To preface this: the author of the following is Shanya Almafeta, who I'm not personally acquainted with. I was unable to find the knol on the current web but had a copy in my own files, so am reproducing it here in case anyone else finds it of interest. If you are the original author and don't want this here, let me know and I'll remove it.
-BSJ.
 
EDIT note: Almafeta's thread here http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?33827-My-critique-of-HERO may also be worth reading to get a balanced perspective; some of the writer's conclusions on HERO System are disputed by its advocates in that thread.

 
Fuzion RPG Design
 
 
The hows and whys of the Fuzion roleplaying game
 
 
Fuzion is the child of two roleplaying systems: Interlock, used in high-action settings like Mekton Z and Cyberpunk 2020; and HERO, a generic roleplaying system and wargame engine. While Interlock was an amazing game in play for high-action games, it created simplistic characters withtout much depth, and it required lots of reworking for each new game. While HERO allowed for wonderful characters and almost every exotic power you could ask for, it was unwieldly to the point of unplayability when combat started. When R. Talsorian Games bought out HERO games, instead of maintaining two different roleplaying lines, Fuzion was created to combine the best elements of both systems.
 
However, while it had lofty goals, the actual execution of this game was... slightly unwieldly. Many of the design decisions of the game system weren't exactly documented, and the execution of the later games (particularly in editing) further clouds the water; however, there are resources available. By trawling interviews, looking up old FAQs on Usenet, scanning my own collection of Fuzion-powered RPGs for designer's notes and common design decisions, and urging Fuzion's designers to go back into their memory banks whenever I had the chance to gnaw one one of their ears, I have collected this list of design decisions over the ten years or so I've played this game. For the sake of readability, I assume you're already passingly familiar with the Fuzion game system and its terms; familiarity with neither HERO nor Interlock is assumed..
 
Attributes
 
HERO and Interlock had two completely different stat systems, and combining the two was one of the most difficult parts of creating the new Fuzion system.
 
HERO's attributes were based on buying attributes up (or selling them down) from 10, and varied on costs from 1/2 point per (Comliness) to 3 points per (Dexterity). A character had a normal characteristic maximum of 20; they could buy up attributes beyond this level at double cost with the GM's permission, but the absolute characteristic maximum (except for in specific circumstances) was 30. HERO's problems, besides complexity, were minmaxability: because the attributes were riddled with breakpoints, it was possible to abuse the system so that you could use a minimum of points to provide a maximum of effect. While pricing the attributes at different values was balanced, it added a bit of complexity to the system, and there were some stats that had been mispriced.(Both Strength and Dexterity provided more value per point than their costs indicated; and Comliness had to be priced at 1/2 point a level to be anything near balanced, and pricing things in half-points was something that nothing else in the HERO system used.) There was also the slight problem that attribute and skill checks used a rollunder system, whlie combat rolls used a rollover system. In the Fuzion system, they wanted to get past the HERO system's breakpoints, and to find an alternative to having a variety of prices for many different attributes.
 
In Interlock, the purchase system was simple: A handful of stats, which ran from 1 to 10; spend so many points among them, and you're done. If you had 50 points to spend, you'd have 50 points of attributes when you were done. Simple, right? However, like HERO, Interlock had balance problems - namely, attributes of vastly different values. Reflexes was a power stat, determinging hitting others, not being hit yourself, and whether or not you wnet first; the next effect was that everyone took at a minimum of 8. Body was almost as much of power stat, in that it made characters much more survivable, and Cool allowed characters to stay conscious longer (and to win facedowns). Some stats were only useful in specific cases: Empathy was only useful for cyborgs; Intelligence was only useful for corporate types, or hackers; Technical was only useful for people who wanted to repair things; Appearance was only useful for certain types of rockers; Movement Allowance was almost useless because it was so easy to modify with readily available gear; and Luck was even less useful, if that was at all possible. Additionally, Interlock suffered from the problem of stat checks (1-10 plus a roll) being on a completely different scale than skill checks (1-20 plus a roll). In Fuzion, they wanted to make all stats equally useful, and needed a workaround for the attribute and skill system
 
 
What attributes?
 
