Unless otherwise specifically altered or contradicted in these house rules, the rules found in the 6th Edition Hero System apply at all times.

Definition of "Mental Powers":  Mental Powers are those Powers that have psionic or mental special effects.  Any power that is purchased with the Attack vs. Alternate Defense Advantage to use OMCV against DMCV and has a Psionic is considered a Mental Power.  Any power purchased with the Psionic Limitation is considered a Mental Power.

Experience Point Awards:  Experience point awards will be made at the completion of an entire storyline, not the completion of a session.  Writing fiction pieces, transcriptions of media interviews, or journal/diary entries featuring your character is worth 1 experience point per item written.  Particularly creative and entertaining writing can earn an extra point.

Massive Damage: A character who suffers more than half his normal Stun and/or Body score in damage (after defenses) in a single attack must make a successful Constitution Roll to remain conscious.  If rendered unconscious by such an attack, the character recovers on his next phase, and has not lost any Endurance from this unconsciousness.  However, if the massive damage places the character below 0 Stun, the normal rules for being unconcious are in effect.

Mental Powers and Classes of Mind: By default, mental powers automatically affect the class of minds to which the possessor of the mental powers belongs (e.g., a human affects human minds, a machine affects machine minds, and so on).  Affecting an additional class of mind is a +10 point adder as always, with the exception of alien minds.  Since each alien species is different, the mentalist must purchase the adder for every species he wishes to affect.  The first alien species costs +10 points as always, but each species after costs only +3 points.  It should be noted that the "Human" class of minds include sentient apes, Pelkons, and Tautiq, due to the mechanical similarity between the brains of those species, as well as to the similarity of their thought patterns.

Pushing A Power:

• Characters may only push their powers when it is appropriately dramatic to do so.  They may not push their powers just to get "a little extra edge".
• A pushed power counts as a presence attack, when appropriate.
• Powers which have an Endurance Cost of 0, or which have a set cost (like Desolidification) cannot be pushed.

The Rounding Rule:  When calculating the cost of powers through the use of Advantages and Limitations, any fractions generated are always rounded off to the benefit of the player.

Special Defenses:  Special defenses are considered Resistant for the purposes of the Killing damage that is applied to non-standard defenses (such as a Ranged Killing Attack that is purchased with the Based on Ego Combat Value Advantage).

Selling Back Characteristics:

• No more than two characteristics may be sold back per character.

• Characteristics can never be sold back below 0.

• Characters who sell back their Endurance are not permitted to purchase the Endurance Reserve power, and vice versa.

Dexterity: It is difficult to train a person to be more agile and dexterous.  Rather than spending experience points to increase a character’s Dexterity, it is recommended that the player purchase skill levels instead.

Constitution: Only To Determine When The Character Is Stunned is a -1 Limitation.

Body:

• Only To Stave Off The Point of Death is a -1 Limitation.

Ego: Characters who do not qualify as mentalists or mystics are limited to a maximum Ego of 23.

Minimum Skills:  All characters are required to have at least 20 points of skills.

Related Skills:  If a character has spent at least 3 points on a Skill that is either a specialization of another skill, or is obviously closely related to another skill, the character effectively has an 8 or less roll with the Skill of which the first Skill is a specialization or close relation.  For example: Civil War Man has spent 3 points on Knowledge Skill: History of the Civil War.  Since this Skill is a specialization of Knowledge Skill: History, Civil War Man effectively also has an 8 or less roll in Knowledge Skill: History.  These free familiarities are just like Everyman Skills in that if the character wants to improve them, he has to pay the full price for the skill.

Interaction Skill  Differences:  Due to the differences in culture, evolution, body language cues, and so on, a -2 penalty applies to all Interaction skills between Humans and Aliens.  For example, a Human character trying to use his Persuasion skill on a Tautiq NPC suffers a -2 penalty because of the alien nature of his target.  The same applies to a Tautiq PC trying to use Persuasion on a human.

