What's your favorite edition of Hero System/Champions?

[Duke Bushido]

17 minutes ago, dsatow said:

 

I wanted to hate the removal of figured stats, but after using it for a while, I can't say I do.  It not that much of a bother to make it the same value as figured and it can lead to a few new configurations which weren't available before without giving the GM a headache.

For what it is worth, I found years ago that simply ignoring the "you can only sell back one characteristic" (or ever how many it was; as alluded to, we ignore it) rule provides pretty much the same freedom, and has yet, in the years since the early eighties, to even cause a quiver in the game, let alone be the game-breaking horror it was suspected of being. 

 

For fantasy and alien-heavy sci-fi, we have run a couple of "build all stats from zero" campaigns: it takes X points (don't recall at the moment, as it wasn't as exciting or wonderful as we suspected it might be) to build a human from 0.  You have that many "free" points to build your starting characteristics; no formulae-derived figureds.

 

Again, not wonderful.  Interesting, and then we were done with it.  On that basis, I have to conclude-- again, I can only speak for us-- that it just wasn't as broken as has been claimed. 

 

[schir1964]

Can't really say I have a preference. I was introduced to 4th Edition and loved it. I liked 5th Edition also (what little I got to play it). 6th Edition would probably would be to my liking but I didn't have the money and had other priorities. I have the money now, but have even less time to game. I would be curious as to what 7th Edition would be like and what changes it might have.

 

Shout Out: Doc Democracy, RDU Neil, Lord Laiden, lemming, and others I'm sure I'm missing. Nice to see all of you still active here.

 

- Christopher Mullins

[Lord Liaden]

Nice to see you again too, Schir! We've had a number of long-absent old hands dropping by lately. It makes my old fart heart all warm and fuzzy. ?

[Duke Bushido]

On that subject:

 

Sean?  Ghost Angel?  Several others--

 

Just fall off the earth or what?  Place seems downright dead next to what I recall it being. …(

 

[EDIT: Because, astoundingly enough, I forgot Keith "Coolest Signature on the Internet" Curtis!  Unthinkable!]

 

[assault]

4 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

For what it is worth, I found years ago that simply ignoring the "you can only sell back one characteristic" (or ever how many it was; as alluded to, we ignore it) rule provides pretty much the same freedom, and has yet, in the years since the early eighties, to even cause a quiver in the game, let alone be the game-breaking horror it was suspected of being.

 

The issue with selling back more than one characteristic is that mathematically it can become a perpetual motion machine. You can "make a profit" by selling back figured characteristics for more points than you spend on STR or CON (usually CON) to get them in the first place.

 

You can push this to a ridiculous extreme by, for example, buying a million CON, selling back the figureds, and have an arbitrarily large number of points to spend on everything else left over.

 

Obviously a GM can veto this, or constrain it within sane limits.

[assault]

FWIW, the most current Champions Now draft has eliminated figured characteristics except for those derived from Body. These can only be bought through buying Body, and can't be increased separately.

 

These characteristics are Recovery, Endurance and two new ones.

 

Knockout is basically the old Stun.

Stun is basically the old Con, in its function of determining when a character is Stunned in combat.

 

Naturally, Body has become very expensive!

 

Decoupling these would be possible too, but the current setup has relatively few moving parts, which is good.

[Duke Bushido]

So to increase END you must increase BOD?

 

I may have to re-read 6e (I kid; I doubt I'll ever do that) but that seems....  flawed.  At least, when I look at the frail little women jogging on my way to work.  I mean, I have no doubt that they can run circles around me without ever getting seriously winded, but I'm pretty sure my three-hundred-five pound self can take one hell of hit more than they can.  (No; while I _have_ had to slide out of a thirty-eight belt into a forty as I pressed beyond fifty, I'm not a fat guy.  I've got a gramps belly started, I suppose, but at six-and-not-quite-three, I'm just a big ol' farm boy.)

[archer]

4 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

 

Actually, while I thought it would be something I disliked, I went with it.  When the 4th edition stuff was released as a big pdf bundle, my friend was enthused to run a 4th edition game.  I actually found figured characteristics a bit of a pain as they forced certain design decisions on me as it would be stupid not to have some STR.  I find that I actually appreciate the freedom to buy DEX without buying SPD, and to buy CON without buying ED, REC, END and STUN.