To unify the two game systems, Fuzion's designers had to tread very carefully.
 
First, the various split the idea of 'attributes' into three areas: Physical, Combat or Control (agility), and Mental, determining each of them to be equally worthy. (This was done specifically because they were looking into using Fuzion as a wargaming engine - and because for intro gaming, collapsing the stats into three broad stats was much simpler.) After diving the stats into three groups, each of these grops was given one stat for each of offense/power, defense/resistance, and finess. The attributes they decided on looked something like this:

• Physical Group
  
  • Offense (Power): Strength
  • Finesse: Constitution
  • Defense (Resistance): Body
• Combat / Control Group (I've seen both names used, but the former is far more common.)
  
  • Offense (Accuracy): Reflexes
  • Finesse: Technique
  • Defense (Dodge): Dexterity
• Mental Group
  
  • Offense (Power): Presence
  • Finesse: Intelligence
  • Defense (Resistance): Willpower

The control group was a bit of a pickle to divide -- it was handled as just one stat in HERO (Dexterity), and in Interlock almost all uses of agility was based on a single stat, Reflexes, with only a few edge cases being handled by Technical. And in both systems, the agility stat of choice (Dexterity or Reflexes) was overpowered. The answer lay not in either system, but in a little of both systems. In HERO, Dexterity was split into an 'offensive combat value' (OCV) and a 'defensive combat value' (DCV) for combat; in Interlock, combat uses of agility were covered by Reflexes, and non-combat uses of agility were covered by Technical. So in Fuzion, the Combat group has two stats to deal with combat tasks (one offensive,.one defensive), and one stat to deal with non-combat tasks. In fact, this compromise may be the reason that the other two stat groups were split in the same way, although that's only a guess on my part.
 
Movement was a special case. Interlock treated movement as its own attribute (MA). HERO had specific rules for using its own "MV" derived stat, which was not really derived from any attribute and which didn't mesh with the rest of its own system thanks to specialized Endurance rules. To standardize the endurance rules, Move was made into its own primary stat. This had the side effect of bringing the number of attributes up to an even 10. (This, pleasantly, made arbitrary assignment of attribute points in Fuzion games easy to do: take the average stat you want a character to have, multiply by 10, and there you go.)
 
After the designers decided what attributes the Fuzion system would use, the designers had to decide what scale their attributes would have.
 
Scaling the attributes
 
If the Interlock and HERO roleplaying systems were only distant cousins when it came to which stats they used, they were complete strangers when it came to how they priced and combined: HERO priced stats based on the difference from the average value 10, while Interlock priced stats based on their difference from completely lacking an ability (0). In addition, one point more in Interlock meant a lot more than the same difference in HERO (especially with HERO's breakpoints making many attributes immutable -- there were only a few cases in the HERO system where a stat of 11 was different from a stat of 10, for example. This was one of the most difficult parts to get right, and it too two tries before the finalized scale was agreed on.
 
Early Fuzion: In the first few Fuzion games, a simple rule was used: use the HERO combat scale for everything. In HERO, every 3 points of Dexterity gave a +1 to hit or dodge; dividing all HERO stats by 3 gave a range of 1-7 for normal humans, and a 3 for the average stat. To map the Interlock 1-10 scale to the HERO combat scale, a rule of "multiply by 0.7" was used (despite the rule feeling like somewhat of a kludge).
 
This was passable, but there was room for improvement; in practice, it would quickly be replaced. Because it was replaced so early in the Fuzion lifespan, very few games used this scale. Sengoku from Gold Rush Games is one of the few, but it's also one of the best Fuzion games, so it's worth mentioning this earlier attribute scale for this game alone.
 
