Use of the Hero System's Older Editions

[Tholomyes]

Apparently you feel that a comic character has to be the main character/focal point (or one of several) of a comic for it to be a 'PC'?  I ask this because you seem to have some divine knowledge about which characters are and aren't PC's within the comics...

 

I, on the other hand, feel that any character portrayed in the comics is fair game for being a PC... even support characters.  This probably drives our philosophical differences ... and also drives why I see little point in requiring a bland, homogenized approach to player builds for pure GM convenience.

 

You say "pure GM convenience"; I say "Genre Conventions". In comics, you rarely see the types of glass cannons who are KOed in a punch (even a superhuman punch) or who are stunned after any given hit filling the same narrative role as PCs in an RPG (who are, yes, the focal characters). Maybe your games are different, and everyone is vying to play Jarvis or Alfred, and everyone else moans and grumbles that they're stuck playing Tony Stark or Batman, but don't act like your games are the norm, and mine are somehow aberrant oddities, just because the PCs are all the focal characters of the story, and filling the genre conventions that befit focal characters in a superhero genre. 

[Surrealone]

You say "pure GM convenience"; I say "Genre Conventions". In comics, you rarely see the types of glass cannons who are KOed in a punch (even a superhuman punch) or who are stunned after any given hit filling the same narrative role as PCs in an RPG (who are, yes, the focal characters). Maybe your games are different, and everyone is vying to play Jarvis or Alfred, and everyone else moans and grumbles that they're stuck playing Tony Stark or Batman, but don't act like your games are the norm, and mine are somehow aberrant oddities, just because the PCs are all the focal characters of the story, and filling the genre conventions that befit focal characters in a superhero genre. 

I tend to play at the heroic level where the vast bulk of the characters can be cold-cocked, gunshot wounds are truly lethal, and 4d6 KA's are missle attacks. Bruises are normal, people regularly bleed, BODY takes a lot of time to heal.  A well-trained agent with an automatic rifle and without a ballistic vest is a glass cannon who can easily be one-shot/killed by a skilled sniper.  Someone with ballistic armor can soak multiple hits ... but will likely be stunned.  The professor X type in the mix is a SPD2 psychic who must concentrate (0 DCV) for almost everything ... and he's still combat-effective.  (Uses cover and times his combat mentalist abilities very well.)

 

​This is all quite normal at the heroic level of play -- i.e. scaled down versions of the 400-500 pointers.  After all, it's no fun to play if your character can't die.  That said, if we were to scale it all up, our psychic would basically be Professor X... and probably no faster than he is at this level of play, he'd just have stronger abilities, AoE powers, etc.

[Tholomyes]

I tend to play at the heroic level where the vast bulk of the characters can be cold-cocked, gunshot wounds are truly lethal, and 4d6 KA's are missle attacks. Bruises are normal, people regularly bleed, BODY takes a lot of time to heal.  A well-trained agent without a ballistic vest is a glass cannon who can easily be one-shot/killed by a skilled sniper.  Someone with ballistic armor can soak multiple hits ... but will likely be stunned.  The professor X type in the mix is a SPD2 psychic who must concentrate for almost everything.

 

​This is all quite normal at the heroic level of play -- i.e. scaled down versions of the 400-500 pointers.  After all, it's no fun to play if your character can't die.

 

Ok, I think I can see the difference of styles more clearly. I tend to play they 4-color-supers variety, where even the most street-level heroes are closer to Spider-man or Green Arrow, than Daredevil or the Question. It fits closer to the Bronze age comics I grew up reading. For me, I've become jaded to death in RPGs and Comics (and, it should follow Comics-based RPGs), due to the prevalence of both, having played with too many vindictive "GM-Vs-Player" style GMs, and having lived through... well, comics past the 80s. I like it when loss doesn't necessarily mean death, and death doesn't necessarily mean loss.

[Christopher R Taylor]

A lot of comic book characters are pretty defense-free.  Cyclops for example is a huge energy blast in two legs.  Yeah he's got some martial arts training and body armor, but its not very significant.  Storm has no defenses, wears little in the way of clothing let alone armor, and is pretty much never hit - but when she is, she goes down in a heap.  Until she lost her powers, then she shifted all her points into martial arts and suddenly was a master hand-to-hand fighter.

[zslane]

I find it rather strange to make "experienced characters" the default starting character standard in an RPG. It would be like making 5th level the default starting level for D&D campaigns. I'm sure there have been plenty of homebrew campaigns where the players decided to skip the first N levels for their characters, but doing so has never been the "official" published default for the game.

