I did indeed mean characters that can make multiple copies of themselves (sorry for the confusion). It isn't that common a power, but to put things in perspective: it's up against Champions. I cannot in good conscience tell my players that they can't have X ability because HQ can't simulate it very well, when Champions can.
The reason I think transforming heroes (by which I did indeed mean characters that can change their shape) are problematic is because some such concepts essentially give you a completely new character sheet. Indeed, with a freeform "change into anything and get appropriate powers" concept (not at all difficult to simulate with Champions, or indeed pretty much any decent supers game) you're going to be doing a lot of hand waving - and that strikes me as a pretty ugly "mechanic".
I'll re-read the example on ranged combat as it seems I'm suffering "versionitis" here (haven't looked at it closely since HeroWars, where I recall it being a bit thorny).
As far as simulating cosmic powers with affinities, I didn't make my point very clearly. I was not by any means suggesting that HQ couldn't simulate something like Green Lantern's ring. Instead, I was pointing out that one of the clearest ways to abuse HQ is to buy a broad ability that can apply to virtually anything, and advance that to the exclusion of everything else. The need to simulate something like "cosmic energy" doesn't create this issue, but it does encourage abuse of it if the player in question has any powergamer tendencies.
I'm aware the HQ is about story first rather than rules; that, however, is somewhat conceited since it is true of any roleplaying system (I find such a statement to be on a similar level of annoyance to White Wolf's implicit claim that they somehow revolutionised roleplaying by inventing the concept of storytelling - and were apparently ignorant of the fact that their games were actually used to play superheroes with fangs). My interest here is not to say that Champions is a better game than HeroQuest (I have no particular interest in taking either side of that debate - apples and oranges, it seems to me) but rather to question the often suggested idea that HQ, with a few tweaks, can make a good supers game. I'm not saying it can't, but I'm just finding it hard to see how it can simulate certain concepts.
To return to duplication - a duplicating hero in most supers games controls all his characters duplicates, and they are often of identical capabilities. If you do that in HQ with followers, you're trivialising the ability (it is no different than a non-duplicating hero who happens to have a couple of sidekicks). How does one come up with ways to represent such a power so that it feels like a superhuman ability instead of just something akin to "Batman and Robin"? Would the suggestion be to actually allow the player to have multiple actions, basically controlling multiple characters, or would you do it with some combination of an augment plus followers?
-- GAZZA
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