FOR HERO SYSTEM VETERANS
All the Depth. Half the Math.
You spent decades mastering point-buy architecture, power frameworks, and the art of the perfectly-costed Limitation. Abraxas was built by people who did the same. The bones are familiar — what changed is the resolution layer, and your Friday night group will thank you for it.
You Already Know This Language
Abraxas concepts mapped to the Hero System terms you already think in.
The same economic engine you know. Every attribute, skill, power, and ability has a point cost. Build a brick, a mentalist, a gadgeteer, or a cosmic entity — Narrative Points are the universal currency of character construction.
Generic power blocks — Ranged Attack, Melee Attack, Defense — are the mechanical chassis. Special Effects (SFX) are the fiction layered on top. Your fire blaster and your telekinetic aren't separate systems, they're the same Ranged Attack framework wearing different clothes. Champions players will feel right at home.
The balancing act you love is intact. Enhancements increase a power's point cost; Limitations reduce it. That Activation Roll limitation that made your Gadgeteer feel genuinely unreliable? Still in the toolkit. The economic logic of 'pay less, accept risk' is preserved in full.
We didn't rename these. They work the way you expect: mechanical hooks that define character identity, grant point rebates for Disadvantages, and add precision to what a character can and cannot do.
Hero System's Street-Level / Standard Superhero / High-Powered tiers have a direct analog here. Campaign Bands set genre expectations and point budgets. Heroic is your gritty pulp hero; Cosmic is full-on Silver Age power fantasy.
What's Evolved
The differences that make Abraxas faster at the table without sacrificing depth.
d6 Dice Pools Replace 3d6 Roll-Under
This is the big one. Resolution is a dice pool — roll high, chase the Wild Die when a 6 appears. Effective Ranks and Total Ranks govern power potency independent of the pool. Combat moves faster. 'Did it hit and how much did it hit?' collapses into one roll. You lose nothing in the build layer and gain significant speed at the table.
Abraxas Forge: Build in Minutes, Not Hours
Building a 400-point Champions character on scratch paper was a rite of passage. Building one in Abraxas Forge takes minutes. The web-based character creator handles point tracking, cost calculations, and framework math in real time. No download, no login, no subscription.
Campaign Bands Set the Dial
No more eyeballing whether a build is 'too much' for your campaign. Campaign Bands — Heroic through Cosmic — define point budgets, power ceilings, and genre expectations up front. Pick the Band at Session Zero and everyone builds to the same spec. The balance conversations that used to happen mid-campaign now happen before character creation starts.
Build Your First Character — It Costs Nothing
If you can spec out a 350-point speedster in Champions, you can build in Abraxas in under twenty minutes. The point-buy logic will feel like home.
No download. No account. Works on desktop and tablet.