Later Fuzion: As time went on, the designers looked a bit more closely at the scales. HERO bases many effects - non-combat rolls, most notably - on multiples of 5. However, dividing the HERO scale by 5 is impractical (leading to a scale of 1-4, with 2 as average!). Doubling this, however, gets something that's far closer to the Interlock system. This effectively means dividing the HERO stat by 2.5; this number is well within tolerance of the 3 that HERO uses for combat rolls, and is an even multiple of the 5 that HERO uses for non-combat rolls.
 
Additionally, this makes HERO map very nicely to the Interlock scale - the average HERO stat of 10 becomes 4, which in Interlock also represents an average stat. This scaling lead to the current 'secret dial' of having three different levels of 'maximum attributes' for the Fuzion system:

• A Fuzion attribute at 8 matches up to HERO's normal maximum of 20, the highest stat that most regular humans can ever hope to attain. Thus, a Fuzion stat of making 8 the best stat you can find in most 'reaslistic' humans.
• A Fuzion attribute of 10 matches up to Interlock's normal maximum of 10, the highest stat that most player characters can have. Because Interlock by default works with slightly larger-than-life characters, and Fuzion suggests that player characters be notibly but not excessively better than normal mortals for most games, this is the most common maximum you'll find for player characters in a Fuzion game.
  
• A Fuzion attribute of 12 matches up to HERO's absolute attribute maximum of 30. This level matches up to pulp characters, who are definately beyond mere men, but are not truly superhuman.
  

A stat from 13 to 16 is considered superheroic; a stat from 17 to 20 is considered epic superheroic; and beyond 21 is considered divine. This has nothing to do with neither Hero nor Interlock; rather, it's a natural side effect of the skill check system (which is described in greater detail below).
 
Every game based on version 4.4.3 or later of the game rules (which is to say, almost all of them) have used the latter scaling of the attributes.
 
Attribute Checks
 
While the attribute selection did merge the two systems nicely, and the scaling was settled on, there was one last issue to address: Attribute checks (1-10 plus a roll) were no longer on the same scale as skill checks (1-20 plus a roll). In trying to merge the HERO and Interlock systems, the designers had accidentally introduced an Interlock artifact. Removing this last artifact from the attribute system required a small rethiniking of what it means to make an attribute check.
 
When you check an attribute in most roleplaying games, what you are really checking is how good you are in a certain broad ability area which that attribute covers. However, in Fuzion, you almost never have to check an attribute alone: instead, there is a specific skill for each type of task that are normally covered by an attribute alone in other systems (including HERO and Interlock); and for these cases, skills were created whole cloth to handle things that would be attribute checks in other systems. Intelligence got Education (for when Intelligence represents your learning) and Perception (for when Intelligence represents your ability to notice something). Dexterity got the Evade skills and Acrobatics. Presence got Persuasion. Technique got Jack of All Trades. Willpower got Concentration.
 
The physical attributes were left out of this skill-creation process, because their natures made it very unlikely that they would be checked directly; their impact was mostly felt by their influence on a character's derived attributes. (In Total Fuzion, the lion's share of derived attributes are based on a Physical stat; in Instant Fuzion, all derived attributes are based on the Physical stat.) The one excption to this general rule of 'physical stats go unchecked' was strength feats: tasks directly involving the use of your Strength attribute. These were given their own 'Strength Feats' system. Each +5 in HERO terms doubled the amount you could lift; similarly, each +2 in Fuzion terms doubled the amount you could work with. This will come up again later in the article!
 
Skill resolution
 
While HERO and Interlock used two different skill resolution systems (HERO 3d6, roll-high or roll-low depending on situation; Interlock 1d10 roll-high), the two disparate systems had similar scales for modifiers. Thus, skill resolution would be fairly simple, regardless of the system they decided to go with.
 