 

The Champions rulebook has always had a chapter devoted to explaining what an RPG is, indicating that it expects some readers will be completely new the hobby. Even among those who have played an RPG before, not everyone will have played a points-based system like Champions before, and so suggesting that everyone should start with an "experienced" superhero right out of the gate feels dubious to me. In my experience, new players barely knew how to make use of 200-250 points worth of stuff; throwing another 50-100 points of stuff at them would be pointless, if not counter-productive.

[Ninja-Bear]

A lot of comic book characters are pretty defense-free. Cyclops for example is a huge energy blast in two legs. Yeah he's got some martial arts training and body armor, but its not very significant. Storm has no defenses, wears little in the way of clothing let alone armor, and is pretty much never hit - but when she is, she goes down in a heap. Until she lost her powers, then she shifted all her points into martial arts and suddenly was a master hand-to-hand fighter.

Defense free in a narrative setting where the author determines how much damage the heroes take. That doesn't quite work that way in an RPG.

[Tasha]

I find it rather strange to make "experienced characters" the default starting character standard in an RPG. It would be like making 5th level the default starting level for D&D campaigns. I'm sure there have been plenty of homebrew campaigns where the players decided to skip the first N levels for their characters, but doing so has never been the "official" published default for the game.

 

The Champions rulebook has always had a chapter devoted to explaining what an RPG is, indicating that it expects some readers will be completely new the hobby. Even among those who have played an RPG before, not everyone will have played a points-based system like Champions before, and so suggesting that everyone should start with an "experienced" superhero right out of the gate feels dubious to me. In my experience, new players barely knew how to make use of 200-250 points worth of stuff; throwing another 50-100 points of stuff at them would be pointless, if not counter-productive.

 

That's the area thing about games. If you want to run a Zeroes to Heroes game, that's up to you and your players. There's nothing wrong with that kind of play, but it really doesn't interest me, been doing it over and over for the last 30+ years.

 

Though I don't think that a 400pt 6e character is "experienced". Just someone who had a life before they had Superpowers + Their Superpowers. 400pts doesn't go a long way. You end up with a few skills and basic powers. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Defense free in a narrative setting where the author determines how much damage the heroes take. That doesn't quite work that way in an RPG. 

 

Exactly, in a game, the bad guys are typically a bit smarter in terms of tactics, the combat is more about the fighting than telling the story, etc.  What works in a comic book doesn't necessarily in a game.

 

I find it rather strange to make "experienced characters" the default starting character standard in an RPG

 

That's never been my favorite either, I really prefer the arc of a campaign where you start out small and accomplish something rather than start out on top and... I'm not really sure where you go at that point.  I'm not saying you can't pull it off or nobody should do that, its just not my preferred structure, nor most players that I've met.  

[Tasha]

A lot of comic book characters are pretty defense-free.  Cyclops for example is a huge energy blast in two legs.  Yeah he's got some martial arts training and body armor, but its not very significant.  Storm has no defenses, wears little in the way of clothing let alone armor, and is pretty much never hit - but when she is, she goes down in a heap.  Until she lost her powers, then she shifted all her points into martial arts and suddenly was a master hand-to-hand fighter.

 

That's where the differences between an Author Driven medium like Comics or Novels show up. It doesn't matter what defenses Cyclops or Storm have, they almost never get attacked. Though the standard Xman costume does include some resistant defenses (enough to resist bullets according to one of the comics).

 

Also Storm probably has defenses we don't see i.e. strong winds making it harder for physical attacks to hit her. I seem to also remember her being pretty resistant to energy attacks. Cyclops probably has the strong resistance to Energy attacks (including total immunity to his brother Havoc's attacks)

 

In Hero and any RPG with the similar model hitting then having armor resist defenses. Avoidance as a primary defense really doesn't work well. Avoidance (i.e. DCV) tends to be streaky where the PC is either constantly getting missed, but then suddenly the GM starts to roll hot and the PC is Knocked out. So it pays to have some defense, usually enough to take an average attack without being Stunned by a single attack. Because once a PC is stunned it's pretty easy to keep them that way and finish Knocking them out.

[Tasha]

Exactly, in a game, the bad guys are typically a bit smarter in terms of tactics, the combat is more about the fighting than telling the story, etc.  What works in a comic book doesn't necessarily in a game.

 

That's never been my favorite either, I really prefer the arc of a campaign where you start out small and accomplish something rather than start out on top and... I'm not really sure where you go at that point.  I'm not saying you can't pull it off or nobody should do that, its just not my preferred structure, nor most players that I've met.  

 

That's hyperbole. The goal isn't to start out completely super experienced. It's to have a competent character. Someone at the beginning of the middle of their career. Still room to grow, but not feeling like they are totally green.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Also Storm probably has defenses we don't see i.e. strong winds making it harder for physical attacks to hit her. I seem to also remember her being pretty resistant to energy attacks. Cyclops probably has the strong resistance to Energy attacks (including total immunity to his brother Havoc's attacks)

 

Well if I built a Cyclops in a game I'd do that but there's no evidence of that in the comics.  His personal immunity to Havok is just because they're brothers and they have the same basic blast type (he's immune to his own attack as well, as in his eyelids can keep back a blast that can punch through a tank).  

