The 'Elminster' of Hero: Harbringer of Justice?

[Eosin]

While it is still early - I believe the poll I started shows that the overwhelming majority of us prefer him to be an uber-bada$$ and that he belongs in HC: UA

[SuperPheemy]

Harbringer = GM PC On Crack

/GM in this case can be replaced with author

The expression of an opinion with which you don not concur does not constitute whining.
Yesterday 08:46 PM

True, true. But the above quote does constitute whining, or bitching, or just general snarkiness. Please, use whatever similar adjective is most palatable to your sensibilities.

[wylodmayer]

In Re: Harbinger of Justice in original Dark Champions book

1) On the one hand, HoJ may be built on a lot of points, but he is built from a Dark Champions kind of perspective; he has only 8 PD & ED, 9 pts of Armor, 40 STUN and a 6 SPD. True, his combat values are truly terrifying, but most of his points go toward broadening his abilities, not deepening them. I always thought of HoJ as a Batman like character. Not the "Batman as God" type mentioned earlier - realize that our buddy the Harbinger would get squished in a fight with real supervillains. His mediocre (from a superhero-level p.o.v.) STUN and measly defenses would swiftly retire him to the sidellines in a fight against someone like Firewing or Dr. Destroyer, regardless of his point levels. On the other hand, HoJ is the kind of character who can successfully do all those things that it would normally take a whole team of characters to do; he has the range of skills, contacts, and gear necessary to investigate every aspect of an international criminal gang like Card Shark or the Master of Crime's organization. He's the James Bond of Dark Champions characters; no James can't bounce bullets or survive a nuclear explosion, but he can keep penetrating SPECTRE's plots and moping the floor with their best operatives until he gets right to the top and drops Blofeld down a smokestack.

2) On the other hand, including HoJ in the Dark Champions book without some better context for him was an odd choice. I recall spending many hours trying to figure out "wtf?" in regards to this character. Had it been more explicitly stated that he is sort of the goal that Dark Champions characters can hope to achieve someday - the lone crimefighter who can literally take on the an entire organized crime syndicate by himself - it would have made things better

3) In the final analysis, he, like the Dark Champions book itself, was Steve's baby, started from humble beginnings and *played* up to the disgusting levels with which we are all familiar. Steve did something very important for superhero gaming. The early nineties were the era of the anti-hero, the vigilante, but up to that point, no such character in any comic universe - however popular - had received any special or even adequate treatment in games that were slanted mechanically toward his more four-color counterparts. Around the same time as Dark Champions, Mayfair published a Batman-centric version of their DC Heroes game, but there was nothing different about the game except the packaging - no concession had been made to the idea that certain fundamental differences needed to be appreciated to properly "game" the vigilante-type hero. Dark Champions changed all that, and so successfully that the term became a generially used one, regardless of game system. Steve's book tapped into the new face (at that time) of superhero comics, and gave us the tools to go into those worlds. That's pretty impressive, considering that this industry really doesn't change that much. Sure, new systems spring up all the time, but their technical innovation, when they are worth anything at all, rarely accomplish anything more than providing another way to simulate the same basic genre conventions. Dark Champions ranks, in terms of innovation, with the other creation of the early nineties that tapped into the zeitgeist, the feeling of "anti-hero" - Vampire. Both took gaming to places it had never (successfully) been before, and opened up new dimensions for roleplaying. If there is greater level of maturity, a more nuanced approach, to games now, I attribute it directly to these two releases, which entered the main bastions of moral clarity (heroes vs villains and people vs monsters) and turned everything upside down. If Dark Champions (4th) seems too "light" now, then that is in part proof of the impact it had. For the man who brought us this... I can forgive a little self-indulgence in publishing the character who, for him, started it all.

4) All that having been said, I have never allowed the HoJ in any of my games as an NPC. I might, in a superhero game, but I haven't yet.

wylodmayer

[Vondy]

True, true. But the above quote does constitute whining, or bitching, or just general snarkiness. Please, use whatever similar adjective is most palatable to your sensibilities.

I do not choose to acquiesce to you characterization. Those words are my honest assessment. They constitute frank criticism. The Harbringer was clearly a player character. You could tell just by looking at the write-up. He was grossly overpowered for the genre. The character needed a major edit before being put into a book and he missed the iconic mark. I'm sure Steve, who did a wonderful job the first Dark Champions and has produced some great materials since then will fix that in this version, but it doesn't change what has come before. What's more, the fact that you want to frame opinions you don't care for in the worst possible light doesn't make doing so acceptable. So I'll repeat myself for your edification: 4th Ed. Harbringer = Author's PC On Crack.