Skills? How many points are normal?

[Transit]

My first time playing in a champions game in..well ages.. I think last time i saw a champions book it was first edition. How many skill points do normal 350 points charcters have or..Should they have?

Most of the printed ones have about 50 pts it looks like including ks and such..and Im a bit worried my 275 pts character only has 21 pts worth.

[Vondy]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

In normal Champions games that mimmic Silver and Bronze Age comics investment in skills tends to be fairly low - you could probably get away with ~20 points not including combat skill levels. In games that mimmic Iron Age comics, or have a more investigative/espionage flair, you will want to go higher than that - perhaps significantly higher.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

"Normal" can also vary widely from character to character. Detective-type characters often tend to have a lot more skills that your average mutant energy projector. My current group, three character have between 30 and 40 points in skills; the fourth has 100 points. So a lot depends on the character.

 

It also depends on the campaign. Some GMs tend to be a bit more strict about "if it's not on the char sheet, you don't know it" while others allow a bit more slop between different skills. So you probably need to ask your GM how many skill points he/she thinks is normal.

[Weldun]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

Personally, I try for at least 20 effective points in non-combat skills. (I use the term, effective points, to take into account skill enhancers). That being said, some have only hit the 10 mark, but then, it made sense for those characters.

 

In the end, it depends on the character.

[radioKAOS]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

I find a good rule of thumb is that you'll want at least 10% of your total cost on skills,, though I feel skill levels [even combat ones] count as points in that category.

 

Obviously character types will differ, but gerenally I think characters with less than that amount of skills need more work on their backstory. It's fine to have more than that in skills obviously, though sometimes I think people get overly crazy with skills and feel they need a PS and a KS for everything under the sun related to their field of specialization.

[Kirby]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

How many skill points do normal 350 points charcters have or..Should they have?

Most of the printed ones have about 50 pts it looks like including ks and such..and Im a bit worried my 275 pts character only has 21 pts worth.

I think your 275 point character is doing well to have 21 points in skills (as long as most are non-combat), especially if you've been away from the game for quite a while. FREd (the 5th Ed book) reccomends 25-80 points on skills. In 350 pt games I run, I require 25 points of non-combat skills (and I do mean skills, not perks, talents, etc.). I've had characters with as few as 13 points of non-combat skills to as many as 96 points in skills (60 were non-combat).

 

The skill points will be a range, but just have some.

[Edsel]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

Based on the above posts I'd have to say that the number of points in skills vary widely based on the campaign. In our own games we rarely play normal Champions (usually its Dark Champs or Fantasy Hero). In the rare instances when we have played a standard supers game a 275 point character would rarely have less than 25 points in non-combat skills, 30 would be more like it. In the rare 350-point games our group has run 40+ points in non-combat skills is not that uncommon. Our group's style usually involves a lot of role-playing though. In a heavily combat oriented game I can see where very few points in skills might be the norm.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

"Normal" can also vary widely from character to character. Detective-type characters often tend to have a lot more skills that your average mutant energy projector. My current group' date=' three character have between 30 and 40 points in skills; the fourth has 100 points. So a lot depends on the character.[/quote']

 

Also note the above are for 250 point characters, not 350.

 

The dynamic may change when they reach 350. i'd actually planned on 150 pts in Skills

[Weldun]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

I do have to admit, that my figures are from my old 4th ed. write-ups. In 5ER, I haven't really paid much attention to putting points aside for skills, as I've usually had more than enough.

[assault]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

While I obviously follow the guidelines set by the GMs in games I play, I have a default standard of 25 points of Skills and Perks for 250 point characters, and 50 for 350. I don't include Combat Skill Levels and Martial Arts in that.

 

I include Perks in there since things like Contacts and so on are as much part of the roleplaying side of the character as "non-combat skills". Since I rarely play Martial Artists and so on, I don't generally go for a lot of detective-type skils, shadowing, climbing and so on. Those I do take I tend to roll in with the others.