For choosing between roll-high and roll-low, the choice was obvious: roll-high. First, roll-high systems were becoming very popular (this was just before d20 hit the scene, if that tells you anything about the trends in game design at the time). Second, both HERO and Interlock used roll-high systems. (Not to mention a then-popular house rule for HERO made HERO a purely roll-high system, with stats giving 'modifiers' to rolls, and players rolling 3d6 + modifier + their skill levels against a flat target number of 10.) Finally, Interlock's roll-high system was explicitly cited as faster and being 'better for action.' So Fuzion became a roll-high system. At this point, 3d6 became the default system for Fuzion - I'll explain why in a moment.
 
Target Numbers
 
The next task was to set target numbers. Both HERO and Interlock slightly favored rolls succeeding: HERO rolled under 11 on 3d6 (62.5% of the time), while Interlock's average stat succeeded on an average task on a roll of 5 or greater on 1d10 (60% of the time). In both cases, the number was just one off of the number that would represent a 50% chance of success. The basic rule for target numbers was the skill level being tested, plus the die roll that would be met or exceeded a bit over half of the time. Instead of using a flat difficulty curve as in the popular HERO house rule, Interlock-style canon levels of difficulty were decided on. However, Interlock's difficulty values were chosen for being easy multiples of 5 - certainly playable, but not designed around what the characters would actually have.
 
To set each level of target numbers, an average stat and an average skill had to be determined. The average stat was already 4. In the Interlock system, a competently trained person had a skill of +4 or +5. In HERO, the competently trained person had a skill of 11; however, the difference between a competent person and a merely 'novice' person was a 3-point difference (HERO's familiarities being skill . That set a modifier of 3 points between hobbist experience and true competence. This also matched up to Interlock's assumption of a +1 being a hobbysit, and a +4 being competence - again, three points between the two levels. Thus, the Interlock skill scale was used. This worked out to the far end of the scale, too, if you used linear skill levels: an Interlock system 'mastery' level of +10 corresponded to a HERO system level of 17, beyond which extra points only offset penalties, as an 18 always failed.
 
Thus, we have an average stat (4), an average skill (4), and an average roll (10, again erring in the favor of the players). Thus, we have the target number for a competent task: 18. Each +2 levels of attribute was already doubling the net real-world effect; if a level of skill equal to the stat was maintianed, every 4 points of modifiers in either direction would double or halve the effective difficulty This set the distance between levels at 4 points. Because scaling difficulties like this also implied how good each level of skill or attribute was, the names of the different levels of stat and skill were set. A stat of 3 or 4 was Competent. Halving the stat's real-world impact (1-2) gave the Everday skill level, people who aren't even worth half of a typical person. Doubling their impact(5-6) gave the Heroic skill level - people that ordinary people look up to. Doubling again gave the Incredible skill level to cover people that even heroes look up to (7-8), and doubling this one last time gave the Legendary skill level (9-10). A further doubling would only be possible for GMs who favored fast-and-loose realism in their player characters, or in superhero games (11-12).
 
What die to roll?
 
Now the designers had to choose a die type. The two source systems difffered in the kinds of dice they used: 3d6 and 1d10. (Splitting the difference and using 3d10 was not seriously considered as an option, even though it would have resulted in nice multiples of 4 for DVs.)
 
At first, 3d6 was used exclusively. There was practicality: at this poiont, Fuzion was using six-sided dice exclusively. Additionally, there was an impact on how the game 'felt' in play. With difficulty modifiers being spaced 4 points apart, a character in a d10-based system could only hope to do better than average about 20% of the time, and only one level of difficulty off of their normal skill. In a 3d6-based system, you still would perform a full level better than average about 20% of the time - but rolling that result of 18 meant that every so often, you'd perform two levels above your listed stat, so even a merely Competent person could occasionally do some Increidble task. In addition, the bell curve made standard results more predictable and extreme rolls more significant when rolled, where with d10 you can expect to do your worst possible job about 10% of the time.
 