Skill Enhancers:

• Skill Enhancers must be purchased during character construction or not at all.  In addition, the possession of a skill enhancer must be explained in the character's background.

• The Expert skill enhancer from Dark Champions is being used.

Cloak: This Ego-based skill is, in essence, a form of "Mental Stealth".  It is used to hide the use of a character's mental powers from persons with mental awareness.  It reflects subtle use of mental powers, so cautiously that no one notices them.  Cloak cannot be used to hide a mental attack, any more than normal Stealth can be used to hide the effects of a regular attack.  Cloak can be used to make mental signatures and traces harder to locate.  If the mentalist uses Cloak when using a mental power on someone, another mentalist trying to use Telepathy in order to locate his or her signature must make a Perception Roll in a Skill vs. Skill contest with the first mentalist's Cloak skill.

Cloak does not hide a mental power which has the Limitation Visible from normal sight; it only hides mental powers from mental senses.  Of course, as with normal Stealth, if someone who can sense mental powers is "looking" directly at the attack, Cloak will not serve to hide it from them.  The Invisible Power Effects advantage is required to do that.  It is harder to Cloak a large use of mental power than a small one -- Subtle uses of mental powers are easier to hide.  The GM should apply a -1 to the Cloak Skill Roll for every 10 Active Points of mental power being used.

The GM should apply situational modifiers, both positive and negative, to the use of the Cloak skill.  For instance, it is easier to hide your use of a mental power when there's a lot of psionic "background noise" going on (a crowd, for example).

Cryptography: The Cryptography skill can be used by characters to represent their ability to translate documents or recordings of languages in which they have no familiarity or fluency.  Using Cryptography in this manner usually requires extra time and reference materials.

Related Skills:  If a character has spent at least 3 points on a Skill that is either a specialization of another skill, or is obviously closely related to another skill, the character effectively has an 8 or less roll with the Skill of which the first Skill is a specialization or close relation.  For example: Civil War Man has spent 3 points on Knowledge Skill: History of the Civil War.  Since this Skill is a specialization of Knowledge Skill: History, Civil War Man effectively also has an 8 or less roll in Knowledge Skill: History.  These free familiarities are just like Everyman Skills in that if the character wants to improve them, he has to pay the full price for the skill.

Interaction Skill  Differences:  Due to the differences in culture, evolution, body language cues, and so on, a -2 penalty applies to all Interaction skills between Humans and Aliens.  For example, a Human character trying to use his Persuasion skill on a Tautiq NPC suffers a -2 penalty because of the alien nature of his target.  The same applies to a Tautiq PC trying to use Persuasion on a human.

Inventor:  Inventor (Spell Research) is a specific form of the Inventor skill.  It is good for devising new spells on short notice and figuring out how to use captured magic items.  Spell Research can also double as a magic Power Pool control roll.  Like the Inventor skill or any Power Pool Control skill, Spell Research rolls take a -1 penalty for every 10 Active Points in whatever the skill is used upon.  Inventor (Spell Research) has the standard cost structure for the Inventor skill..

Cloak: This Ego-based skill is, in essence, a form of "Mental Stealth".  It is used to hide the use of a character's mental powers from persons with mental awareness.  It reflects subtle use of mental powers, so cautiously that no one notices them.  Cloak cannot be used to hide a mental attack, any more than normal Stealth can be used to hide the effects of a regular attack.  Cloak can be used to make mental signatures and traces harder to locate.  If the mentalist uses Cloak when using a mental power on someone, another mentalist trying to use Telepathy in order to locate his or her signature must make a Perception Roll in a Skill vs. Skill contest with the first mentalist's Cloak skill.

Cloak does not hide a mental power which has the Limitation Visible from normal sight; it only hides mental powers from mental senses.  Of course, as with normal Stealth, if someone who can sense mental powers is "looking" directly at the attack, Cloak will not serve to hide it from them.  The Invisible Power Effects advantage is required to do that.  It is harder to Cloak a large use of mental power than a small one -- Subtle uses of mental powers are easier to hide.  The GM should apply a -1 to the Cloak Skill Roll for every 10 Active Points of mental power being used.