[Rapier]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

That's a difficult question to answer. It's kind of like asking how many dice should my energy blast be? It depends on the campaign.

 

Our current campaign that I'm a player in, my character has 50 pts of NonCombat Skills. He's also got 56 points in senses. Now he's spent some XP on some of that (currently at 340 pts).

 

He's a fairly skill/sense heavy kind of guy (with a HUGE FREAKIN GUN). I've seen other characters in this game with about 20 pts of skills and some at the 40ish range.

 

In the low-powered Monster Hunter game we are starting work on, my NPC character (I will be GMing) has 84 pts in skills (250 pt character) and no powers (using the Resource Points system from Dark Champions). I expect that most of the characters will come in at 50+ pts of skills (about 20% of their total).

[ghost-angel]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

I think a lot of GMs like to see 10% of the character be Non-Combat, mostly in Skills. One GM I game with says he wants 20% but we see from 15-20% normally.

 

Others haven't specified, and a lot of the time I personally get "Uh, I suggest less skills and more powers." eh.

 

go with 10-20% of your Characters total Points. You can't really do wrong in that range.

[Niles]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

For many Character Concepts 0-6 points is more than sufficient. Don't let anyone tell you any differently. Also remember your everyman skills.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

For many Character Concepts 0-6 points is more than sufficient. Don't let anyone tell you any differently. Also remember your everyman skills.

 

I hope this is humor

 

Speaking personally, were I to ever GM a game where a player gave me a Character with 6 points in Skills (that's 2 skills) I would send them back.

 

But everyone's game is different.

[Kirby]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

I hope this is humor

 

Speaking personally, were I to ever GM a game where a player gave me a Character with 6 points in Skills (that's 2 skills) I would send them back.

Ditto.

 

But everyone's game is different.

Those bastards.

[Bloodstone]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

For me, it's all about character concept and campaign style.

 

Most of my character concepts tend to be extremely skill heavy: Detectives, Scientists, Secret Agents, former members of the Special Forces, Immortals... things like that. As such, I frequently spend 10% or more of my character points on non combat skills.

 

However, this works out pretty well for me. Most of the campaigns I've been in have had lots of stuff to do outside of combat, so many of those skills end up seeing more action than my powers. I think if I didn't have so many usefull skills I would frequently get rather bored at the game table.

[assault]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

For many Character Concepts 0-6 points is more than sufficient. Don't let anyone tell you any differently. Also remember your everyman skills.

 

This is actually quite correct. There are quite a lot of characters that don't really need much more than their everyman skills. In fact, even when I do spend lots of points on non-combat skills, a lot of them are simply spent on upgrading everyman skills from their base level to three points.

 

Contacts and other Perks are something else.

 

To put it simply, a lot of starting characters are pretty much "everymen". At most they need a KS or two.

 

I do usually buy some other stuff, but I don't think it is necessary, and I didn't usually bother to do this back in earlier editions.

 

Also: Repped, for daring to express a controversial opinion.

[Questar]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

There's no such thing as a "normal" amount of skills. And while the type of campaign may influence things to some degree, the main thing to consider is what type of character YOU want to play. I have players who have very little interest in non-combat skills. It just isn't their thing. They enjoy getting in and mixing it up with the bad guys. Why should I make them buy a certain percentage of skills that they will never use?

 

Think about what would be fun for you. If you think you would enjoy having a lot of skills (and have a GM who is skilled at contriving ways to have them come into play) then buy those skills and don't worry about what is "normal". Or buy fewer skills if the other aspects of the game experience are more important to you. That freedom to create your OWN style of character is part of what makes HERO the great system is it.

[Shike019]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

In my current game, we started at 505 points (free regen 1/day). But we were required to have 120 pts in non combat skills. My char. I think has the highest skill point total but he is also 2500 years old. I don't actually have skills for some things, such as Classical Greek Mythology (as he grew up with it) and the GM allows me to make Int checks for those. He also knows 10 languages and has 15 skills under (Traveler).