However, that wasn't the end of it. It was realized that with standardized DVs, the range of a roll could have an impact on how the game felt in play. 3d6 was the best roll for most genres the Fuzion system was going to be used on -- but what if for this particular setting, something else was better; for example, a grim and gritty setting where merely competent people don't do incredible things? In addition, the values of the different DVs were not really based on how well you rolled, but what level of skill someone could be expected to have better than even odds of success. Thus, the DV.had to be changeable to suit the die roll.
 
You'll occasionally see a "Flat X" mentioned in the rules (not to be confused with the Rule Of X). This Flat X is the value that is used in the DV table to scale the target numbers to suit the kind of dice you're rolling (as well as a few other places). For example, in default Fuzion, the Flat X is a Flat 10, because that's the number you can meet or beat about 50% of the time. In Fuzion games using +1d10, the Flat X is a Flat 5, because that's the number you can meet or beat about 50% of the time in that system. Those are the two most common examples, but there are others (in Fuzion based on a 2d10 roll, for example, the Flat X would be a Flat 11).
 
Pricing Skills
 
For the most part, skills in both Interlock and HERO had one single (linear) pricing scheme, with most Interlock skills costing 1 point per level, and most HERO skills costing 2 points per level. However, to be purchased with the same kind of character points, there would need to be two different costs -- one for attributes and one for skills.
 
Instead, the Interlock system was looked to, with two kinds of points: one to spend on attributes, and one to spend on skills. One skill point would be used to buy one level of a skill, and one characteristic point would be used to buy one level of a characteristic. Out of pure coincidence, the ideal levels for attributes and skills meshed here - if a person got 10*X points to buy up 10 stats at level X, then 10*X points.for skills would buy 10 specific skills at the campaign's assumed level of competence, X -- this was enough skills for most characters to have several areas they were good at, without making everyone into a jack of all trades.
 
At this point, a person could create a Fuzion character without ever having to convert levels of advantages into 'real points' -- just add up your total stats, and add up your total skills. Everything that cost multiple points per level or was otherwise complex were merely optional -- thus, Option Points.
 
Powers
 
Both HERO and Interlock had power systems (the latter being described in Mekton Zeta Plus). Again, both had flaws. HERO's power system, while industry standard at the time, was horribly complex and was long in need of errata. Interlock's power system was cleaner, but was was woefully incomplete and requird far more GM adjucation. For Fuzion, then, they turned to the industry-leading HERO powers system, and sought to rework it rather than reinvent the wheel.
 
Power Points
 
The HERO power system, with only a very few exceptions, was based on multiples of 5. Dividing all power costs by 5 was the obvious method to simplify the system: 1d6 of damage now cost 1 point instead of 5. There were a few issues with this method, however.
 
First, HERO charged Endurance to use powers: 1 End per 10 HERO points of ability. While the Endurance scale could be transferred over (easily: an average of 20 endurance became 5 * CON), it wasn't much of an improvement to change 1 End per 10 points to 1 End per 2 points (not to mention that there would be a breakpoint every other level). To convert to Fuzion, they doubled both the costs and the reserve: You got 10*CON as your endurance reserve, and you spent 1 Endurance per point of power. This had the nice effect of making the system far simpler to play around with.
 
Second, some powers were priced at odd levels to convert: For example, Killing Defense was priced at 3 HERO points per 1 KD in the HERO system. For Fuzion, these powers were fudged a little: in the above example, Killing Defense now bought you two points of KD for 1 power point.
 
Finally, there was the issue of modifiers...
 
Adders and Limiters
 
HERO used two kind of modifiers: linear and algebraic. While linear modifiers were easy to modify (+5 points became +1 PP), algebraic modifiers (+1/4, -1/4, and so on) had to be rethought, because adding a fourth of what was now 1-point power was just silly. (You just don't want to know how they handled negative modifiers.) To keep the full potential of the HERO system's power creation system in Fuzion, all the adders would have to be kept.
 
