#RPG-a-Day2026 Bonus Episode Marvel Super Heroes Ultimate Powers Book

 For RPG-a-Day 2026 I am republishing Mirk the Meek's collaborative episodes on different genres. You can read all about that here: https://podbypost.com/nerds/rpg-a-day-2026

But for the blog I will be somewhat following Anthony's lead (read his post here: https://castingshadowsblog.com/2026/07/31/rpgaday2026-starts-tomorrow-my-plan/ )

Basically that means I will post a character on each Sunday of August. This is a bonus episode where I create one for TSR's Marvel Super Heroes Ultimate Powers Book by David Edward Martin plus the errata by the author that appeared in Dragon Magazine #122.. 

Since I covered character creation for the Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Set in the last blog entry I am going to concentrate on the differences between that and the Ultimate Powers Book in this one. This book gives an alternate character creation system an expanded set of powers. It is also infamous for being unbalanced, it will be interesting to see what we get!

Here are the seven steps to creating a character:

• Generate a physical form.

• Generate an Origin of Power.

• Generate Primary Abilities.

• Generate Secondary Abilities.

• Generate a Weakness.

• Generate Powers.

• Give your character life.

Step 1: Physical Form

I roll a 49 which gives us Modified Human, Organic. This person started as a normal human who has had their internal organs and nervous system altered but not their DNA. They roll on column 1 when generating abilities  and heal twice as fast as normal humans. The organization that modified the character should be one of the Contacts and they start with one less Power.

 Step 2: Origin of Power

I roll a 16 which gives us Maturity. According to the book the character did not gain full control of their power until maturity. Sadly we will have to tap into one of the other origins to really explain the source of the power since this character is not a mutant. I'll come back to this after we generate the powers to see what will make the most sense. 

Step 3: Primary Abilities

Fighting I roll 78 for Remarkable (26)

Agility I roll 96 for Incredible (36)

Strength I roll 04 for Feeble (1)

Endurance I roll 01 for Feeble (1)

Reason I roll 61 for Remarkable (26)

Intuition I roll 75 for Remarkable (26)

Psyche I roll 45 for Excellent (16)

Good thing he heals fast, definitely not a rough and tough type.

Step 4 Secondary Abilities

Health is the sum of the first four abilities 64

Karma is the sum of the last three abilities 68

Resources start at Typical (5) modified by a roll on the Ability Modifier Table, I roll 76 for Increase by two ranks so it goes up to Excellent (16)

Popularity starts at 10 but is reduced by 5 because he will have a secret identity so he actually has two Popularity scores, one for the secret identity and one for the heroic identity. He can split Contacts between the two but not anything else. The Popularity of the two can be different depending on what happens in the game but they will both start at 5 so it looks like 5/5.

Step 5 Weakness Generation

You would think his Strength and Endurance would be enough but the book wants him to have more issues. The book wants us to determine a Stimulus, an Effect and a Duration for the Weakness. If we have a power with a rank over Remarkable the weakness may be fatal otherwise they recommend it only max out at Incapacitating. That is nice of them. 

For Stimulus I roll a 33 which gives us Energy Allergy, to trigger this one of the elements from the Periodic Table must be in its pure state, in a quantity of at least an ounce and within 20 feet.

For Effect I roll 41 which is Power Negation meaning the character's powers cease to work within 20 feet of whatever element we pick. His Primary Abilities are also impacted and receive one Column Shift down per turn of exposure until they are all down to the rank of Typical. Also his Powers automatically fail if he directly attacks or tries to use them on the Stimulus.

For Duration I roll 04 for Continuous with Contact. As soon as he moves more than 20 feet away his Powers return and they regain 2 lost Health points a turn.

It recommends you work with the Judge to determine the Stimulus but the more power the character the more common the Stimulus should be. Let's generate our Powers and come back to the specific element that is our "Kryptonite."

Step 6 Power Generation

We need to roll once for Powers, once for Talents, and once for Contacts.

For Powers I roll a 61 for 5 out of 7 powers, because of our Physical Form we only start with 4 out of 7 Powers.

For Talents I roll a 32 for 1 out of 6 possible Talents.

For Contacts I roll a 71 for 3 out of 3 possible Contacts.

At this point I can decide to spend Resource ranks to get extra Powers, Talents, or Contacts. Powers cost two negative Column Shifts each where Talents and Contacts only cost one negative Column Shift each. I can't drop Resources below Feeble. I'm not going to do this but it is an option.

Okay, time to roll our 4 Powers. 

First up I roll 33 for Lifeform Control and 44 for Hypnotic Control. I roll 60 for a Power rank of Excellent (16).

The hero can dominate a target's behavior and actions by implanting commands, not by direct psionic control. The Hypnotic command may pertain to current conditions or lie dormant until triggered by future conditions (post-hypnotic suggestion).

Second Power, 91 for Self-Alteration and 93 for Shrinking with a roll of 45 for a Power rank of Excellent (16)

The hero can temporarily decrease his body’s size. The hero’s primary and secondary abilities remain unaffected. 

That sound good until you keep reading

it is much harder for a shrunken hero to gain enough leverage to perform tasks that would otherwise be simple to perform.

And that isn't all

As the hero shrinks, he becomes harder to hit but conversely suffers greater damage if struck.

