Quantum from Dragon Magazine #111, 1986 by George MacDonald

[massey]

The game mechanics dictate many of the "sweet spots" for stats.  If people are using a 10D6 average attack, then they're going to average about 35 Stun.  If you've got an 8 PD/ED and 20 Con, that means a normal attack will leave you missing your next action.  Buying up those stats so that you can take an average damage hit without being Stunned just makes sense.  Higher Speed is always helpful as long as you've got enough Endurance to make it to the post-12 recovery.

 

The very first character I ever built was a power armor guy.  I hadn't seen any of the published characters and didn't understand the system all that well.  This was in 4th edition.  His OCV/DCV was 5, because I didn't realize that such things were important.  Our team's first adventure was a Danger Room type scenario.  Our GM had played before, but none of the players had ever tried Champions.  So he let us fight each other and try out our characters, with the idea that we'd then rebuild after the session and fix all the various problems we had.

 

We were a bunch of players with zero experience in Champions, but very familiar with rpgs in general.  It took us exactly one battle before we each had a big list of changes for our characters.  Our second drafts looked very much like classic Champions characters, with Dex and Con scores in the mid-20s and Speeds of 5 to 6.  Those are simply the most effective places you can spend your points.

[Tech]

On 10/4/2020 at 1:30 PM, massey said:

The game mechanics dictate many of the "sweet spots" for stats.  If people are using a 10D6 average attack, then they're going to average about 35 Stun.  If you've got an 8 PD/ED and 20 Con, that means a normal attack will leave you missing your next action.  Buying up those stats so that you can take an average damage hit without being Stunned just makes sense.  Higher Speed is always helpful as long as you've got enough Endurance to make it to the post-12 recovery.

 

The very first character I ever built was a power armor guy.  I hadn't seen any of the published characters and didn't understand the system all that well.  This was in 4th edition.  His OCV/DCV was 5, because I didn't realize that such things were important.  Our team's first adventure was a Danger Room type scenario.  Our GM had played before, but none of the players had ever tried Champions.  So he let us fight each other and try out our characters, with the idea that we'd then rebuild after the session and fix all the various problems we had.

 

We were a bunch of players with zero experience in Champions, but very familiar with rpgs in general.  It took us exactly one battle before we each had a big list of changes for our characters.  Our second drafts looked very much like classic Champions characters, with Dex and Con scores in the mid-20s and Speeds of 5 to 6.  Those are simply the most effective places you can spend your points.

 

(I hope this doesn't become a duplicate post)

Massey, it's cool to hear about your beginning Champions experience and I think it will help others.

[BNakagawa]

This is why it's a good idea for the GM to establish some benchmarks so players can build characters that fit into the game world in the places they are supposed to. 

 

If you envision your character to be an agility based fighter, you need to know how much CV is enough to play that role. If you want to build a damage sponge, you need to know how much DEF is enough.

 

Without campaign specific benchmarks, how will you know?