Champions Now Character Build Thread

[allenshock]

Myself, I like the idea that "not everything has to be paid for.

 

 

[Pattern Ghost]

Continuing on with the Golden Age, a friend of Strike Force Liberty:

 

 

Snow Leopard

18 STR 08
26 DEX 48
18 CON 16
12 BDY 04
18 INT 08
12 EGO 04
18 PRE 08
16 COM 03
10  PD 06
10  ED 06
05 SPD 14
08 REC 00
36 END 00
30 STN 00
      -----------
           125

 

 

Powers/Skills

05 +1 All Perception (14-)
05 UV Vision
20 Regeneration, 2 Body
22 Instant Regeneration: Armor +6PD/+6ED, Hardened
10 Superleap, 2x Distance
08 +4" Running
10 +2 Levels with Close Combat
10 Acrobatics (14-)
05 Stealth (14-)
30 2d6 HKA (Claws)
--------
125

 

Char 125 + Powers/SKills 125 = 250 = 100 Base + 150 Disadvantages

 

Disadvantages:

-25 Hunted: Herr Gehirn, Individual, Superpowers, Ruinous
-30 Hunted: Russian Government, Organization, Superpowers, Manipulate
-15 Secret Id
-15 Unusual Looks 14-
-20 Berserk in Combat, Common 11-/11-
-20 Psych: Possessive of "Prey." Happens a Lot, Intense
-20 Psyc: Divided Loyalties between team and country, Happens a lot, Intense
-05 Unlucky 1d6
-----
150

Background:

Levka Lyalyushkin was abducted from the Russian Embassy in Berlin and experimented on by Herr Gehirn. She was rescued by Strike Force Liberty , and fought beside them for a short time before being returned to Mother Russia.

 

Powers/Tactics:

Levka is at this stage very feral. She has an issue with tunnel vision, often selecting a single target in combat (her "Prey") and pursues it with gusto. She also has a habit of toying with her opponents. This tends to limit her effectiveness. On the flip side, when she goes berserk, Libery Star has found it effective to toss her into the largest nearby group of Axis troops available.

 

Notes:

I originally wanted to write her up as a somewhat experienced operative with a small KA to represent claws, with a Martial Arts main attack and a couple of more skills. Unfortunately, KA has a minimum 15 buy in. An experienced version might gain Detective Work and buy down the Berserk to an Enraged.

 

[Chris Goodwin]

Presenting Greenstick! 

 

 

Character - Greenstick

Secret ID - Mark Tilford

 

VAL	CHAR	BASE		Cost X	Points
18	STR	10		1	8
28	DEX	10		3	54
28	CON	10		2	36
10	BODY	10		2	0
13	INT	10		1	3
11	EGO	10		2	2
25	PRE	10		1	15
10	COM	10		1/2	0
8	PD	4		1	4
8	ED	6		1	2
5	SPD	3.8		10	12
12	REC	10		2	4
56	END	56		1/2	0
33	STUN	33		1	0
					140	Total Points

 

Cost	Powers and Skills	END
18	Martial Arts - 6d6 punch, 8d6 kick
10	Acrobatics 15-
10	Find Weakness w/Martial Arts 11-
5	1d6 Luck
5	Stealth 15-
10	Precognitive Anticipation: Skill Levels, +1 Universal
10	Danger Sense 11- (12- with levels)
30	Multipower: Limb Strike, all slots Goes Vs. Normal PD (-1/2)
6	1: Arm Snap - Power Drain STR, 2d6; Destructive (+1), Energy Strike (+1/4) (45 Active Points); Goes Vs. Normal PD (-1/2)	9
6	2: Legbreaker - Power Drain Running, 2d6; Destructive (+1), Energy Strike (+1/4) (45 Active Points); Goes Vs. Normal PD (-1/2)	9
110	Powers & Skills
140	+ Characteristics
250	= Total Cost

 

Pts	Disadvantages
15	DNPC: Older sister Alyssa, who knows his secret (competent, constant)
20	Hunted: Random martial artists who think he disgraces their sport (sm. group, unusual, manipulative)
35	Hunted: Shining Fist of Nostradamus (org., supers, ruinous)
20	Psych: Code vs. Killing (a lot, irrational)
20	Psych: Jumps into a fight before fully thinking through the consequences (a lot, irrational)
15	Secret ID (Mark Tilford)
10	Susceptibility: 3d6 STUN from exposure to other precogs (uncommon)
5	Unluck 1d6
10	Unusual Looks 11- (rep as overly violent)
150	Total Disadvantage Points
100	+Base Points
250	Total Points