With a Power rank of Excellent he shrinks to 3% of his normal size and which results in one negative Column Shift if someone tries to hit him but if he is hit the damage is shifted up one Column Shift.  

Next we have to roll to see how he shrinks and I rolled a 09 for 

Atomic Collapse decreases the distance between the body’s atoms and subatomic particles, thus decreasing overall size. Mass and strength are unaffected.

I guess he won't be riding in anyone's pocket! But there is an optional associated Power that I can take in the place of rolling my next one, Diminution, the ability to reduce the size of a target. I'm going to take that.

So my Third Power is Diminution and a roll of 67 gives us a Power rank of Remarkable (26) which reduces the target to 1% their regular size! I'll keep Atomic Collapse as the how he shrinks his targets, which can include living beings. 

Last Power, 38 is Magic and 52 is Power Simulation 

The book says:

If a Magic Power appears at any time during the character generation process, the player should convert the entire character to a Mage and convert all the Powers into their Magical equivalents.

This is why you don't put too much thought into anything before you roll everything up! 

We need to figure out the "Mechanism" of magic for this character, or how they manifest the "Effect" or power. Rolling a 80 we get Summoning. 

The Mage can summon supernatural beings and compel/ bribe/ beg them to go do the actual work that produces the Effect.

Nice! I can work with that, all the Powers this character has are done by the entities they summon. The Power rank of the Power dictates the Power rank of the being they have to Summon and we are told:

The Mage runs into danger as he attempts to summon more Powerful beings, many of whom might resent the Mage for dragging them away from their home dimension and sending them off on some ridiculous mission. Should the Mage loses control of the situation, things might get nasty, messy, and probably fatal.

Time to find out what "Power Simulation" is:

This is not an actual Magical Power. What it is is a Magical version of any Power in the Ultimate Powers Book. The player simply rolls the dice again at this point to randomly determine another Power. Such a Power is to then considered to be Magical in nature and follows the rules for Magic rather than for relatively normal Power. 

Of course, that makes perfect sense. Now I roll 04 for Defensive and 09 for Body Armor (Artificial) Power rank roll 100 for a rank of Amazing (46)

The hero possesses artificially-created armor that provides protection and possibly a way of possessing other Powers. 

We should circle back to the Weakness now. Lead would be sense as the element since his powers are magical in nature but I worry that would be so common as to cripple the character. Maybe Silver? Probably also too common but what the heck. It does have to be at least an ounce to 

For his Talent he rolled is 61 Professional Skills and 7 for Engineering. 

For Contacts I think two will belong to the Secret Identity, Engineering and a Mystical Contact. This wouldn't be Mephisto but a "friendly" contact that is helping guide him on the path of possible redemption. Friendly is in quotes as this contact is no doubt using him as a pawn in their battle against evil. The other one will belong to the Heroic Identity, a Hero Group the Defenders (remember my touch stone is 1970s and 1980s comics so my Defenders are characters like Dr. Strange, Namor, the Hulk, The Son of Satan, and Valkyrie. 

Step 7 

Let's put this all together. Robert Faust was a smart but sickly boy who loved learning how things worked. He also is somewhat self taught in Aikido although he was never really healthy enough to attend actual classes (this explains the high Fighting but low Strength and Endurance as well as the lack of Martial Arts Talent). By the time he was in high school his organs were failing and he took at chance. Using a magical tome he found in an abandoned house he summoned Mephisto and traded his soul for the ability to summon demons to do his bidding. Regretting his choice he tries to use these powers for good with the misplaced hope he might win his soul back. He balances his career as a respected biomedical engineer with his other identity, The Green Scarab.

As The Green Scarab he wears a green business suit with a hooded cape and a mask over his face, all green except for the black full face mask. He wears a ballistic and stab resistant vest, like police officers wear under their uniform shirt, under his suit to hopefully protect against silver knives or shotgun slugs that would go right through his magical body armor. 

To use his powers he has to summon demons. His armor manifests as demonic scarab beetles that cover his body and their ever shifting mass absorbs damage. A slightly larger, rainbow colored demonic beetle appears when he uses Hypnotic Control to mesmerize his victim. It puts forth a kaleidoscopic ray that works either visually or audibly. Shrinking and Diminution is done by a half humanoid beetle demon that only the targeted person can see.    

Mechanically he looks like this:

The Green Scarab

Robert Faust, Modified Human, Organic

F Rm (26)
A In (36)
S Fb (1)
E Fb (1)
R Rm (26)
I Rm (26)
P Ex (16)

Health: 64

Karma: 68

Resources: Excellent

Popularity: 5/5

Known Powers: Body Armor (Artificial) (Am), Diminution (Rm), Hypnotic Control (Ex), Shrinking (Ex), heals twice normal rate

Weakness: Silver

Talents: Engineering

Contacts: As Robert Faust: Undefined Mystical Contact, Undefined Engineering Contact. As The Green Scarab: The Defenders

Equipment: Concealed Ballistic and Stab Resistant Body Armor (Gd)

Obviously there is a ton the player and Judge will need to work out with this character before they are ready to play but he could be a lot of fun and has a nice juicy hook the Judge can use against him. 

That is all for this week, see you Sunday, 23 August, when I create a character for Cyberpunk 2020!