 

 

Using figured characteristics, I've found that buying DEX without buying SPD creates huge advantages...if you can find a GM willing to let you play a high DEX character.

[Ninja-Bear]

5 hours ago, dsatow said:

 

I wanted to hate the removal of figured stats, but after using it for a while, I can't say I do.  It not that much of a bother to make it the same value as figured and it can lead to a few new configurations which weren't available before without giving the GM a headache.

I’ve found the same thing too.

[assault]

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

So to increase END you must increase BOD?

 

I may have to re-read 6e (I kid; I doubt I'll ever do that) but that seems....  flawed.

 

Champions Now, not 6e. A different set of rules entirely.

 

As far as the "realism" side goes, Champions Now is a superhero game, pure and simple.

[Doc Democracy]

9 hours ago, schir1964 said:

Can't really say I have a preference. I was introduced to 4th Edition and loved it. I liked 5th Edition also (what little I got to play it). 6th Edition would probably would be to my liking but I didn't have the money and had other priorities. I have the money now, but have even less time to game. I would be curious as to what 7th Edition would be like and what changes it might have.

 

Shout Out: Doc Democracy, RDU Neil, Lord Laiden, lemming, and others I'm sure I'm missing. Nice to see all of you still active here.

 

- Christopher Mullins

 

Christopher - have you finally been able to extricate yourself from real world responsibilities to engage with the more frivolous side of things again?  Always nice to see you.  ?

[Doc Democracy]

7 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

On that subject:

 

Sean?  Ghost Angel?  Several others--

 

Just fall off the earth or what?  Place seems downright dead next to what I recall it being. …(

 

[EDIT: Because, astoundingly enough, I forgot Keith "Coolest Signature on the Internet" Curtis!  Unthinkable!]

 

 

Sean drops in for focussed bursts of activity, he gets too caught up and needs cool-down periods!!  ?

 

Ghost-Angel posts irregularly but it is normal for people to drift off - that Duke Bushido used to be really active too!  What is missing is enough new people to keep the activity up.  

 

[Duke Bushido]

Very sound logic, as usual. 

 

Thank you. 

[RDU Neil]

16 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

 

Actually, while I thought it would be something I disliked, I went with it.  When the 4th edition stuff was released as a big pdf bundle, my friend was enthused to run a 4th edition game.  I actually found figured characteristics a bit of a pain as they forced certain design decisions on me as it would be stupid not to have some STR.  I find that I actually appreciate the freedom to buy DEX without buying SPD, and to buy CON without buying ED, REC, END and STUN.

 

 

Doc

 

This... a hundred times over. In our playtest of Champions Now, everyone of my group is like, "Ugh... we are back to figured characteristics... bleh"

 

The variation of characteristics and skill levels is so much greater... there is no inherent "everyone is a quick mini-brick at the core because nothing else is as efficient." 

[RDU Neil]

14 hours ago, schir1964 said:

Can't really say I have a preference. I was introduced to 4th Edition and loved it. I liked 5th Edition also (what little I got to play it). 6th Edition would probably would be to my liking but I didn't have the money and had other priorities. I have the money now, but have even less time to game. I would be curious as to what 7th Edition would be like and what changes it might have.

 

Shout Out: Doc Democracy, RDU Neil, Lord Laiden, lemming, and others I'm sure I'm missing. Nice to see all of you still active here.

 

- Christopher Mullins

 

I was off the boards for years, but came back in the last year or so, because I actually had a chance to game regularly again. Bit of an old home week, kind of thing, for sure.

[Tech]

I picked 1st-3rd edition because it's the foundation upon which the others were built upon, even though I use some 4-5th edition. I care so little for 6th edition I'm deciding on how to sell both core books.

[Joe Walsh]

7 minutes ago, Tech said:

I care so little for 6th edition I'm deciding on how to sell both core books.

 

Good idea! I went all-PDF on my 6e stuff a year or two ago, getting rid of all the physical 6e books I had. I've had no regrets. It's all there in PDF for reference, and that's all I need from 6e.

 

(I did keep CC and FC. No sense selling them for the pittance I'd get.)

 

[Scott Ruggels]

I prefer 4th, as the rules. though I have fond Memories of the Fantasy Hero Playtest with Doug's Thugs back in Sunnyvale. (those differed, especially in point totals from the first edition of Fantasy Hero...that I did art for).

