I wonder how many have stopped using Champions/HERO for similar reasons to this?

[JmOz]

regarding Steve and credit.  I did a thread on the Ultimate Brick, kept it running as a fan thing during the dark days.  Due to that thread I got my name in Ultimate Brick, nothing I included was in that book as far as I can tell (other than some no brainer stuff) so I feel he does give credit more freely than he needs to...

[arakish]

For the Champions Complete edition, I'd have to agree with the original quoted post.  They messed it up.  In my opinion, it was perfect with the Big Blue Book.

 

rmfr

[Tasha]

For the Champions Complete edition, I'd have to agree with the original quoted post.  They messed it up.  In my opinion, it was perfect with the Big Blue Book.

 

rmfr

You are very entitled to your opinions. Hero 6 does fix a long standing glaring issue with balance. Which is CAUSED by Figured Characteristics. Which made Bricks and High Dex characters way cheaper than they should be. This caused people to buy stats that didn't fit into their conceptions so they could squeeze out a few more points.

 

I think that 6e is actually the better edition over 4th. Yes there are things that I miss from 4th and wish made it to 6e unchanged. 6e isn't perfect either, but it's a huge step in the right directions.

 

Since you own Champions Complete, I hope you will make a couple of characters with it. See how the edition works. Come back here when you have questions about things that are different (ie Unified Power instead of Elemental Controls).

 

Once characters are built the game plays the same as 4e, with a few options added in.

[Enforcer84]

I got credit for a few brick powers I tossed in when he was taking Until Super Powered Database 2 submissions. 

[Vondy]

Steve credited the 6E brainstorming threads in general terms for a great many ideas, on two ideas I proposed there in specific. Both made it into the APGs. I didn't ever feel I needed to be mentioned by name -- and I'm not sure he actually knows what my real name is to begin with. If you post it on the boards, esp. threads about ideas for products, its fair game IMO.

[Ragitsu]

Is the latest iteration of the Champions book still worth hunting down?

[IndianaJoe3]

Is the latest iteration of the Champions book still worth hunting down?

 

Yes, very worthwhile. The, "superhero gallery" section is very useful.

[Bodkins Odds]

You are very entitled to your opinions. Hero 6 does fix a long standing glaring issue with balance. Which is CAUSED by Figured Characteristics. Which made Bricks and High Dex characters way cheaper than they should be. This caused people to buy stats that didn't fit into their conceptions so they could squeeze out a few more points.

 

I think that 6e is actually the better edition over 4th. Yes there are things that I miss from 4th and wish made it to 6e unchanged. 6e isn't perfect either, but it's a huge step in the right directions.

 

Since you own Champions Complete, I hope you will make a couple of characters with it. See how the edition works. Come back here when you have questions about things that are different (ie Unified Power instead of Elemental Controls).

 

Once characters are built the game plays the same as 4e, with a few options added in.

 

As good for balance as decoupling figureds was, I still think the best change was Complications not giving character points. Replacing EC's with Unified Power is another strong contender as is Regen's return as it's own power.

 

Also, unifying Armor and Force Field probably should have happened when FRED came out. Not sure why that one took so long. :/

[Greywind]

How do Complications NOT give points? Because if you don't have them, that is still points your character is short.

[Bodkins Odds]

How do Complications NOT give points? Because if you don't have them, that is still points your character is short.

 

There is a penalty for not having the recommended amount of Complications for the campaign you're in, but that's not the same as getting points by taking Complications.The penalty is just a psychological tool to get a certain kind of player to want to take complications at all. No matter how many Complications you take you will never have more points than the GM gave you to start with. A 400 point character with 150 points of complications still only has 400 points to play with. Complications never add to your point total. They don't give points.

 

The new rules for Complication frequency and severity are also a huge improvement. I had forgotten that they didn't always work that way, until I started writing this post. The roll under x rule was bad and I've yet to see a GM actually use it as written.

[Greywind]

6th, pg28

 

 

Most of the Character Points the GM gives you
are “free” — you get them without any requirements
or restrictions. However, to get some of
them you have to select a matching value of
Complications.

 

Note the second sentence.