The GM should apply situational modifiers, both positive and negative, to the use of the Cloak skill.  For instance, it is easier to hide your use of a mental power when there's a lot of psionic "background noise" going on (a crowd, for example).

Cryptography: The Cryptography skill can be used by characters to represent their ability to translate documents or recordings of languages in which they have no familiarity or fluency.  Using Cryptography in this manner usually requires extra time and reference materials.

Facade: This Ego-based skill is, in essence, a mental form of the Disguise.  It is used to change the "appearance" of mental signatures and traces.  If the character makes his Facade roll, he may make his mental signature resemble that of another.  Alternately, Facade can be used to simply muddle a mental signature or trace to the point that it is unrecognizable.  Another mentalist using Telepathy to search for a signature or trace that has been covered up with Facade must first make a Perception roll to detect the fact that the signature or trace has been altered.  This is a Skill vs. Skill contest.

Characters can more reliably hide mental traces with the Invisible Power Effects Advantage.  Facade can also be used to mask a character's surface thoughts from a telepathic scan.  The character must make a Skill vs. Skill roll against the telepath's Ego Roll.  If the character succeeds, he may disguise his surface thoughts.  Deep hidden thoughts and subconscious thoughts cannot be hidden in this way.

Language Skills:

• Characters automatically gain literacy in any language they have paid at least three points for, assuming that the language has a written component.

• For Braille, American Sign Language, and other "languages" which are actually alternate ways to communicate with languages one already knows, a character should spend 1 Character Point for Literacy (Braille) or Fluency (ASL), or the like.  That allows the character to use that method of communication with any Language he knows.  For sign languages like the one used by the Plains Indians, which are separate and distinct languages of their own, normal Languages rules apply.

• Humans and Aliens adds +1 to the cost of each level of fluency when learning each other's languages.  For example, a Tautiq would have to spend 5 points to speak English idiomatically.

Professional Skills: A character with a Professional Skill is required to also possess other skills which are appropriate for that profession.  For example, a character with Professional Skill: Auto Mechanic should also possess the Mechanics skill to at least some degree, as well as other appropriate skills, such as Knowledge Skill: Automobile Makes and Models, and so on.

Science Skills: Science skills dealing with medicine, biology, and the study of living beings in whatever fashion must be bought separately for both native Terran life and Alien life.  For example, a doctor who wanted to be able to treat both Human and Tautiq patients would have to have both Science Skill: Human Medicine and Science Skill: Tautiq Medicine.  Otherwise, the character suffers penalties to his skill rolls; the greater the anatomical differences between the species, the greater the penalty.

Skill Levels: Skill levels cannot be applied to Talents.

Transport Familiarity:

• For the purposes of this Skill, riding animals (such as horses, camels, and so on) are not considered modes of transportation.  Purchase the Riding skill instead,

• Scuba is a means to breathe underwater while the character is swimming.  If the player wishes his character to be Scuba certified, he should purchase Knowledge Skill: Scuba.

Veil: An Ego-based skill which is, in essence, a form of mental Concealment.  It is used to hide mental signatures and traces.  If the character makes his Veil roll, all signatures and traces are hidden.  A mentalist using Telepathy to search for them must make a Perception roll to detect the hidden signatures or traces; this is a Skill vs. Skill contest.

Weapon Familiarity: Characters who carry weapons (guns, knives, and so on) as part of their powers and have paid points for those weapons get the appropriate Weapon Familiarities for free.

Contacts:

• A contact may be purchased without being defined.  In the course of an adventure, when the players are trying to figure out "do we have a friend in such-and-such department of the government" (or profession, or country), the player whose character has an undefined contact could then ask the GM, "Is it reasonable for my undefined contact to be someone who fits the bill?" If the GM agrees, the Contact is defined from that point onward.