[lemming]

On 9/5/2018 at 5:13 PM, schir1964 said:

Can't really say I have a preference. I was introduced to 4th Edition and loved it. I liked 5th Edition also (what little I got to play it). 6th Edition would probably would be to my liking but I didn't have the money and had other priorities. I have the money now, but have even less time to game. I would be curious as to what 7th Edition would be like and what changes it might have.

 

Shout Out: Doc Democracy, RDU Neil, Lord Laiden, lemming, and others I'm sure I'm missing. Nice to see all of you still active here.

 

- Christopher Mullins

Howdy.  I breeze thru every so often

[LoneWolf]

I have played every edition of the hero system and enjoyed each one.  It seems to me that with each addition the system improved.  I can still remember some of the shenanigans we used to pull in the early editions.  The END battery rules in the early editions where easily exploited.  Taking one level of growth and or density increase with figured stats always on was another commonly used exploit.  But probably the most overpowered on was the early multipower rules.  When each edition came out and took away a favorite exploit it was an adjustment.  Yea it meant that often a favorite character ended up being less powerful, but to be honest that was a good thing.

 

One reason that a lot of people may favor some of the earlier editions is due to nostalgia.  If you played in a campaign you really enjoyed in an earlier edition you probably are going to favor that edition.  In most cases the reason the game was enjoyable was not because the earlier rules were better, but because the campaign was better.  I still look back on some of the campaigns I played and remember how much fun they were.  Trying to recreate those campaigns never really seem to work.  Maybe because you have already done it so doing it again is not as much fun.

 

6th edition seems to have cleaned up a lot of things.  Getting rid of figured stats took a little adjustment, but it also improved the game.  Some stats became so effective everyone bough them up even if it did not fit the character.  I don’t think I ever saw any PC that did not buy up their DEX and CON to well above average.  STR was another stat that people always put point into.  It used to be that every character had a DEX of 18+.   The figured stats alone made it worth it.  I remember one fantasy hero campaign where someone mentioned they had a low DEX.  Looking over the character sheet it turned out they had an 18 DEX.  This was a high powered campaign that went on for several years so the characters where fairly high points. 

[zslane]

4 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

I don’t think I ever saw any PC that did not buy up their DEX and CON to well above average.

 

That is the sign of a GM asleep on the job, rather than a sign of a game system in need of design changes.

[Doc Democracy]

16 minutes ago, zslane said:

 

That is the sign of a GM asleep on the job, rather than a sign of a game system in need of design changes.

 

Ooh! tempting, but for a different thread I think!!  ?

[Joe Walsh]

4 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

I don’t think I ever saw any PC that did not buy up their DEX and CON to well above average.

 

44 minutes ago, zslane said:

That is the sign of a GM asleep on the job, rather than a sign of a game system in need of design changes.

 

Don't be so hasty to judge; it may have been intentional. The GM may have been running a campaign set in Lake Wobegon.

[LoneWolf]

The characters did not all start out that way, but they ended up that way.   In our group we set the campaign limits before the game begins and as long as the character abides by them and is legal you can do pretty much what you want.  The GM does have the right to veto anything, but that is a rare occurrence and is usually only for thing affecting game balance.

 

Under 5th edition rules by buying a STR 13, DEX 18, CON 18 and spending 2pts to bring my speed up cost me 45 points.  Those 45 points give me the equivalent of 33 points and boost both my OCV and DCV by 3 each.  Levels with DCV used to cost, and getting 5 OCV with most of your attacks was about the same.  So by spending 45 points I am getting the equivalent of 63 points, plus what the base stats give you.  It is pretty hard to justify allow one character to do this and saying another cannot. 

 

My gaming group is very familiar with the system and knows all the tricks and ways to optimize characters.  If we have someone who does not know the system as well we help them so their characters are not at a disadvantage.  I am not saying this is how the game has to be played, but this is our preferred play style.

[dsatow]

3 hours ago, zslane said:

 

That is the sign of a GM asleep on the job, rather than a sign of a game system in need of design changes.

 

I'd disagree, since most of the predesigned villains and heroes also went this route.  This was just how the game was set up.  If your GM set the limits such that the average amount of stun past defenses were 1.5xN (where N=number of dice), then you set your CON to somewhere around 2xN .