Hero System ability design

[whswhs]

In the course of thinking about this, I had a further look at Transform. It has you roll dice as for Killing Attack, counting the roll against BODY; but if you get up to twice the normal full BODY, instead of the target dying, they are changed into something else. And I sort of see the logic of that. But on the other hand, killing someone is essentially permanent; but Transform is written so that they will return to their normal form, either by "healing" the lost BODY, or by some special event such as a kiss from a princess or a session of abreactive hypnotherapy or something. Those don't seem to be on a par.

If you inflict normal full BODY with a Killing Attack, the target is dying, but they could be prevented from dying by being healed or treated medically. That seems sort of parallel to a Transform that can be undone by healing. And permanent change to a dead body seems akin to permanent change to a frog or a marble statue. So I'm thinking about having 1x BODY be sufficient for transformation, and 2x BODY for permanent transformation.

Not that that's a good fit to electric shock's paralyzing effects; healing BODY takes much too long for recovery from shock. But I can think of other applications for it.