• Overall Skill Levels may be applied to a Contact roll.  No other type of skill level may be applied to Contact rolls.

• If a Contact is particularly difficult to reach or communicate with even when the character succeeds with his roll – for example, it takes hours to exchange messages with him due to his remote location or elaborate security procedures, the character can deduct -1 Character Point from the cost of the Contact.

Favors:

• Generally, people who owe a character favors will be Contacts at the very least, as it is odd and rare for complete strangers to owe each other anything.

• It is possible to take a Favor without defining it when it is purchased.  In the course of an adventure, when the players are trying to figure out "do we have a friend in such-and-such department of the government who owes me one" (or profession, or country), the player whose character has an undefined favor could then ask the GM "Is it reasonable for my undefined favor to be from someone who fits the bill?" If the GM agrees, the Favor is defined at that point.

Follower: A Non-Player Character may be a Follower, or he may be a Dependent NPC.  He can never be both.  While a Follower can sometimes get into trouble, and a DNPC can sometimes be helpful, for the most part if the NPC is primarily helpful he's a Follower and if the NPC is primarily a hindrance, he's a DNPC.  Followers may never have Followers of their own.

Fringe Benefit: Fringe Benefit: False Identity, Fringe Benefit: Business Rank, Fringe Benefit: Criminal Rank, Fringe Benefit: Government Rank, Fringe Benefit: Law Enforcement Rank, Fringe Benefit: Military Rank and Fringe Benefit: Security Clearance (all from Dark Champions) are being used.  Details can be found on pages 84 - 88 of the Dark Champions Book.

Combat Luck:  Player Characters may not begin with more than two levels of Combat Luck.  Generally one level is sufficient for most character conceptions.  Characters whose entire concept revolves around being lucky may purchase up to four levels with approval of the GM.

Dark Champions Talents: The Combat Ready Talent is being used.  Details can be found on page 91 of the 5th Edition Dark Champions book.

Fantasy Hero Talents: The Animal Companion, Beast Speech, Berserk Fury, Evasive, Fascination, Fearless, Inspire, Magesight, Rapid Healing, and Skill Master Talents are available for use in the Global Guardians Universe.  Details can be found on pages 102-108 of the 5th Edition Fantasy Hero book.

Lightning Reflexes: Mentalists and Mystics can buy Lightning "Reflexes" which apply to EGO instead of DEX at the regular cost.

Minor Talents: For the most part, Minor Talents are a very limited form of Luck.  Call them "Murphy's Law in Reverse".  Its just one of those tiny ways in which life seems to work out for the character.  Each Minor Talent costs 1 point.  Some possible minor talents include: Always Gets A Good Seat At A Restaurant, And Never Gets A Bad Waiter, Always Has Correct Change, Always Picks The Fastest Line, Never Sunburns, Never Gets Picked For Jury Duty, Never Receives Junkmail Or Spam Email, Remembers His Dreams, etc.  There are an infinite number of possible ways to define Minor Talents; however, these abilities should be too rare or trivial to be of much use to the character in anything but specific situations.

Universal Contact (20 Points): This Talent is for the character who seems to know someone everywhere.  For 20 points, he is considered to have an 11 or less chance at having a Contact in any situation, +1 to the roll for 1 point.  The GM decides on the usefulness of the Contact based on the flow of the game and the situation.  Generally, most Contacts are relatively "low level" connections, but more influential connections can be seen if the GM so chooses.  As always, common sense should be used in conjunction with this; if there is no possible way the character could have a Contact in a particular situation, then the GM should not feel required to throw logic out the window and grant a Contact anyway.

