I really enjoyed the combat system of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. In the sessions I experienced, it resulted in richly-described, flavorful fights that were consistent with light, colorful superheroic action. However, if I have a criticism it's that the logic of the Stress and Complication systems tended to favor all-or-nothing actions that promptly take foes out of fights rather than a richer dynamic like back-and-forth momentum shifts or building to the climax.

The basics of the system

On your turn in combat you describe your action, usually in a way that would justify bringing in dice from the different sections of your character sheet. You'd gather up all the relevant dice and roll them.

For example, if I was playing my favorite superhero, The Thing from the Fantastic Four, and I was in a fight with some alien invaders, I might say that I run up and sock the leader square in the jaw. Since I'm acting solo there (rather than with a buddy or a whole team) that would give me a d6, I'd get a d8 from my “It's Clobberin' Time!” distinction, I'm obviously using my Godlike Strength d12 to punch this alien bozo, and I have expert level skills in combat so I get a d8. Assuming I don't use any plot points or special effects, that would give me a pool of [d6 d8 d12 d8].

You then roll your pool of dice, and you need to do two things with them: choose two to be added together to be your total (or more than two, if you spend points for extra), and pick one die that's not part of your total whose number won't matter but whose size will be the “effect die” for your roll. Then your target gets to make a reaction roll, using the same mechanics. If your action's total meets or beats the reaction's total then your effect happens (and you get a bonus if you beat it by 5 or more). If it was a direct attack then it's applied to one of the types of stress, either setting a new stress level (if your effect is higher than their current stress) or bumping up their existing stress level (if the size of their current stress is bigger than your effect die). Once someone's stress is one level beyond d12 they're taken out of the fight (less for minions). You can also “complicate someone out” by using your effect dice to create a complication on them of similar magnitude, for example The Thing could immobilize someone by “tying them up” with a metal lamp post that only someone super-strong could bend.

So what's the problem?

The problem is that most of the famous characters have easy access to really big dice, like The Thing's d12 for his strength. Because of the random nature of dice you'll often find the d12 unnecessary for including in your best total, which means you might as well cause d12 effects. And since beating an opponent by 5 lets you bump up the size of your effect die you'll often have a bumped-up d12, i.e. the ability to take someone out in a single action. Since the attacks are so powerful the defender is highly incentivized to try to get reaction rolls that are high enough so the hits don't land. When I pick a character whose catchphrase is “It's clobberin' time!” I actually want to spend some time clobberin', but the mechanics make it more likely that The Thing's foes will spend most of the fight “not clobbered yet” and then switch to “they're thoroughly clobbered” in a single step.

The only compensation for that is that the characters at those power levels often have special effects that help them. For example, The Thing has Invulnerable. Spend 1 PP to ignore physical stress or trauma unless caused by mystical attacks. In one session I got into the amusingly absurd situation of being in a fight with Doctor Doom, who has a forcefield which grants him a similar power from the GM's side. Both the GM and I were low on the resource that powered the effects, but you can get more of that whenever the other player rolls a 1 on any of their dice, so rather than the dice game being about totals and effects ours morphed into “who can roll their pool without getting any 1's?”.

Other special effects can have an impact, too. For example, Doctor Strange has Alliterative Invocations When using a stunt to create magical assets or complications, add a d6 and step up your effect die. I think this was likely intended for situations where Doctor Strange spends a round summoning up power by saying things like “By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth!” that he then uses as an asset in a big attack in his next round. But it's hard to do that in an organic way (unless you're the last character to go in a round, so you can choose yourself to go first in the next round), and it's far more effective to just use a single action to call forth the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak to complicate-out your foes since you get the free die boost for your complication.

It might be the case that the more “street level” heroes end up making more use of the “build up their stress” mechanic, I didn't get much experience with those characters, I wanted to play the characters I already had an emotional attachment to, which tend to be some of the more famous and frequently more powerful characters.

It's still fun, though

Even though I have some gripes about the system I thought it had a lot more good stuff than bad stuff in its design, overall I had a lot of fun in the sessions I did play. It's disappointing that the business realities led to the product line being ended.