Again, the fact that +2 points of Fuzion ability doubled its real-world effect was referenced. The HERO system was logarithmic - then why couldn't modifiers work that way? If you had a 10PP effect, and an 8PP effect with a +2 modifier, that 8PP effect would be about half as effective - except for whatever benefit that modifier gave. In a logarithmic system, linear modifiers have logarithmic effects. With this workaround, the full flexibility of the HERO power system could be used, but without the full complexity.
 
The Damage Ratio (?)
 
While researching the powers system and how it worked with the Fuzion damage rules for this article, I came across this neat little ratio; it's far too close to a very simple ratio to be coincidental. Remember that CP and PP are considered equivalent.

• For every CP you buy of Body, it takes 7 points of effect to either stun or kill you.
• For every PP you buy of atttack, you get 1d6 damage; on average, 3.5 points. Thus, you need 2 points of offense to negate 1 point of health.
• For every PP you buy of Armor, you get 2 Killing Defense. That's about half a die of damage. Thus, you need about 2 points of armor to negate 1 point of attack.

Thus, Fuzion uses a 1:2:4 ratio for health, damage, and armor. That's just too simple (and cool) to be mere coincidence, but I've never seen it mentioned anywhere..
 
Combat
 
When combining Fuzion's two parent systems, Combat was the second most complicated decision to make. While both HERO and Interlock brought something good to the table, each had their problems. However, what one system did poorly, the other system did extremely well, and vice versa.
 
HERO's combat rules could cover just about every concievable situation, being the system designed for the superhero game Champions (a genre in which anything could happen). However, it suffered from two major problems: it was complicated, and it was slow. Both of these stemmed from the fact that HERO was a very old roleplaying system, from a time when roleplaying games still had to draw players from the wargame hobby. In wargaming of the day, a little algebra or calculus between turns was seen as fitting for 'realism,' something that no 'real gamer' would shrink from; but that attitude was twenty-five years old, and the game industry had evolved.
 
Interlock's combat rules, while fast, had as many problems as HERO. In the first part, Interlock's combat rules were not really one system, but three: the original personal combat system, the new personal combat system created for the Cyberpunk 2020 roleplaying game ("Friday Night Firefight"), and the vehicle combat system used by Interlocks's giant mecha combat game, Mekton. However, the one thing that unified all three systems were that there were lots of special cases for different effects. While Interlock was more playable in terms of speed and brevity, it wasn't really a universal system.
 
Basic resolution
 
The basic resolution of the system came directly from Interlock: to be more specific, the "Friday Night Firefight" combat system as seen in the second edition of Cyberpunk 2020. Almost all of the combat resolution system was lifted straight from FNFF. For sanity's sake, you could only do, at most, two actions per turn - one at full skill, and two at a penalty to both. One change was made to FNFF to make the system play a bit faster, and to work a bit more like HERO: By default, all defenses were based on a static number (Flat 10 for +3d6 games, Flat 5 for +1d10 games). Mathematically, it worked the exact same as HERO's rule of rolling under (11 + OCV - DCV), but it played as quickly as the Friday Night Firefight system.
 
Although FNFF was the basis for the basic resolution engine, HERO was called in for maneuvers. While the Friday Night Firefight combat had maneuvers, they were simplistic and not really balanced (at high levels, all a martial artist had to do was aim for the head to kill someone). At the time, one of the best roleplaying game treatment of martial arts was the Ultimate Martial Artist book for HERO. While it used maneuvers similar to those of the FNFF system, their effects were much more cleanly defined, and the system's balance was much better overall. With only a very few modifications, these maneuvers were integrated into the FNFF-based resolution system.
 
