Re: D20 Supers is what your looking for.
javadragon said:
I don't think any of the super’s games coming out will work that well with a D&D campaign except for D20 supers. And to be honest I don't think that many people are looking for a super’s game that can be run in FR (or whatever world they use). Not that there is anything wrong with that but it certainly isn't what I'm looking for. I really think “D20 Supers” is what you are looking for in a supers game.
Although it should noted that D20 Supers also introduces a new class called Hero (I may mistaken as to its name). So you will still have to incorporate a new class. However, I think they have balanced the powers in it with the core classes so it should play fine in D&D.
Hi. Please don't take this as a hijacking of your thread, but I just wanted to weigh in briefly as one of the writers of D20 Supers (which has been finally titled "Four-Color to Fantasy."
First, in our book, the Hero class is simply a way to balance super powers against the core classes. A level of Hero is balanced against a level of Fighter, of Rogue, of Sorcerer, etc.
Second, we decided to make the rules be an accessory to the core rules, rather than a wholly new rules set, for three main reasons. Number one is the fairly obvious fact that with Mutants & Masterminds, Godlike, Atomic City, Vigilance, and now Deeds not Words and at least one other pdf supers book, there are already a substantial number of wholly-supers games for people to choose from, but none that can just be added to an existing game.
Number two is that, way back in February or March, Russ (our site's own Morrus) was challenged that the core d20 rules couldn't handle superheroes. Of course, I think that it has been proven quite well that d20 can handle superheroes, by a number of other publishers as well as us, but still, so far no one else has tried to make the powers work within the same class/level structure as core D&D.
Finally, number three is that we wanted the rules to be eas to use by current players. You already have D&D, Spycraft, Call of Cthulhu, and soon-enough D20 Modern, plus tons of individual settings I could barely begin to list. A lot of people already play these games and settings, and in our opinion there is definitely a use for having rules to add super-power-like abilities to their games.
In D&D, there's always the popular blessings of the gods, or magical blood, strange arcane accidents, or demonic curses--all of them could use rules to adjudicate how much stronger your character might be with any new powers he gains.
In Spycraft, perhaps your agents are trying to stop a group of super-soldiers with incredible powers, or they're fighting to stop incredibly powerful alien monsters from breaking out of an underground lab, or maybe the agency wants them to see if there is any validity in the mystical mind-over-body powers of Uzbekistani monks. Better yet, maybe your own character gets a permanent gadget installed into his body to give him inexhaustible endurance and the ability to shoot lasers from his eyes. Our rules help you balance that.
In Call of Cthulhu, there are more ways to be touched by the mythos than to lose your sanity. You might bargain a bit of your life force in exchange for alterations to your body--fiendish wings, tentacled extra limbs, the ability to see in total darkness. Or you might try to stop a mad scientist who has grafted animal body parts onto human beings, and inserted power gems into their skulls to let them travel faster than the speed of shadow.
And of course, with D20 modern, you can always play a perfectly normal superhero campaign. Heck, if you're willing to bend the rules a little, you could even use core D&D rules for a modern superhero game. Soldiers and thugs might be fighters, ninjas could be rogues, and we even provide a new class--the Specialist--which provides a PC-powered equivalent to the Expert class. Thus, you have your combat-oriented, your sneaky-oriented, and your skill-oriented classes. Add in the rules for super powers, and you can make almost any character concept that you'd need for the modern day. Indeed, since D&D already has rules for sorcerers and monks, you can easily add in other staples of superheroic storytelling like magi and master martial artists.
So don't sell us short; we're adaptable. We might even be more useful to the average gamer, who wouldn't consider buying a wholly-superhero game, but might take a look at a book that lets them add new nifty powers to their characters.