 

And the example from the same page:

 

 

Example: Jason is a player in a Champions
campaign — a game of superheroes and crimefighting
action! He’s going to create a character
he calls Defender, a powered-armor wearing
paragon of justice and crusader against evil.
Jason’s GM decides to use the Standard Superheroic
character type guidelines. That means Jason
receives 400 Character Points he can spend to
create Defender. But the Matching Complications
amount for the campaign is 75 Character
Points. If he prefers, Jason can pick only 50
Character Points’ worth of Complications. That’s
perfectly all right, but since he’s 25 points below
the Matching Complications amount, he only has
(400 - 25 =) 375 Character Points to spend to
create Defender.

 

So, yeah, you pretty much still need the Complications if you want parity with the rest of the players.

[esampson]

 

There is a penalty for not having the recommended amount of Complications for the campaign you're in, but that's not the same as getting points by taking Complications.The penalty is just a psychological tool to get a certain kind of player to want to take complications at all. No matter how many Complications you take you will never have more points than the GM gave you to start with. A 400 point character with 150 points of complications still only has 400 points to play with. Complications never add to your point total. They don't give points.

. . .

 

Mathematically speaking there is no difference between "400 points with 75 points in Complications" and "325 points with up to 75 points in Disadvantages" (I use Disadvantages in the second sentence merely to make it clear that it is working in the older fashion). If you take 150 points in Disadvantages you would still only have 400 points to play with.

 

There is a minor psychological impact in the new wording of it but it really has no more effect than you get from changing Disadvantages on powers to Limitations.

 

I do like the fact that the limit is much lower. It use to be that characters felt the real need to scrape up twice as many points (100 point characters with 150 points in Disadvantages) and so you very often had Disadvantages that were pretty clearly added for points rather than being part of the character concept.

[Tasha]

Mathematically speaking there is no difference between "400 points with 75 points in Complications" and "325 points with up to 75 points in Disadvantages" (I use Disadvantages in the second sentence merely to make it clear that it is working in the older fashion). If you take 150 points in Disadvantages you would still only have 400 points to play with.

 

There is a minor psychological impact in the new wording of it but it really has no more effect than you get from changing Disadvantages on powers to Limitations.

 

I do like the fact that the limit is much lower. It use to be that characters felt the real need to scrape up twice as many points (100 point characters with 150 points in Disadvantages) and so you very often had Disadvantages that were pretty clearly added for points rather than being part of the character concept.

Limitations on Powers were always called Limitations.

[Bodkins Odds]

6th, pg28

 

 

Note the second sentence.

 

And the example from the same page:

 

 

So, yeah, you pretty much still need the Complications if you want parity with the rest of the players.

 

So, wait, am I the only one who played with people who would just stack tons more Disads on to get more character points?

[Cassandra]

Best advise:  Use the Edition and the Rules you like.  The Hero System isn't written in stone.

[Grailknight]

So, wait, am I the only one who played with people who would just stack tons more Disads on to get more character points?

 

No, you're not.

 

After my first groups, myself included, matured as gamers we set our limits to 175 and later went to 150+150.

 

But I remember some 325 and 350 point monstrosities that were probably more dangerous to be near than the villains they fought.

[bigbywolfe]

So, wait, am I the only one who played with people who would just stack tons more Disads on to get more character points?

No, but that's not a problem with the system it's a problem with whoever was running the game and allowed it.  There was suggest maximum amount of Disadvantages and any more than that were not worth points.  If your GM wasn't bright enough to use what was right in the rules and let people just add 50 "Hunteds" (or whatever) to get more points....

[Tasha]

So, wait, am I the only one who played with people who would just stack tons more Disads on to get more character points?

We did that when we first played 1st/2nd ed. Our GM eventually set limits for the PC's and we never looked back.

[Tasha]

No, but that's not a problem with the system it's a problem with whoever was running the game and allowed it.  There was suggest maximum amount of Disadvantages and any more than that were not worth points.  If your GM wasn't bright enough to use what was right in the rules and let people just add 50 "Hunteds" (or whatever) to get more points....

 In the earlier editions instead of hard Disad Caps there were diminishing Returns. Each Disad of a type after the 2nd one was worth half. the next two 1/4 and so on. I knew someone who stacked 525pts of disads and was a total wimp due to the massive disads the character had.

[Scott Baker]

So, wait, am I the only one who played with people who would just stack tons more Disads on to get more character points?

No. I've played with all types over the years. And I'm sure I've been several of them myself.

[Zephrosyne]

LOL, made me think of someone years ago who wanted to take the Disadvantage, "Hates Ham."  I don't know what offended me more: the fact that he presented that as a Disadvantage or that he thought that I would be stupid enough to allow it.  I came down on him like a ton of bricks.