Universal Scholar (20 Points): This Talent is for characters whose knowledge covers such a broad range that they can reasonably be said to know something about almost everything.  For 20 Character Points, he is considered to have the equivalent of an 11 or less roll in every subject that would be bought as a Knowledge Skill (except Area Knowledge skills; see Universal Traveler).  This roll can be increased by +1 for 1 point.  As always, common sense should be used in conjunction with this; if there is no possible way the character could have knowledge of a particular subject, then the GM should not feel required to throw logic out the window and grant such knowledge anyway.

Universal Scientist (20 Points): This Talent is for characters whose mastery of science covers such a broad range that they can reasonably be said to know the basics of almost every science.  For 20 Character Points, he is considered to have the equivalent of an 11 or less roll in every subject that would be bought as a Science Skill.  This roll can be increased by +1 for 1 point.  As always, common sense should be used in conjunction with this; if there is no possible way the character could have skill in a particular Science, then the GM should not feel required to throw logic out the window and grant such skill anyway.

Universal Tradesman (20 Points): This Talent is for characters who've seemingly done everything at one time or another or who at least seem to be able to pick up any profession almost instantly.  For 20 Character Points, he is considered to have the equivalent of an 11 or less roll in every subject that would be bought as a Professional Skill.  This roll can be increased by +1 for 1 point.  As always, common sense should be used in conjunction with this; if there is no possible way the character could have skill in a particular Profession, then the GM should not feel required to throw logic out the window and grant such skill anyway.

Universal Traveler (20 Points): This Talent is for characters whose travels have seemingly taken them everywhere.  For 20 Character Points, he is considered to have the equivalent of an 11 or less roll in every subject that would be bought as an Area Knowledge or Culture Knowledge Skill.  This roll can be increased by +1 for 1 point.  As always, common sense should be used in conjunction with this; if there is no possible way the character could have knowledge of a particular area or culture, then the GM should not feel required to throw logic out the window and grant such knowledge anyway.

Absorption:

• A character cannot use his own powers and abilities on himself in order to absorb them.  In other words, you cannot Blast yourself in order to power your Absorption.

• A single instance of Absorption cannot feed into itself.  In other words, you cannot purchase your Absorption so that it increases your Absorption amount, unless you buy two instances of Absorption.

Desolidification:

• A character who is Desolidified may always be affected by any power purchased with the Affects Desolidified Advantage, any non-physical power which does not cause direct damage (such as Images, Darkness, or Flash attacks that lack physical components) and Mental Powers.  In addition, they can be affected by any attack power that is linked to one of those powers if the special effects would so dictate.

• Characters who are Desolidified can affect the physical world with attacks that have mental special effects (with the exception of Psychokinesis), as well as any non-physical power which does not cause direct damage (such as Images, Darkness, or Flash attacks).

• Technically a character with Desolidification can turn his power on and off to make people miss as a zero phase action relying on a good Fast Draw or Dexterity Roll.  This is abusive and is not allowed.

Dispel: Characteristics cannot be Dispelled.  They may, however, be Suppressed.

Duplication:

• Note that if the original character is killed, but has at least one active duplicate in existence, that duplicate may take over as the "original character" automatically.  (Though the GM may want to consider storylines involving Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, as the shock of the original's death will likely have some effect on the character.)

• Duplicates Can Duplicate (+10 Points): With this adder, any duplicate of a character with this power can also duplicate, up to the character's maximum number of duplicates possible.

Enhanced Senses: Unless specifically constructed otherwise, all characters are assumed to have the five basic human senses.

Entangle: Entangles are not automatically considered to have an area effect.  If you wish your Entangle to have an area effect, you have to purchase it with the Area Effect Advantage.

Hand-to-Hand Attack:

• Strength is not additive to the Hand-to-Hand Attack power if the latter is bought with advantages while the former isn't.  For example, Martial Arts Man buys +3d6 Hand-to-Hand Attack with the Armor Piercing Advantage.  Because his base Strength is not also bought as Armor Piercing, the Hand-to-Hand Attack is considered a separate, non-additive power.

• Hand-to-Hand Attack does not affect Hand Killing Attacks, NNDs, or anything other than Normal Damage done by the character's Strength and Normal Damage from Martial Arts maneuvers.

