This is a pretty interesting topic.
Wouldn't the ability to choose to damage yourself have the potential to be OP when Fanatic is in a group? She could easily damage herself to pop and do massive amounts of damage based on low HP.
I'm not sure if this is a problem or not, but it seems like you could revive someone early on and basically abuse one of her core mechanics.
I wasn't really thinking about the details.
Edit: Would this fix the issue?
At the start of their turn, if any heroes are incapacitated , a surviving hero may deal themself any number of psycic(a diffrent type would be ok, but psycic seemes best) damage. If they do, revive an incapacitated hero with x hp, where x is the amount of damage dealt to that hero this way minus (H - 1)
more detailss. I am trying to make it harder for this to be used for anything other than resuricting the dead.
At the start of their turn, if any heroes are incapacitated , a surviving hero may deal themself (H) or more any number of psycic damage. If they do, revive an incapacitated hero with x hp, where x is the amount of damage dealt to that hero this way minus (H - 1)
Speaking of Fanatic, wouldn't she be able to ressurect someone to full health if she had Breastplate in play and was willing to lose it?
You do take damage into negatives, if anyone figured that might solve the problem.
Actually, I guess the issue is anyone who is almost dead could just take absurd amounts of damage to restore someone else to life with full.
In game design you have to keep in mind, that whenever you give players more options, you are giving them more power. I don't feel this can be balanced when working from the hero-end alone.
Imagine a scale that is perfectly balanced, on one end you have the heroes(and all their tricks/abilities), on the other hand you have the villains (and all their abilities). You're trying to add a trick to one end of the scale, it's going to throw off the balance. The fact that it has some disadvantages makes it only a small trick to add, but it's still something, it's still an option. What do the villains get to restore the balance? Nothing... I'd reccomend trying to restore balance by messing with the H mechanic. Perhaps H= H+1 when using this house rule.
With that said, if your friends are losing their heroes too much, I'd say now is probably not the time to add in house-rules. When we win the game, 9.5/10 times we have 0 hero incapacitations. When we lose the game, usually all heroes are killed within a turn or two of each other. Rarely do we have one player "out" of the game on their incapacitated side for a significant amount of the game while the other heroes are still playing.
Without knowing your group I have to make guesses in wildly unfamiliar territory here, so take the following with a grain of salt. I'm guessing one of three things is happening with your group:
1. You are relatively newer players. This game does have a bit of a learning curve. It takes a while to get the hang of it. Keep plugging away and you'll learn the heroes and the villians well enough that incapacitations will stop happening.
2. You are not playing with enough players. Even though the H mechanic does help, the game is still harder with 3 players than with 4. It's harder with 4 players than with 5. If you're only playing with 3 players, add another player, or have one player play another hero.
3. Your group is playing extremely agressively. Maybe you are choosing heroes like Absolute Zero or Fanatic and bringing on the self-inflicted damage. This is fine, but you have to realize that early incapacitation is a chance you take. If incapacitation bugs them, suggest they pick different heroes or play more conservatively. You may also not be assigning much value to cards like Fortitude, Danger Sense, Synaptic Interruption, Hypersonic Assault, Throat Jab, Ground Pound, etc... things that mitigate the amout of damage you take. These are good cards, many of them are among the best in the game, don't ignore them!
If I am the only hero alive and at 1 HP, could I take 60 damage to resurrect a team mate at full HP? The villain would have a greatly reduced chance to win with this rule as we could do it every time... and even if you say "You can't go into negatives to resurrect others" There are too many heroes who tank by regaining HP at an increased rate, The Scholar, Absolute Zero and Nightmist instantly spring to mind.
I think what you have here is a dead idea (pun intended), it sounds an interesting notion but the mechanics behind this are causing more problems than they are solving. I think you would another method of resurrection not tied to HP
Discard your hand and skip your turn. The incapable hero gets HP = the number of cards you discarded?
Discard may work better than damage. Especially when Twist the Ether comes into play. Zero could deal himself HP-1 Psychic (converted to Fire) and then heal that much (potentially +1 more with Focused Apertures) by dealing the resulting Cold damage caused by Isothermic Transducer to himself with the Null-Point Calibration Unit in play. With Vis, that would make him THE healer character.
sigh.