Heroes Wear Masks – Avalon Games
PDF only, 208 pages & 1 page of legal information. The download includes both the normal version of the game and a “printer friendly” version.
Heroes wear masks is a Super Hero Genre modification for the Pathfinder Role Playing Game.
The artwork varies in quality from quite good to very poor. For some reason, the authors elected to put a fancy boarder around every page, which seems like a waste of space.
Positives
It uses character levels, experience points, hit dice, armor class, etc. Most of the skills and feats from Pathfinder are also carried over, but some (such as Extra Mercy modify powers that no longer exist). Several new skills and feats that modernize the setting are also introduced, such as Drive and Investigate, There are four “races” (Human/Enhanced Human/Mutant/Strange Visitor) as well as six “classes” (Acrobat/Brick/Combat Expert/Detective/Energy Manipulator/Super Human). For advanced play, there are also three “prestige classes” (Mastermind/Super Hero/Super Villain).
For the GM, it also uses challenge ratings to help balance encounters as well as access to creatures from the Bestiary that actually fit in the genre, like dinosaurs, animals, demons, etc. There are also a few NPC specific classes (Assault Trooper/Henchman/Police Officer/Thug).
Negatives
This games really wants some more tables, such as a summaries of all the available powers, feats, and skills with a short description of what the feat/power/skill does (see pages 114 to 117 of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook to see what I mean.) This would enormously help in creating a character. Likewise, a couple of examples where the writers walk us through the (somewhat complicated) character creation process would also have been very helpful.
Characters should have been given an innate base damage and innate armor class. Right now, unless the hero buys a specific power, they are doing 1d3 base damage, so the character is better off grabbing a weapon. Likewise, character will end up equipping armor. In the comics, most heroes (and villains) fight with their fists and wear skin tight spandex (and even less if they are a female).
Player Characters are not “uber” enough, especially at low level for the intended “feel” of the game. The art and text definitely appears to be striving for a “Four-Color” vibe, but the game works better for gritty “Iron Age” campaigns the period during the late 80s/early 90s when violent anit-heroes came to dominate comics. One way around this, would have been to start the PCs above 1st Level, but with the “sample adventure” being written for 1st Level characters, that does not appear to be the author’s intent.
I do note that with the four “iconic” heroes, they wrote them up at 7th to 9th level to make them super enough to fit their genre roles.
All, in all, Heroes Wear Mask fails at its primary mission – allowing players to be Superheroes (villains) in a Comic Book adventure.
