Sadly impossible to get a hardcover + colour edition these days.

Great game, BUY IT!

The Hero System is the most flexible, balanced, real-life/fantasy role-playing system I've ever played. You can play in worlds that resemble super hero comic books, deep space adventures, high fantasy, country westerns, pulp fiction, and 1920's New York noire, all with one system. The rules are a bit of a tough swallow, but they are pretty consistent. I love the separation between special effect and game effect. I like how many examples there are in the books, even though they're relegated to the margins. I like the artwork as well.

I love how I get a printed book and a searchable PDF (because I bought the combo). I wish the print was color and hard-cover, even if that made it more expensive. I would have at least liked the option to choose color or black-and-white. The soft cover starts to fall apart after lots of commutes in a backpack. It doesn't stand up well on a shelf of Hero books because of this. The index at the back of the printed book is hard to read because the original color of page numbers are light blue and red, which fade to light gray in the black-and-white printed version.

The most difficult part of the Hero System is having to build everything--enemies, weapons, armor, bases, vehicles, animals, adventures, and campaigns before you can play. All of this (plus learning the rules) takes a great deal of time. And you'd better have an intelligent play group. Combat requires lots of addition, counting patterns, and subtraction; building characters involves calculating costs with multiplying and dividing fractions. While there is additional software you can purchase to help out, you still need your GM's approval. They need to approve costs associated with limitations, and the design of things like contacts, favors, and complications.

While the popular D&D system is easy to learn, people have a hard time describing the flavor of Armor Class (a combination of dexterity and armor) and hit points. The Hero System nails these issues in the bud, where each character has an offensive combat value, defensive combat value, physical defense, energy defense, resistant versions of the last two, stun, and body. All of these combine to make a combat system that makes more sense, but requires more math in the heat of combat. Critical hits and failures in D&D each have a 1 in 20 chance of occurring because you're using 1d20. In Hero, you roll your attack with 3d6. A 3 is an automatic, glorious hit and an 18 is a colossal fail. Each of these rolls has a 1 in 216 chance of occurring. Much more realistic.

Here is what I would improve if there were another version of the book. While there is a section of charts at the back, I would also add a section of formulas. Formulas for things like knockback and turn radius are hidden in paragraph form. I would love to see formulas with variables and I just substitute the variables. Knockback, for instance, includes formulas for going into and thru walls, which require other variables like wall BODY and PD, but it is written in English form, rather than in math form. There are other things that could be turned into formulas, like the rules for adjustment powers, multi-attack, and how damage from an attack gets applied to defenses. So, in-line formulas would be great as would an index of formulas.

Another thing I would improve are the headers and footers. When I flip through a book, I personally look at the lower corners to find the page I want. However, the page numbers in this book are in the upper corners. Also, although the header will say something like "244 - Powers", I would really like to know alphabetically where I am in relation to what I'm looking for. Page 244 gives no indication as to which Power it's talking about. It happens to be Leaping. Therefore, if I was looking for FTL, I know I'd have to flip more towards the beginning of the book, and if I was looking for Multiform, I'd have to flip more towards the ending. Even if the header just had "244 - Powers - L" I would know where I was.

All in all, it's a great system, but it's not for the mathematically faint of heart. I started a group with my teenagers and their friends. I had no one to show me the ropes and no GM to explain how things worked. I spent way more hours preparing for adventures than playing them because of all there was to design and build, along with reading and learning the rules because the teens wouldn't.

Hero System is the only system I play anymore. Learn one system and play in any genre, any setting, any character. Believe the hype.

Hero System has the most flexible character creation system in existence.

Like most point-based systems, it's critical to come up with the character concept first. This is especially true for Hero, because you can make ANY character you can think of.

Additionally, there are often several different way to make the same character (though there will be subtle differences in game play).