Hero System ability design

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by 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.

Transform goes against power defense so it's a lot more effective against superhero and supervillain class opponents. Of course, that's probably not the major intended use case of this power.

I would just give in to the system and make it a stun only energy attack with a note that a target 'knocked unconscious' by this power is actually paralyzed, with a small limitation that says the power cannot reduce the target below zero (thus, if you take someone down and remove the current, they take a recovery on their next turn and are at positive stun again).