Cool concept. I never get to play Hero.
Neither do I- I haven't played HERO since 4th. That hasn't stopped me from buying the books and staying savvy with the system.
And it's looking like this will never get played by my group either. When I mentioned what I was doing, there was a bit of a buzz. When asked what system I was doing it in, all I heard were crickets.
Still, this isn't putting me off. I'm liking the way things are coming together, so it's really fun to try to figure out the nastier things, like how to handle Regeneration...and how to stop it from happening.
It's going to take time, though. Because nearly everything in M:tG runs off of Mana, I have to essentially re-stat any standard mythical creature I want to use, even if there is already one in the Beastiary. And then there is figuring out what it will mean in HERO to be "tapped" like in M:tG.
So I don't see myself even being able to run it until near the end of 2012.
For black familiars Imps are obvious, but did anyone mention Thrulls?
I need to figure out if Thrulls are suitable for being PCs, or if they are NPC/Monster types. If they're the latter, maybe they'll be a good option.
If you want to simulate the somewhat chaotic card drawn nature of M:tg magic, you could steal a page from the 3e Crusader from the book of 9 swords. Each spell goes onto an index card, and the player draws one each round.
I'm going to avoid the randomness factor with the obvious exception of a PC being affected by a spell that messes with their minds.
You can apply that as a modifier to spell costs, making them cheaper, and that then gives you a mechanic to simulate the card manipulating spells like brain geyser or a mill stone.
I'm going to have a campaign Limitation on all spellcasting Multipowers that will limit each slot to 4 uses per combat. M:tG spells and other effects that would affect the players' hand, library, or graveyard will instead affect the number of uses available in the MP. There will probably have to be a randomizer built in to simulate something that cannot happen in HERO, namely, the effects actually getting land instead of a spell or item.
BTW for aquireing new spells, I would simulate the notion that planeswalkers magic (even if the PCs are not planeswalkers) draws upon actual places and creatures from elsewhere.
Not quite sure what you mean...here's what I'm thinking at this point (please correct me if we're not talking about the same thing, though).
Creatures summoned will be summoned from somewhere, unless they're some kind of illusion or conjuration (like the Avatars). Depending on the precise spell, this will be some kind of creature nearby or something drawn from another plane. Or something- still a work in progress.
Artifacts will be physical gear to be worn and used like in most other RPGs, unless the player explicitly makes it part of his spellcasting MP. This will have different consequences, of course. Worn & carried gear may be made temporarily or permanently non magical, or possibly even destroyed. However, while the gear you summoned could be called up on a whim, it could also simply be Dispelled.
This also lets monsters or exotic places themselves act as treasures. So if the PCs stumble upon Nentir Vale or the Maze or Ith, and they can get along well enough with the locals to perform their rituals without getting filled with arrows, then they can bind that location and pay their points to get the power.
My plan at this point is to have special locations act like cards in certain multiplayer tournaments. In one that used to be popular here in D/FW, there was a Deck monitored by the judge. At the start of each turn, he'd flip a card from that Deck, and whatever land or enchantment it was affected all the players in the tournament. So if Aether Storm were the card flipped, everyone had to deal with it. If, on the next turn, Mana Flare was in effect, everyone had lots of mana.
Translating that into this FantHERO game, that means that if the PCs go into Urza's Tower after getting Urza's Mine & Power Plant operational...
