Heros Unlimited as Superheroic Fantasy

"Fantasy Heroes 

This is an option similar to the Medieval Heroes setting mentioned previously, but instead of being set within a historical Earth time frame, it is set in a world of fantasy, magic, and legend, such as the one presented in The Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game®, 2nd Edition . In this setting, dragons and magic are very real and the characters mesh easily into it with their super powers, psionics, and other strange abilities. The G.M. can make super abilities available to all inhabitants of this world, or have the player characters belong to one particular race or class of people that demonstrates these powers." 

- Heroes Unlimited GM Guide, page 70.

So, I want to be a dragon-man paladin in a fantasy world, have natural body armor, fire breath, a light blast power, extraordinary strength, fire and heat resistance, and karmic power to lead a "blessed by the gods" life where my natural resistances (and those around me) are heightened. He goes around, saves villages from skeleton armies, defeats demons, and battles the dark necromancer and other nefarious villains.

That paragraph in the Heroes Unlimited GM's Guide gets me thinking...

It would take me 10 minutes to create that exact character in Heros Unlimited, swapping out skill packages for the ones in Palladium Fantasy. Still, I can get there using a template for a mutant-animal superhero. My dragon-man will be unlike any other, and I could do another using an ice-dragon template and another character class inspiration, and get exactly what I want right from the start.

There is no buying $80 crowdfunded books for expanding the game.

There is no waiting for a book to see if the game designers will give this to me.

There is no praying; a class gives me the powers I want, and I am waiting for the power to unlock, forced to go on weeks of pretentious adventures to finally unlock something weak, and I can only use it once or twice per adventure.

There is no begrudgingly accepting weak powers because "they have to be balanced," and there is no being forced to agree to lame things like your flame breath only working once a day. Sorry, Sir Scalelord the Holy can blast holy light and breathe fire all day, blessing everyone around him at will without a short rest, thank you for nothing, Seattle game designers.

And my warlock black dragon-man can breathe pure darkness, summon demons, teleport, have a shadow form, and control minds. My elf can be a trained swordfighting expert. My gnome can be a tinker gnome with a set of steampunk fantasy armor. My dark elf can be a magic-infused rogue who can disappear at will, phase shift through solid walls, and throw huge fans of blades as an area attack. My bard has a sonic attack blast, mental charms, and can strum their lute to bring up a temporary force shield.

Whatever I want, I can have. It is such a simple concept. Why don't more people play fantasy as a superhero game? This is where it all ends up anyway, and you get what you want right from the start.

Why?

Why, why, why?

This is what D&D 4E promised us, fantasy superheroes, and what 5E pulled way back on, bringing back old-school class roles and making the game boring again. I want the superheroes! I want the instant gratification! I like having it all when I start, and being the uber-character who kicks down the dungeon door and snarls, asking, "Who wants some?"

That is why we loved D&D 4E, not for the rules, which were horribly broken, but for the design theory that says, "You start as a fantasy superhero, and it only gets better."

In D&D 5E, you start off as a mid-level OSR character, you get superpowers around 7th-10th level, and then the rules break, you can't die, and you get bored with the campaign. Anticipating having extraordinary powers is more fun than actually having them.

With a superhero game as the base, I get my fantasy world, and since every superhero is different, all the characters are unique, and your dragon-man won't be replaced by a paladin with the same exact powers. Guess what? My paladin dragon-man is the only one like him in the world. And I didn't need to spend thousands of dollars buying subclass options to expand the choice pool so I could have a semi-unique character.

No, he starts off unique, the only one of his kind, and that is fine by me.

In fact, this is what D&D promises, but it keeps delivering the same cookie-cutter characters, copies of each other. Heroes Unlimited has random super-hero character generation, and if I translate that into a fantasy setting, who knows what I will end up being? I just need a few drops of imagination to translate the powers and origin into a fantastic setting, and there I go.

Heroes Unlimited gives me what D&D 4E promised me.