weird superpowers system. They are inborn and can't be trained except they sort of can, they are completely unrooted in science except when they are and so on.

Aspects and compels would also work really well with the political aspect of HeroAka.

[Miz_Liz]

If you’re looking for a simple system BASH works well. It is a bit less crunchy and a bit more dependent on the GM’s interpretations,

Ooh, I've never heard of BASH. What is that like?


FATE. I use it for pretty much everything, but in case of HeroAka, you have an added problem of excessively weird superpowers system. They are inborn and can't be trained except they sort of can, they are completely unrooted in science except when they are and so on.

Aspects and compels would also work really well with the political aspect of HeroAka.

The thought hadn't occured to me to just take FATE and run with it. Hmmm.

[Rhedyn]

Isn't ICONS a Fudge build?

[Pauly]

Ooh, I've never heard of BASH. What is that like?



The thought hadn't occured to me to just take FATE and run with it. Hmmm.


Basically its 2d6 plus modifiers against target difficulty of 9
Your characteristics are strength, mind and agilitu.
Then there are 50 or so special skills which are your superpowers.

https://watermark3.rpgnow.com/pdf_previews/65882-sample.pdf

The GM needs to be be able to make decisions on the fly. Because the actions are described fairly loosely (eg The character is stong enough to pick up a car - what happens when the bad guy is in a black oversized SUV? It’s up to the GM to work out if the player can, cannot or partially pick up the SUV.

[Knaight]

Isn't ICONS a Fudge build?

It is, and it's solid. It's just not necessarily the one I'd use, which is technically the question asked. For a system recommended though, yeah, Icons.

[Goaty14]

I like a system that encourages well-rounded characters.

But aren't half of everybody in BNHA super specialized? Pretty sure none of them are anything like superman (immunity to bullets, shoots lasers out of eyes, flight, etc)

[Dire Roc]

I actually played in a campaign based on the series, although it eventually died at the hands of conflicting schedules.

We used Mutants and Masterminds since we knew it well, and I thought it worked great. If your story has a student from the support course you can use a lot of devices (essentially powers with a flaw where you might be disarmed or not have them with you) for your build instead of normal powers. The system of arrays and power stunts can allow for a lot of different tricks in a character with a versatile quirk, when watching Endeavor's fight vs. the Nomus, pretty much my whole playgroup focused on his tricks that would be power stunts.

An absolute ability like Eraserhead or Shinso's have some difficulty being modeled on the PC side of the screen, since most things in M&M give some sort of roll for resistance. The other limiter would be that power level caps are pretty hard to go beyond (Plus Ultra!) so anyone trying to pull of a trick that does so by more than a few points will have to coordinate with the GM or do some very cheesy building.

Its also worth mentioning that like many point-buy systems, the GM will want to carefully review a character's capabilities, both to make sure they didn't forget something like topping off their defenses, and to avoid anything too crazy. I'm pretty sure a high-power M&M game my GM never started owes its death to my robot whose opening move for combat was to crack the planet in half.

[Rhedyn]

As much as I would normally advocate Savage Worlds, this setting doesn't have "normal people", only abnormal people don't have some sort of power so the fleshed out rules for normal people are entirely unnecessary.

Something like ICONS or Fate seem best. Idk if you need Hero System or GURPS for something like this but that is an option as well.

[Segev]

I have not found Mutants & Masterminds 3e to take more effort to build PCs in than D&D 3.5, and it is probably the best-designed purpose-built system for exactly the kind of setting that My Hero Academia represents that is out there, in my opinion.

[Grod_The_Giant]

If you want to focus on the "superhero" part of "teenage superheroes," definitely Mutants and Masterminds. Even beyond the usual "it's a great flexible superhero system" stuff, it seems perfectly suited to this particular style of game. My Hero Academia, at least as much as I've seen, centers very much on the protagonists using their powers in interesting, unexpected ways, and M&M is perfect for that. It's got the flexibility to model more-or-less anything you can imagine, without going either extremely narrative and vague (like you'd have to do in a Fate game) or "stop the game" level crunchy like I hear HERO/CHAMPIONS can be.

On the other hand, if you want to focus on the "teenage" part, Masks: A New Generation would be pretty fitting. It's a Powered By The Apocalypse system, so pretty much a total opposite on the "narrative vs simulationist" scale, but PbtA games tend to be rock-solid, and a quick scan of the TV Tropes page for the system lines up quite well with the MHA setting and storytelling.

[Andor13]

Teenagers From Outer Space would work, assuming you can find some of the original stone tablets the game was printed on.

...

I'm old. :smalleek:

[Segev]

Teenagers From Outer Space would work, assuming you can find some of the original stone tablets the game was printed on.

...

I'm old. :smalleek:

It's a bit stylized for the genre, but if you want the high school antics more than the superpowers, you can shoehorn the alien stuff into superpowers and the system does support the social side of things better than many options.

[Gadzooks]

I don't know how well it would work, but there's an older system called Champion for superheroes. I looked it over once or twice and it might be good.

[Max_Killjoy]

I don't know how well it would work, but there's an older system called Champion for superheroes. I looked it over once or twice and it might be good.

The aforementioned HERO system, for which Champions is the superhero genre "material".

[Milo v3]

Champions as far as I could glean from when I read it was "Do you want M&M but even more crunchy and no power levels?"

[Max_Killjoy]

Champions as far as I could glean from when I read it was "Do you want M&M but even more crunchy and no power levels?"

Champions is more open-ended because there are no hard-defined power levels. More falls on the GM and players in terms of finding the right point levels both for total character and individual powers.

As for "do you want X, but...", based on which came first, it's more that M&M is "let's kinda do what HERO / Champions does, but using something more d20ish for the mechanics and with more assumptions built in and more narrative fiat".