Scaling damage
 
In both HERO and Interlock, damage was logarithmic and based on the energy the weapon dealt. However, that's where the systems parted ways. HERO used two different damage types, with two different ways to roll that damage (Stun was based on rolling lots of d6s, while Killing damage was based on rolling a small number of dice and multiplying by a factor that could either be random or based on hit location), which were subtracted from Stun or Body points. Interlock used two damage types, as well - a standard damage type which would either be used to make a 'death save' more and more difficult (for living targets) or subtracted from a pool of "Structural Damage Points" (for non-living, small targets); and a second damage type, "Kills," a non-random damage type just for handling very large targets like mecha. (If you counted the Interlock system of non-lethal damage, which was represented in terms of modifiers to a saving throw, you had three damage systems.)
 
A way of representing non-lethal damage was ideal; in addition, HERO's damage scaled nicely (+3d6 roughly doubling the energy). Thus, the system was based closer to HERO. However, HERO had two different hit point values: 10 points to resist killing attacks, but 20 points to resist stunning attacks. HERO's "Killing Attacks" also had that nasty issue of rolling one kind of damage, then multiplying that damage to create the other kind of damage, possibly rolling the multiplier as well. To simplify the two matters, the HERO damage scale for killing damage was doubled to 20. This increased most HERO attacks to a nice simple number of dice to roll, and made both stun and hits easily derivable - a character's Body (average 4) times 5 gave a nice round number no matter what level of BODY one had.
 
An additional side benefit was that stunning and killing damage were put on the same scale. To get past a character's Stun Defense of 2 x Body and completly drain a character's Stun of 5 * Body, 2d6 per point of Body would be able to knock a person out a little over 50% of the time. To reduce a character's Hits from full 5 * Body to -2 * Body, 2d6 per point of Body would be able to kill a person a little over 50% of the time.
 
Finally, there was one last bit about damage: lethality. Some games were more lethal than others, but the damage was fixed based on how much real-world energy it did. To fix this, another 'dial' was added that altered the lethality of the system: altering the level at which damage killed you. For most games, the level at which damage was lethal was -2 * Body: that is, it'd take 2d6 per point of Body to kill you about half the time. In Champions: The New Millenium and other low-lethality games, you have to be reduced to -5 * Body: 3d6 per point of Body to kill you about half the time. And in a very few games where it was easy to die, damage was mortal once it had you reduced to or below 0: 1d6 per point of Body would (usually) let you survive, but 2d6 per point of Body would turn you into chunky salsa.
 
Usagi Yojimbo, Victoriana, and Zorro have custom damage systems, but they generally subscribe to the same scale for damage classes as other games.
 
Wonky Bits
 
In this knol, I have been painting the Fuzion system in very rosy terms; however, it's not all golden. Some of the discrepancies over the years in the Fuzion roleplaying game have come from things that were out-and-out bugs: things that the designer (or the editor!) should have caught before printing the game, but which made it to print. And a few I just can't figure out for the life of me. Some of the more famous errors, flaws, and Murphy's Rules of the game are here, along with fixes if possible.
 
Evasion: In the early Fuzion system, there were three Evasion skills: unarmed, melee, and ranged. If you bought all three at your campaign's level of competence, that'd be one-third of your skill points from the outset, making you very limited in other areas. However, later games combined all the Evasion skills into one skill, with one single price -- thus making it easy for everyone to get their campaign's max Evasion.
 
Fixing evasion: Either Evasion needs to have a special price per level (3 OP per level?), or the skills need to be resplit for balance.
 
Everyman Skills: HERO had a system for 'Everyman Skills' that ensured everyone was at least passingly competent with the basic abilities of their culture. However, there were some problems with this. The concept wasn't explained quite as well in the Fuzion rules as it was in the Hero rules. The 'Everyman Skills' concept was also used to describe the basic abilities that were added to handle attribute checks (Perception, Concentration, Education, Persuasion, and Evasion) - but they were given to a level that was suited for Everyday tasks (2), not the level of difficulty they were being built on. In effect, characters better than Everyday (like, say, Competent characters) were always at a penalty to handle situations that would be unpenalized attribute checks in other systems, unless they paid 10 OP for every level of deficit they wanted to buy up!
 