[Niles]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

I hope this is humor

 

Speaking personally, were I to ever GM a game where a player gave me a Character with 6 points in Skills (that's 2 skills) I would send them back.

 

But everyone's game is different.

 

Last time this came up I challanged anyone on the thread to come up with 10 points of background skills Inargueably possesed by any of 5-8 (mostly) prominent comic book superheros, after much brainstorming they got close but failed for the Thing and Superman, and failed utterly everywhere else.

 

My last Champions Character was a 14 year old kid newly recruited into an X-men like mutant team. Are you going to tell me that he needed more points in skills than an average citizen has in total to reflect his knowledge and expertice?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

Last time this came up I challanged anyone on the thread to come up with 10 points of background skills Inargueably possesed by any of 5-8 (mostly) prominent comic book superheros' date=' after much brainstorming they got close but failed for the Thing and Superman, and failed utterly everywhere else.[/quote']

 

I don't read comic books. The writing in them sucks. Probably because the writers have no skill.

 

My last Champions Character was a 14 year old kid newly recruited into an X-men like mutant team. Are you going to tell me that he needed more points in skills than an average citizen has in total to reflect his knowledge and expertice?

 

Maybe that particualr concept, sure. But not any concept. I will concur some concepts can get away with little or no skill. Not "any" or "every" concept.

[Kirby]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

I don't read comic books. The writing in them sucks. Probably because the writers have no skill.

Repped!

[assault]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

Last time this came up I challanged anyone on the thread to come up with 10 points of background skills Inargueably possesed by any of 5-8 (mostly) prominent comic book superheros' date=' after much brainstorming they got close but failed for the Thing and Superman, and failed utterly everywhere else.[/quote']

 

The Thing shouldn't be hard: ex-gang member/football star/Army Air Force (or was it Marine?) pilot. The latter apparently involving both "test pilot" and "combat pilot" roles. Let's see: Streetwise, AK: Yancy Street neighbourhood, Combat Pilot, PS: Test Pilot, TF: Sundry planes, parachutes etc, plus whatever other training you feel like giving him. Survival training? KS: Commies/Nazis/Baddies. KS: US military. Etc.

 

Likewise, Reed Richards: Serious scientist guy and OSS veteran (spy). Everything you can eat, plus Commando Training!

 

Superman: Knows about Krypton, space/aliens, Smallville, and either farming or small town shopkeeping. Can speak Kryptonese. There's ten. He would have had all of this stuff by the time he went to Metropolis. Oh yes, and Robot Engineering, since he built his Superboy robots as a kid!

 

Flash (Barry Allen): Police scientist. Is an actual cop, as well as a scientist, although I wouldn't give him a lot of "street" stuff. A couple of KS's, Forensics, and a science skill or two should do, but that's 10 points there. (Breakfall would be nice too, but that's not really background!) That's ignoring what he knew about Earth-2 from reading comics about it as a kid!

 

Green Lantern (Hal Jordan): a fairly tight squeeze here. He's a test pilot. He might have been ex-military, although I'm not sure if that was stated. He certainly knows a few things about aeronautics. I'd have to scratch around to be certain of an undeniable ten points. He didn't orginally know much about the Green Lantern Corps, the Guardians and so on. He had some contacts, though.

 

Of course all of these are easy ones.

 

I've followed their early Silver Age continuities if any of these statements seem confusing. Obviously a bunch of these things weren't established until after the character first appeared, so you could happily ignore them in a "First Issue" version of the character.

[Bloodstone]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

Last time this came up I challanged anyone on the thread to come up with 10 points of background skills Inargueably possesed by any of 5-8 (mostly) prominent comic book superheros' date=' after much brainstorming they got close but failed for the Thing and Superman, and failed utterly everywhere else.[/quote']

 

I'm pretty sure I could pass that challenge for Superman or Thing. At least, as they are now. Not so sure about them at the very beginning of their publication history though.

