I've never been truly happy with the magic rules in MSH, even after extensive house-ruling and cherry-picking from multiple rule revisions.
They work well for low-powered magic-users with a limited arsenal of effects, and allow to run them with clear-cut rules and a manageable arsenal.

If you look at the iconic super-sorcerers like Doctor Strange or Brother Voodoo, however, every other issue they find the right spell to banish the monster of the week just to store it away and never ever use it again.
In effect, that means constantly keeping track of a lot of clutter. Power stunts help to remedy that a bit, but as they lead to permanently bought powers/spells, you still collect a lot of clutter.

An interesting alternate take I've found is in the Savage Worlds super-hero setting Necessary Evil. In this setting, magic is just a single power called Super-Sorcery.
Thus, Super-Sorcery in MSH would look as following:

Super-Sorcery** (three slot power)

Super-Sorcery allows to simulate any other super-powers as spells, with a total combined rank of the Super-Sorcery power rank x2, with no single spell of a higher power rank than Super-Sorcery.

Adding a spell to the active arsenal requires an action and a Psyche FEAT as for an universal spell (along with the need to be able to gesture, and the possibility to temporarily lose Psyche ranks).

Dropping a spell to make room for different spells is a free action.

Spells are declared as personal, universal or dimensional, with the usual effect.

A super-sorcerer can borrow more power than he can normally safely handle. He can borrow more than power rank x2 power rank points (and even gain spells of higher rank than Super-Sorcery), but he must keep track of the number of power points above his limit. Whenever the die result of a spellcasting FEAT is equal to or lower than the number of "over-borrowed" points (including the FEAT to "over-borrow" in the first place), he must roll for backlash (d%):
01-02 Dimensional Rift: Red Psyche FEAT or drawn to other dimension by displeased entity
03-04 Scarred For Life: unconscious for 1d10 hours, Psyche permanently -1 rank, no spell-casting for 1d10 days
05-15 Mind Whip: all spells drop, unconscious for 1d10 hours, no spell-casting for 1d10 days
16-35 Mental Blast: all spells drop, stunned for 1d10 turns, no spell-casting for one day
36-69: Mystic Feedback: All spells drop, stunned for 1d10 turns, no spell-casting for 1d10 hours
70-99: Magic Fatigue: All spells drop, no spell-casting for 1d10 rounds
00: Power Surge: Caster taps into a power source, Psyche temporarily increases by 1 rank for the rest of the day

Example:
Black Wizard is a magical villain with Psyche EX (20) and Super-Sorcery RM (30), which grants him 60 points to buy spells with.

He plans to rob a bank, and thus prepares the following spells:

• Body Armor EX (20) = 20 points: Enough to repel anything fired at him up to shotgun blasts.
• Slashing Missile GD (10) = 10 points: To cut down any opposition and prove that he is serious.
• Flight GD (10) = 10 points: To get away fast after the robbery.
• Mind Control* GD (10) = 20 points: To force the cashier to hand him the money if he refuses

That uses up 60 points, exactly his allowance.

The robbery goes well, until all of a sudden The Thing busts in.
Black Wizard realizes that his measly Slashing Missile won't cut it, but needs the big guns.

On his action in round 1, he first drops both Slashing Missile and Mind Control in the first round (reducing his spells to 30 of 60 points). He spends the rest of round 1 "over-borrowing" to activate Energy Generation MN (75), bringing his spell total to 105, 45 points above his safe limit. From now on, any casting roll of 45 or less will result in a backlash.
The result of the activation roll is a 97, so the over-borrowing itself goes well.

In round 2, he wins initiative and tries to fry The Thing with his Monstrous Energy Beam. The roll is a 27 - so not only a failure, but a backlash! The result on the backlash table is 08, knocking out Black Wizard for 1d10 hours and making him easy to pick up for the cops.


Thoughts?

You missed MG9 Power Simulation allowing any power in the UPB, or whatever you want, to be used a magical spell.

MG9 just takes a particular regular power and treats it as a magical spell, without it being able to be changed, swapped etc. What I'm looking for is something that allows to emulate any power without creating an ever longer list of powers at hand.

Well I look at Magic Power Simulation as just that. Any power you want, treat it as a magic spell. DC Heroes has that power too. I see the subtle difference in what you're saying.

Back in the 1980's, when I first proposed doing a NEW UNIVERSE-style campaign. Our first attempt at the classic MSH game fell flat. We did not feel like we belonged in the MSU and using established heroes just did not fit us right.

So, after a few years, I read the NEW UNIVERSE campaign comic STAR BRAND. Pretty cool concept, when you look at the era.

And then it hit me. I gathered my players. Told them about my idea.

It was going to be a New Universe style campaign game as well. Where on day 1, there was no heros or villains at all on planet Earth. Things were exactly the way they were in summer of 1988 (I think it was). Reagan was president. The Los Angeles Lakers had just won back-to-back titles. The Cold War was still on.

But that then, on that day we started, would be the first time in the history of the world that super hero's would start to pop up. And it would open it up. It would be US being the hero's, people we did not like the villains.