Fixing everyman skills: Tie your level in an Everyman Skill to the level of attribute it is attached to. If you have Intelligence 3, you also have Education and Perception 3, and so on and so forth.
 
Half Points: There are exactly two places in the default Fuzion system where half-points are used: to price the Favor perk, and to price Major complications. Nowhere else. Don't ask me why, I can't figure it out either.
 
Fixing half points: A rounding rule would fix the only two places in the system where half-points occur in character creation. (Just 'round as normal' would do the job.)
 
Modifying Derived Characteristics: In HERO, you could buy up each derived characteristic individually. There were a few attempts to do this directly; for example, Fuzion 5.02 let you buy up Stun Defense, Recovery, Endurance, Hits, and Stun directly with OP or CP... except that in both cases, it wasn't as good as just improving the stat that the derived characteristic was based on. In other editions, there was a rule for "trading Hits for Stun" (because their HERO point value, once altered to the Fuzion scale, was identical); this rule was eventually left out of the system because it added almost nothing to the game and managed to confuse many.
 
Fixing modifying derived characteristics: Fixed in modern versions of the game. Eventually, the current system of using Talents and Complications for modifying all derived characteristics was settled upon -- although there are still some remnants of the earlier systems in many Fuzion games, leading to general confusion.
 
Reflexes for offense? Dexterity for defense?: In Fuzion, Reflexes is used to hit someone, and Dexterity is used to dodge. This sounds like an editor's error to many people: Isn't dexterity your general coordination, and thus would be used to hit something? Isn't reflexes your reaction speed, and would be used to dodge? While that's what the definitions of Reflexes and Dexterity would have you believe, the Fuzion designers went for the connotations of the attribute names: Dexterity sounds more defensive and "graceful," while Reflexes sounds more combat-oriented, so Dexterity became the defensive stat and Reflexes became the offensive stat.
 
Fixing Reflexes for offense, Dexterity for defense: This can't be changed at this point; the cost in confusion to old players would more than offset any gains by fixing it for new players.
 
The "Speed" system: One of the worst parts of the HERO system -- perhaps the part that was singly responsible for the most players leaving it -- was the Speed system. Speed was a god statistic that acted as a multiplier for everything you did; more Speed, more everything, combat or non. It was also extremely complex, because it required dividing a round into 12 phases and counting down against this phase chart every round for every character, player or NPC, in the game. Early Fuzion games kept the speed chart and all its headaches, and this fact alone was singulary responsible for people calling the new Fuzion game "excessively complex," "headache-inducing," and "a munchkin's dream."
 
Fixing the Speed system: Fixed. Later Fuzion games wisely threw out the Speed system in favor for the Friday Night Firefight action system: everyone goes on their initiative, gets one action at full skill, or two actions at a penalty.
 
Unusual damage classes: Very occasionally, you will see a weapon with a non-standard damage type, like 2d6+1, 3.5d6, or 4d10. These were the result of directly porting statistics over from HERO or Interlock -- both used the +1 and +2 notation, HERO used half-dice, and Interlock occasionally used d10s instead of d6s.
 
Fixing unusual damage classes: You don't really have to convert these dice, if you need to -- although dropping +1s and rounding +2s, +3s, and +0.5d6s up to full dice of damage can save some trouble. If you want to convert d10s to an equivalent amount of d6s, multiply by 7/11 (that is, multiply by 7, then divide by 11), and round normally (up on 0.5 or more, down on less than 0.5).
 
Weapon classes: In early Fuzion games, there were more combat skills -- a few broad classes of melee weapons, and a few broad classes of ranged weapons. These have been combined in later Fuzion games into just the Melee Weapons and Marksmanship skills, respectively, with only the "optional rule" to divide the skills into several areas.