Teen Champions 'graduating' to Full Champions?

[CrosshairCollie]

Something that occured to me recently. Right now, I'm running a Teen Champions game at 250 points (I should have gone 200, but I mis-remembered what I intended to do. C'est la vie), built as 150 base + 100 Disads. Since the PCs are brand new at this, they have few of the interactive kinds of Disadvantages, like Hunteds (since they obviously couldn't have made any enemies), Rivalries, that sort of thing.

So, I was considering this: Over time, the PCs can acquire, should they choose, another 100 points of Disadvantages if the story accomodates them, complete with bonus Character Points to go with them. They're restricted by the 50-per-category cap, and the 150 point max, but past that, it's story-driven as they garner nemeses and interact more with The Superhuman World.

Good idea, bad idea?

[Blue]

You could wind up with a campaign that temporarily has one or two heroes that have much better powers than the others. To combat this the boosts might have to be across the board (Everyone picks up a particular hunted at the same time).

I think it's fine, so long as they aren't dumping all those points into the same power.

[Arkham]

Personal Opinion: Bad idea. Give them the disads for free, and by the time they have 100 points from exp, they will have graduated high school and are no longer 'teen champions'.

[CrosshairCollie]

You could wind up with a campaign that temporarily has one or two heroes that have much better powers than the others. To combat this the boosts might have to be across the board (Everyone picks up a particular hunted at the same time).

I think it's fine, so long as they aren't dumping all those points into the same power.

I thought of that, but I realized that there are few hero teams in comics who have an even power-level across the board (the most glaring being the original Avengers team, with Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk ... and Wasp and Ant-Man), and even a 350 point team will usually have some power variation even without point variation ... for example, in the game I'm playing in, we have a character capable of an 80 STR teamed up with my character, whose best standard attack is 10d6. I just spent, like, 60 points on skills.

And, fortunately, I have players I can trust not to overdo the crunchy aspects of a character ... except for one, but he's so tactically inept that I could hand him a 750 point powerhouse and I'd expect him to lose to Bulldozer. And even if they do, I told them from the onset: Spend your XP how you like; so long as it's remotely logical, I won't stop you. However, keep in mind that my job is to provide challenges for you. The more powerful you get, the more dangerous the opposition becomes.

That actually sums up my opinion of powergaming in both Hero and d20; you want to, go ahead. I'll just ramp up the opposition, because I have to give you a challenge. If it turns out the rest of the party can't keep up, well, you'll just have to take on a larger share of the work.