 

Storm is pretty much just given plot protection.  I remember her standing in one image, with no powers, in front of everyone else as this crappy morlock killer uses this blizzard of shrapnel attack.  She sort of cringes and everyone behind her gets torn apart, Collossus is hurt so bad he passes out.  Plot protection.

 

In Champions, you just get hit with the AE, heh

[Tholomyes]

A lot of comic book characters are pretty defense-free.  Cyclops for example is a huge energy blast in two legs.  Yeah he's got some martial arts training and body armor, but its not very significant.  Storm has no defenses, wears little in the way of clothing let alone armor, and is pretty much never hit - but when she is, she goes down in a heap.  Until she lost her powers, then she shifted all her points into martial arts and suddenly was a master hand-to-hand fighter.

I'll agree that Storm doesn't tend to get hit a lot, but there isn't much textual evidence that she "goes down like a heap" any more than the rest of the X-men. I did a quick flip through of my Trades, up through lifedeath, and when a lot of the time, when she goes down, the rest of the X-men go down just as easily (including tankier characters like Colossus and Wolverine, although wolverine less so, when Byrne started drawing the book, because you can always tell who Byrne's favorite X-man is). Then, besides NND/Mental effects, and  Entangle-Psych Lim combos, I found 3 cases out of 90 issues (X-men 121, when she had already exhausted herself with a massive use of her powers [in game terms, END taken as STUN?], 137 where she was taken out early by the Shiar Imperial Guard [while it was a losing battle, the rest weren't taken out as easily, so I'll count it], and 149 [Colossus was knocked into her; as close to direct textual evidence as I could find]) where she went down any easier than the rest of the team. Colossus actually gets more than her, but chalk that up to the Warf effect.

 

As for her "sudden" master hand-to-hand fighting, there was evidence as early as the Dark Phoenix Saga, and it was most notable over a year before losing her powers in 170, where she handily defeated Calysto in knife-fighting, no powers combat. Not exactly like it came out of the blue.

 

As for Experienced superheroes, count me in favor. Perhaps it's that I played enough of D&D to hate the slog of the first few levels before you were actually competent, and perhaps it's that I tend just not to like the same sort of steady XP progression for HERO, but to me, I don't see Champions as a game where you "level up" from Novices to Experienced heroes to High powered heroes to Cosmic heroes. I see it as the game where you pick up a few extra tricks, a few extra skills, and maybe invest a bit in an HQ or team vehicle. The experienced heroes benchmark gives enough points for a decent civilian skillset, superhero skillset and powers, and enough points for some tertiary and flavor-powers and abilities.

[zslane]

That's the area thing about games. If you want to run a Zeroes to Heroes game, that's up to you and your players. There's nothing wrong with that kind of play, but it really doesn't interest me, been doing it over and over for the last 30+ years.

Fair enough. However, the main rulebooks of most RPGs address the reader as though s/he is a first-timer. The assumption, sometimes implied but usually stated explicitly in some way, is that you are starting out with an inexperienced hero, the "zero" in your perspective. Players are always free to ignore the defaults and go their own way, but the rulebook itself has to take a more common-denominator approach.

 

This is perhaps another reason why 4th and earlier editions are more suited to introducing newbies: starting characters are assumed to be as (in)experienced as the players.

 

Though I don't think that a 400pt 6e character is "experienced". Just someone who had a life before they had Superpowers + Their Superpowers. 400pts doesn't go a long way. You end up with a few skills and basic powers.

One of the things that Champions was always praised for was the fact that even a "starting" superhero was more capable than most "1st level" characters in other RPGs, making them more fun/interesting to play right out of the gate. Even with the lowly 200-250 range of 1st-4th editions, I found this to be palpably true. I have to assume that if you feel 400 points doesn't buy much of a character in 6E, then you must also feel that 250 points doesn't buy much of a character in 1-4E either, to which we will simply have to agree to disagree.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Its been my observation that if you give players enough points they can build their characters with all the stuff they want, they have a hard time figuring out where to put experience except in "I want to take less damage" or "I want to hit harder."  Leaving players hungry with gaps in their build gives plenty of inspiration to spend xps and places for the GM to exploit and build stories around.

[ghost-angel]

I think you're misreading the rules. Even in 4th Edition they did not treat Characters as New.

 

Players - yes. Always have the text assume the Player is new.

Characters - no. 4th Edition had two levels of Superhero: Standard & High Powered. That's not the Rules assuming New Inexperienced Characters, just the opposite, it's providing rules for both. Explicitly.