The effect was electric. Everyone was in on the spot. My brother claimed IRON MAN. My friend Jason claimed Superman. My friend Ryan claimed Thor. And so on. It was great. We were going for a "street level" campaign to start with, so we did limits where our powers were so new we did not know how to use them.

As we were creating our characters, my brother ran his mouth. He went on about how with technology always improving, that eventually his Iron Man character, would someday be the most powerful in the world.

I could not let him get away with that. I knew I was going to be GMing most of the adventures and when I PC'd it would be when it was just me and my brother playing, and he was GM. I needed something that got stronger as time went on, that would not get left behind and would be powerful and mighty.

And as I was pondering this, I looked at my Advanced D&D Players Handbook and saw the answer staring right at me.



I smiled. I would be a D&D magic user in the Marvel Universe. Weak at first, no doubt. But as I leveled up, I would gain in strength and in might.

Like many, I did not like the established MSH rules for magic and decided to go with D&D's greatest strength- it's magic system.

I did it where my character (read my bio, btw) would find my spellbooks for the first time on my own, would practice and learn them and would use them just as if I were in the D&D world.

This meant I had to convert EVERY spell in the Players Handbook and Unearthed Arcana over to MSH format. Some of them were easy. For example, casting a SLEEP spell, I need a successful casting, opposed by an opponents PSYCHE to avoid falling asleep. No big deal. Other spells were more difficult to balance out. MAGIC MISSILE spell, for example. I could cast 1 missile for every 3 levels; each missile did TYPICAL damage, auto hit if I cast successfully, avoided all natural and artificial armors; avoided non-magical forcefields. Drawback- it only does 6 points of damage. Which was a fair trade off.

But my character was born and he is still in use today, although more of an NPC though.

After testing it a bit, rank x2 was way too powerful even for a three-slot power. In combat, that is sufficient to run an offensive power and a defensive power at full rank level, or a bit below it while running a load of utility powers at Fe-Pr level (Leaping, Teleport, Resistance etc.)
=> Thus, I will lower the selection to rank x1.

At the same time, overcasting has been much too unattractive. Any serious raise in power comes with a serious raise of risk. The risk needs to be dampened.
=> Whenever a die is equal to or greater than the number of overcasted points, there is a Psyche FEAT, that on a white result leads to backlash.

Hopefully that will work out, but this will need some more testing.

New version:

Super-Sorcery** (three slot power)

Super-Sorcery allows to simulate any other super-powers as spells, with a total combined rank of the Super-Sorcery power rank.

Activating a spell requires an action and a Psyche FEAT as for an universal spell (along with the need to be able to gesture, and the possibility to temporarily lose Psyche ranks).

Dropping a spell to make room for different spells is a free action.

Spells are declared as personal, universal or dimensional, with the usual effect.

A super-sorcerer can borrow more power than he can normally safely handle. He can borrow more power rank points than his rank in Super-Sorcery (and even gain spells of higher rank than Super-Sorcery), but he must keep track of the number of power points above his limit. Whenever the die result of a spellcasting FEAT is equal to or lower than the number of "over-borrowed" points (including the FEAT to "over-borrow" in the first place), he must make a Psyche FEAT or roll for backlash (d%):
01-02 Dimensional Rift: Red Psyche FEAT or drawn to other dimension by displeased entity
03-04 Scarred For Life: unconscious for 1d10 hours, Psyche permanently -1 rank, no spell-casting for 1d10 days
05-15 Mind Whip: all spells drop, unconscious for 1d10 hours, no spell-casting for 1d10 days
16-35 Mental Blast: all spells drop, stunned for 1d10 turns, no spell-casting for one day
36-69: Mystic Feedback: All spells drop, stunned for 1d10 turns, no spell-casting for 1d10 hours
70-99: Magic Fatigue: All spells drop, no spell-casting for 1d10 rounds
00: Power Surge: Caster taps into a power source, Psyche temporarily increases by 1 rank for the rest of the day

Example:
Black Wizard is a magical villain with Psyche IN (40) and Super-Sorcery RM (30), which grants him 30 points to buy spells with.
He plans to rob a bank, and thus prepares the following spells:

• Body Armor GD (10) = 10 points: Enough to repel any handgun shots at him.
• Slashing Missile GD (10) = 10 points: To cut down any opposition and prove that he is serious.
• Flight GD (10) = 10 points: To get away fast after the robbery.

That uses up 30 points, exactly his allowance.

The robbery goes well, until all of a sudden The Thing busts in.
Black Wizard realizes that his measly Slashing Missile won't cut it, but needs the big guns. On his action, he drops both Slashing Missile and Flight in the first round (reducing his spells to 10 of 30 points). He spends round 1 "over-borrowing" to activate Energy Generation MN (75), bringing his spell total to 85, 55 points above his safe limit. From now on, any casting roll of 55 or less will result in a backlash. The result of the activation roll is a 97, so the over-borrowing itself goes well.
In round 2, he wins initiative and tries to fry The Thing with his Monstrous Energy Beam. The roll is a 27 - so not only a failure, but a backlash! The Psyche FEAT fails, and the result on the backlash table is 08, knocking out Black Wizard for 1d10 hours and making him easy to pick up for the cops.