[esampson]

Reminds me of a quote from one of our old, old games:

 

I apologize if you find me to be a bit overbearing, but I get 20 points for it.

[Tigereye]

Maybe I'm late to this thread, but I've had a lot of "real-world" issues to deal with and have only begun catching up recently. Someone mentioned upthread that some people joined HERO System late, and I'm one of them. I would qualify this by saying that I played the original Champions system while in the military in the early Eighties and found it too complex. I rejoined it recently when a fellow gamer introduced us to it.

 

It's still not an ideal system, but it is powerful. I don't know of a system that can let you do virtually anything with it on a scalar basis. Only GURPS comes close to it in flexibility, and GURPS loses something in translation in some areas. (I don't care for it for superheroes, for instance.)

 

Now, is it flawed? Absolutely. Some intelligent people hate basic math, although they may be otherwise literate as all get-out, and this can make HERO really off-putting. (We should always remember that most gamers, at their hearts, are often artistic types. Even before computer games gutted the paper RPG market, this was so.)

• The Speed Chart is a hindrance if you're running a large team. I'd love to see Super-speed as a power rather than a characteristic which slows down the other players. (And now we wait for Zipperman to take his three actions before we take one of ours...Why yes, I'm twice as fast as a normal human being. Why do you ask?)
• The Advantages/Limitations for powers is a real hindrance (Couldn't we have a decimal system? Does it have to be fractional? Really? My Gods, it doesn't have to be this way, people!)
• The Multipower/Unified Power/Elemental Control "box-stuffer" has merits, but I'd like to see something like a flat 30-40%% discount for clever character design rather than the spastic way EC works. (A motoring and gaming enthusiast said that EC does for powers in Champions what Saab gearboxes did for that brand - almost takes the joy out of it to the point of ruination...)

 

That said, I hate, hate, hate a lot of other systems. The late Eighties and early Nineties saw a proliferation of systems that made Hero Games look like 1st Edition D&D in terms of complexity, and didn't really do anything for "realism" for all their complication. (Mention Phoenix Command to my fellow gaming-group members. Go on, I dare you!) Some don't even make the system more fun- by the time Rifts came out, I was already so sick of Palladium's "chrome" I was calling the company name "Thallium Games" as it was so poisonous to me.

 

The nice part about HERO is that if you don't need to use a part of the system if you feel it would just make things more complicated for the players. You can, in effect, "shield" them from parts of the system. It doesn't make the GM's job any easier, and it doesn't shield them from all of it...but to me, the challenge is part of the fun. It even gets the GM involved with the players - how can we save a point here and there, take those three points and take a new skill? No, you don't need to take 12 points in Speed...9 points will suffice, and here, let me show you how you can save even more points, because you never need to use it all the time, not with your character concept...

 

Although I wish that point inflation hadn't happened between 4th and 6th editions, in some ways it's a natural form of escalation, and occasionally necessary due to the expansion in what one must purchase to be a competent character.

 

The supporting material is second to none. Sure there are some things I'd like to see (HERO did their own take on GURPS' "Who's Who"- I'd like to see a 6th Edition remake of this) but as a whole, these things are almost as much fun to read as to put into a game. I have a friend at work who likes to read them just as a comparison study - I've had to explain the game stats to him, as he doesn't game, but he loves the fact that a company has put out a series of books defining and comparing Asian mythological beasts, as just an example!

 

I owe the creators and designers of Hero Designer big time for making my job as a GM 75% easier, and twice as fun to noodle with.

 

In other words, I love other systems too, but I love HERO Games for its sheer breadth. Want your Star Hero "Girls With Guns" team to encounter a Midgard Serpent? Only in HERO...

[sinanju]

So, wait, am I the only one who played with people who would just stack tons more Disads on to get more character points?

Not hardly. My favorite change in 6th Edition was the greatly reduced number of Complication points. I always hated having to stack on tons of Disads just to get the same allotment of character points as everyone else. I much prefer a game where you only take the disads that really fit your character concept/background.

[Tasha]

I am glad that 6e got rid of Elemental Controls. They were a box stuffer and a PITA for everyone.

Unified Power is a nice Limitation that allows for the stuff that EC's did, but also gives powers with it a real limitation(ie you drain one UP power, you drain them all)

 

Multipowers give a list of powers and a pool and say that you can only have that many points of powers active at once. IMHO that's a real limitation.