 

Out of curiosity, who were the other people on your list?

 

My last Champions Character was a 14 year old kid newly recruited into an X-men like mutant team. Are you going to tell me that he needed more points in skills than an average citizen has in total to reflect his knowledge and expertice?

 

Depends on the kid obviously.

 

Characters like Robin and Speedy are all about skills. Beast Boy or Starfire, much less so. Cyborg and Raven are both a pretty decent middle ground, IMO.

 

My writup for Ben 10 has something like 10 or 15 points in non combat skills, which is honestly pretty impressive for a ten year old hero. But as much as I love that show, I would never play him or even someone like him in most of the games I have been involved with. I would have nothing to do out of combat! In the show, Ben stumbles upon all the answers through sheer dumb luck or the help of his grandpa and cousin (Followers/DNPC's). Most GM's I know just don't run their games like that.

 

This is not to say mutant kids or radiation infused janitors are invalid concepts or anything. But I would personally be frustrated if I couldn't contribute anything to the team except ammusing roleplaying and combat. YMMV

[Niles]

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

 

I'm not trying to be a jerk here, you did better than the most of the people on the old thread. But...

The Thing shouldn't be hard: ex-gang member/football star/Army Air Force (or was it Marine?) pilot. The latter apparently involving both "test pilot" and "combat pilot" roles. Let's see: Streetwise' date=' AK: Yancy Street neighbourhood, Combat Pilot, PS: Test Pilot, TF: Sundry planes, parachutes etc, plus whatever other training you feel like giving him. Survival training? KS: Commies/Nazis/Baddies. KS: US military. Etc.[/quote']The chalenge was prompted by someone declaring that all characters needed at least 10 points of background skills of no obvious adventuring application. I didn't count the skills needed to fly the team vehicle, and probably wouldnt have counted most of the military skills, if anyone had brought them up.

 

Likewise' date=' Reed Richards: Serious scientist guy and OSS veteran (spy). Everything you can eat, plus Commando Training![/quote'] Yeah, Reed has a hella lot of skills, I never wanted to claim nobody broad swaths of skills, just that it wasn't nessecary for superheros to have broad swaths of skills. Johnny was on the list, and Sue certainly could have been.

Superman: Knows about Krypton' date=' space/aliens, Smallville, and either farming or small town shopkeeping. Can speak Kryptonese. There's ten. He would have had all of this stuff by the time he went to Metropolis. Oh yes, and Robot Engineering, since he built his Superboy robots as a kid![/quote']It's much harder if you assume the post-crisis superman.

 

Flash (Barry Allen): Police scientist. Is an actual cop' date=' as well as a scientist, although I wouldn't give him a lot of "street" stuff. A couple of KS's, Forensics, and a science skill or two should do, but that's 10 points there. (Breakfall would be nice too, but that's not really background!) That's ignoring what he knew about Earth-2 from reading comics about it as a kid![/quote'] Not on the list, Barry's highest skill would be SS: physics, and you could make a good arguement he used it as the control skill on his VPP.

 

Green Lantern (Hal Jordan): a fairly tight squeeze here. He's a test pilot. He might have been ex-military' date=' although I'm not sure if that was stated. He certainly knows a few things about aeronautics. I'd have to scratch around to be certain of an undeniable ten points. He didn't orginally know much about the Green Lantern Corps, the Guardians and so on. He had some contacts, though.[/quote'] People scratched around alot on every Hero they tried, and I had to disqualify a number of skills as redundancies, exagerations (Ben Grimm plays cards for relaxation, but that doesn't mean he has the gambling skill.) or as everyman skill people wanted to pay for even though they were getting them free(PS:My Job is an everyman skill people).

 

I've followed their early Silver Age continuities if any of these statements seem confusing. Obviously a bunch of these things weren't established until after the character first appeared' date=' so you could happily ignore them in a "First Issue" version of the character.[/quote']And why shouldn't we assume a first issue aproach for starting characters?