Life Support: Life Support (Longevity) cannot be taken with any variation of the Costs Endurance Limitation, the Only in Hero Identity Limitation, the Battlesuit Limitation, or on less than all of a character's multiple forms (if any).  Either the character is immortal, or he isn't; "part-time" immortality is not permitted.

Multiform:

• The most expensive form (not including the cost of the Multiform) pays the cost of the Multiform power.  If two or more forms have the distinction of being "most expensive" by having identical (pre-multiform cost) costs, the player may choose which one pays the cost of the Multiform.

• Depending on the concept of the character possessing the Multiform power, the various forms may be required to share some or all Skills, Perquisites, and Psychological Limitations.

• When a Multiform character earns experience, the points are added to the base form's total.  Note that all the forms are still one character; a character with three forms does not earn three times the experience as a single form character.

Telepathy: Assuming a pre-existing mental connection, when used only for communication using Telepathy is a 0 phase action, just like any other soliloquy.

Transform:

• Transforms which can create anything useful will require an appropriate skill roll.  For example, Transforming a cement block into a TV set would require an Electronics Roll.  If the roll fails, you’d end up with something that looked like a TV but did not actually work.  Transforming your handwriting into someone else’s would require a Forgery roll, and so on.

• Transformation attacks affect Entangles and can affect Barriers depending on the special effects of each.

• Transformation attacks against inanimate objects have an automatic doubling of effects.  In other words, double the amount of Body rolled by the Transformation attack is considered changed by the attack when it is made against an inanimate object.

Armor Piercing:

• Armor Piercing Only vs Non-Resistant Defenses is a +1/4 Advantage.

• Semi-Armor Piercing (+1/4), as described in the 5th Edition Dark Champions book, is being used.

Dependence: Characters who are addicts are very rarely heroic.  Please keep this in mind when choosing this Disadvantage.

Dependent NPC: A Non-Player Character may be a Follower, or he may be a Dependent NPC.  He can never be both.  While a Follower can sometimes get into trouble, and a DNPC can sometimes be helpful, for the most part if the NPC is primarily helpful he's a Follower and if the NPC is primarily a hindrance, he's a DNPC.

Distinctive Feature:

• Hair color is not distinctive enough to be taken as a Distinctive Feature, unless your hair color is a shade not normally found in human beings (such as neon orange or lime green).

• Belonging to a particular ethnic group is not distinctive enough to gain this disadvantage.

Hunted and Watched:

• No hunted should be taken higher than 11 or less, or else the campaign will eventually devolve into "Which Hunter is going to show up this week?"  Watched may still be taken at 14 or less.

• Any Hunter or Watcher that has been invented by a player for his character must be approved beforehand by the GM.  If the new NPC is approved, the player of the character in question must provide a full background and character sheet for the Hunter by the time the character enters play.

• Floating Hunteds: Players may take Hunteds which are not defined as particular groups or individual people, but rather types of groups or people.  For example, rather than taking Hunted by the Frazetti Crime Family, or Hunted by the Floating Blossom Yakuza Gang, the character can take Hunted by Any Organized Crime Organization.

• Being Hunted By A Group: 

  • Groups In General: In general, a group has more resources than a single person, and is capable of causing more mischief to a character than a single person.  Thus, group Hunteds are always considered More Powerful to all but the most world-shaking characters.

  • Governments and Government Agencies: With very few exceptions (none of whom are Player Characters), no single being can marshal the power and resources of a government or even a government agency.  Thus, any government or government agency taken as a Hunted or a Watched by a character is automatically More Powerful, generally not restricted to a single area, and automatically has Non-Combat Influence.

  • TAROT: Tarot is quite easily as powerful and resourceful as a government (and compared to some governments, is even more powerful and resourceful.  Thus, Tarot is always More Powerful, has no area restrictions, and automatically has Non-Combat Influence.