 

As a child, Mark Tilford always had these little flashes of intuition; his mom always thought it came from his deceased father's side of the family.  His teachers always thought he was a smartass or a cheater; other kids, especially the bullying types, thought he was making fun of them, and he had a knack for finding trouble.  His older sister Alyssa was always pulling him out of scrapes. In middle school he discovered martial arts, and he took to it with a passion. This helped him focus and get healthy, but didn't do anything toward keeping him out of fights.  At age 19, he was expelled from competitive martial arts when, during a match, he accidently broke the legs of three competitors in a row. Leaving the match, he was jumped by a number of other competitors; a secretive organization known as the Shining Fist of Nostradamus chose that exact time to try to recruit him, claiming he had some sort of destiny or something, and it didn't go well; confrontations with the Shining Fist caused him unexplained nausea, dizziness, and headaches.  He managed to escape the ensuing chaos, thanks to his big sister being there for him yet again and showing up in her car at just the right time.  She sat him down and gave him a good stern talking to about what he can do, what he did in the big fight, and what he should do.  He agreed, and does what he always enjoyed and was good at: finding the bad guys, mixing it up with them, and breaking their legs.  

[Chris Goodwin]

Hey, look at what Google Docs can do!

[Ninja-Bear]

13 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

Hey, look at what Google Docs can do!

And now I must ste...ahmm appropriate it!

 

[Chris Goodwin]

Please do!  It's a two column layout... the stat block and powers and disads blocks are all tables with extra columns inserted and the border colors tweaked.  The logo is a font in an insert from Google Draw in the "first page header is different" space.

 

To arrange them like that, put Characteristics first, followed by Disadvantages, then Powers & Skills.

[Chris Goodwin]

Here it is, blank!  Champions Now character sheet

 

[SCUBA Hero]

Hi Chris!  I have backed Champions Now, not sure if it'll fund though... 

 

Rules question (I have downloaded and read through the playtest doc):  I didn't see anything specific in the playtest doc, but in Champs I-III the X1.5 and X2 damage for Martial Arts were done by multiplying the character's Strength.  By that method, I get 18*1.5 = 27 5d6 Martial Punch and 18*2 = 36 7d6 Martial Kick for Greenstick (like the name!).  How did you derive 6d6 and 8d6?  (Am I missing something?)

 

-SCUBA Hero

[steriaca]

7 hours ago, SCUBA Hero said:

Hi Chris!  I have backed Champions Now, not sure if it'll fund though... 

 

Rules question (I have downloaded and read through the playtest doc):  I didn't see anything specific in the playtest doc, but in Champs I-III the X1.5 and X2 damage for Martial Arts were done by multiplying the character's Strength.  By that method, I get 18*1.5 = 27 5d6 Martial Punch and 18*2 = 36 7d6 Martial Kick for Greenstick (like the name!).  How did you derive 6d6 and 8d6?  (Am I missing something?)

 

-SCUBA Hero

I believe he used rounding rules.

[Chris Goodwin]

I did use the rounding rules.  As I recall we always applied the multiplier to the dice rather than the points; it may have been a GM interpretation.  But that's how I derived that value.

 

Edit:. Yes, looking back at the book and tightening up the math, it should have been 5d6 and 7d6 respectively.

[SCUBA Hero]

Thanks!  My group is playing a golden-age Champions campaign, after finishing up a FantasyCraft campaign.  (Based on Champions Complete ruleset)

[steriaca]

6 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

I did use the rounding rules.  As I recall we always applied the multiplier to the dice rather than the points; it may have been a GM interpretation.  But that's how I derived that value.

 

Edit:. Yes, looking back at the book and tightening up the math, it should have been 5d6 and 7d6 respectively.

New rules, new math.

[ideasmith]

 I thought I'd adapt a character I first built for 4th edition, and started building for other systems I came across to help me understand them. This character is intended to be visible, famous, and inspiring.