 

That's what drew me to Hero in the first place, as I started with 4E, it did not assume you went from Zero To Hero, it assumed you started out as a Hero and went up from there. Especially in Heroic Level Play (also, where I started, with Fantasy and Cypberpunk games).

 

I started specifically because the rules did not seem to assume my Character was an inexperienced as I was with the System. That's the whole draw to me.

 

I actually have one GM I've gamed with for almost 2 decades now who assumes the exact opposite: The Character Points you get are your Hero at their most competent, they start out fully experienced and at peak power. I've had a standing discussion with him for years about it... He's been playing since 2E or 3E IIRC.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think a 1st level superhero would be a guy with like one power he could use a couple times a day, or a few points of extra defenses.  Champions presumes more than that, but at least in the old days they started you as a New Mutant, not an Avenger.  Vulnerabilities, activation rolls, etc were all pretty standard in 2-3rd edition.

[Hugh Neilson]

So IF the GM says that Average Dex is 23 and average SPD is 5. Then you make a character that is dex 11 spd 2 that of course doesn't perform very well in combat. That's somehow the GM's fault? Or is it really your fault for making a PC that was so behind the curve?

It is the GM's fault, at least in part, if he says nothing. In reading a player's proposed character sheet, I generally will send back what I perceive - eg. that this guy will be low to average damage, be slow, but perhaps be the best defended character in the game. The player can then decide if that was what he was aiming for (if so, fine) or not (then revise).

 

Hugh if iirc in the original Enemies books, the villains with Dex above 30 were "normal" heroes like Frisbee. Lol.

 

"Normal Humans" tended to be better than the typical Super in DEX and SPD. But that's the same in the comics - Batman, Daredevil, etc.

 

 

In the first section before <SNIP1>, above -- you seem to suggest that one cannot build around normal human characteristics and still have playability.  One can certainly build a glass cannon type who is either a force to be reckoned with ... or is in deep, deep trouble after suffering a hit.  When done, the character should absolutely expect to be hit, get hurt, and be out of game play for a while ... and the player of such a character must employ cautious, strategic/tactical play to help avoid it.

 

Some glass cannons off the top of my head: Professor X, Cyclops, Storm, Prism, The Human Torch, Dr. Octopus. Caught off guard, any one one of them can be cold-cocked and rendered unconscious fairly easily.  If the Hulk were to hit any one of them at full force, they'd all be in the ICU -- if not flat-out dead.  Suggesting that players don't build any of these types of characters ... and that they 'tend not to be PCs' ... seems pretty absurd to me, as I've seen some rendition of each one of them played as PC's across my years of gaming.

And in the comics they are not hit for long enough to be part of the storyline, and a combat that starts with Storm taken out doesn't lead to Storm's player spending the next couple of hours sitting out the game. 

 

Apparently you feel that a comic character has to be the main character/focal point (or one of several) of a comic for it to be a 'PC'?  I ask this because you seem to have some divine knowledge about which characters are and aren't PC's within the comics...

I find few players want to be the low powered sidekick or the Super's normal buddy.

[Tasha]

I think a 1st level superhero would be a guy with like one power he could use a couple times a day, or a few points of extra defenses.  Champions presumes more than that, but at least in the old days they started you as a New Mutant, not an Avenger.  Vulnerabilities, activation rolls, etc were all pretty standard in 2-3rd edition.

 

Still had lots of characters with Activation Rolls, Restrainable powers, Concentration. Even at 350pts.

Never had a ton of characters in our campaigns with Vulnerabilities or Susceptabilities. Most players don't like overt combat weaknesses. I had characters here and there that had those disadvantages. Only when it was appropriate.

 

Maybe your groups were different, but seen the stuff you say aren't "standard" was actually pretty common.

[Ninja-Bear]

I think what they meant by experienced and why the increase if starting points is not so much as an increase of power level but a broading of power, skills and perks.

[Lucius]

 

The Champions rulebook has always had a chapter devoted to explaining what an RPG is, indicating that it expects some readers will be completely new the hobby

 

It has? Is that in Champions Complete?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Experienced palindromedary rider

[ghost-angel]

It has? Is that in Champions Complete?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Experienced palindromedary rider

 

Page 4 is an introduction to what RPGs are, essentially.

[Ninja-Bear]

Fwiw I have a hard time to spend 350 pts for a new character however sometimes I find it hard to fit everything at 250 pts too.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Maybe your groups were different, but seen the stuff you say aren't "standard" was actually pretty common.

 

I wasn't going based on my group, just on the published characters both hero and villain from the time.  That's why I said that kind of thing was "all pretty standard" at the time, not that it was not.

 

I find few players want to be the low powered sidekick or the Super's normal buddy. 

 

Probably not, but they ought to try it some time, its pretty fun!