 

 

Limelight

 

Disadvantages:

-15 Physical Limitation: Easily spotted in the dark, In certain situations, Debilitating/Negating
-10 Public ID
-15 Psych: Loves to be noticed, Happens a lot, Opinionated
-10 Dependent NPC, Whichever reporter(s) is underfoot this time Normal, Occasional
-10 Dependent NPC, Whichever member(s) of her fan club is covering this time Normal, Occasional
-05 Dependent NPC, Whichever employee (s) of her family is underfoot this time Normal, Occasional
-05 Dependent NPC, Whichever member(s) of her family is underfoot this time Normal, Occasional
-10 Susceptibility to Darkness Fields Uncommon
-15 Vulnerability to Darkness Attacks, Single Specific
-20 Hunted: Gloom, Individual, Superpowers, Manipulative
-20 Psych: Seeks Peaceful Resolution/Offers Parlay/Surrender to Opponents, Happens a lot, intense
-15 3d6 Unluck

 

Powers & Skills:

24 Pep Talk, 2d6 Recovery Transfer, 30 Active Points, Reversed Direction (Transfers from Limelight to target) (-1/4)

 [7 END]

 

30 Multipower, Lightray Form, 30 Active Points

06 15” Teleportation, 30 Active Points,  [6 END]

04 Missile Deflection, 20 Active Points,  [4 END]

 

15 Luck, 3 dice

---
79

 

Characteristics:

13 STR 3 [3 END]
11 DEX 3
18 CON 16
10 BDY 00
18 INT 08
17 EGO 14
60 PRE 50
20 COM 05
3 PD  00
4 ED  00
06 SPD 49
18 REC 22
36 END 00
26 STN 00
     -------------
       171

 

 Char 171 + Powers/Skills 79 = 250 = 100 Base + 150 Disadvantages

 

----
150

 

 

 

[RDU Neil]

On 5/31/2018 at 11:32 PM, Pattern Ghost said:

When I saw Champions, I didn't see the mechanics as impediments to, but as great enablers of roleplaying. Reasoning from effect for power creation, vast customization and Disadvantages all really went to supporting storytelling to my mind. Taking a character concept and squeezing it into the allotted points can be an exercise in compromise, but I never found the game lacking as a roleplaying, storytelling tool.

 

This, a thousand time. All the ability to make the charater you wanted, to me, intuitively meant better story telling, less "the rule book says that in this instance I do this particular thing" and the constrictions of levels, classes, etc. It was transformative.
 

In our original High School group... 1981-85, we certainly embraced this, with a lot of copy cat characters that were only slightly different than Marvel and DC characters, but it was fully in the vein of the Bronze Age comics at the time... and NOBODY "ran the math."

 

When I got to college and taught friends there Champions, and later Hero 4th... I certainly influenced a certain playing style based on world building and characters and story telling, not "mastering the system."

 

No engineers, no programmers, no lawyers... but people who wanted to create cool superhero stories.

 

It has been a constant battle since them, for the past quarter century, to find the right playgroup, to avoid the Gamist mentality players, and realizing how Hero has become a system that ENCOURAGES that min-max, "run the math" bullsh!t (with 5th and 6th in particular). 

 

This is why I'm backing, but not too optimistic about, Champions Now. By returning to figured characteristics, and maintaining the labored point build aspect, it will just encourage the point shaving, n3 point breaks and all that crap. 

 

Like, I get, theoretically, why Edwards like END in the game (I dropped it 30 years ago and never looked back) as the idea of doing somehting big and splashy, but at an exhausting cost is cool... but too much damn math. I was hoping for something that focused on the in game of effect of exhausting the character (missed turns, vulnerable moments, dramatic decisions on whether to go "all out" or not) rather than going back to adding and subtracing incremental points over and over, calculating average END spend over a turn, etc.  BLEH!

 

And the fact that he is still using the Speed Chart. Something else I dumped decades ago, and it was a revelation how much more organically combats ran, while not making characters have to max their SPD or be left out of play much of the time, etc. 

 

Bringing characters back to an easy to read, simply built 250 points, etc, is really good. But bringing back a lot of the mechanics that led to the undermining of the play intent (we'll be back to mini-bricks with martial arts being the most efficient builds, and every character having their powers through 0IF and such) seems like a step backward into the bad stuff, not the good stuff.

 

Still, I backed it, and am interested in Ron's narrative set of rules for play, to see where he goes with that.

[Pattern Ghost]

On 6/24/2018 at 11:32 AM, RDU Neil said:

and every character having their powers through 0IF and such

 

Some of the notes in the playtest document seem to be discouraging this approach. I think he prefers only in hero ID instead for the Focus-heavy builds. There's also a bit about calculating the ratio of real points and active points as a check against this kind of abuse.

 

Mini-bricks with Martial Arts on the other hand look pretty viable.

[RDU Neil]

On 6/8/2018 at 7:49 PM, Chris Goodwin said:

Hey, look at what Google Docs can do!

 

I'd ask how you did that, but I'd never understand it or remember how. Cool.