Third Edition Renaissance

[Duke Bushido]

8 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 Chris Goodwin could tell you more about 3e options. 

 

 

Told ya!

 

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

1 hour ago, Spence said:

 

Very true.  I think I misunderstood and responded to that misunderstanding

For some odd reason I read it as the 3rd ed rules were better because somehow they made the fluff less.  Not that it was the writing style of the 3rd ed era you liked.  Bizarre eh?

Np.  That seems something like I would do 😂

[Ninja-Bear]

@Duke Bushido, recently I was given the Original Golden Age Champions Sourcebook. And in it had a custom GM Advantage for Superleap. +1/2 Advantage to reduce the time it takes to complete the Leap.  I just found this interesting.

[Duke Bushido]

3 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

@Duke Bushido, recently I was given the Original Golden Age Champions Sourcebook. And in it had a custom GM Advantage for Superleap. +1/2 Advantage to reduce the time it takes to complete the Leap.  I just found this interesting.

 

Seemed odd to me, too, as it effectively doubles the movement speed of the character.

 

I've never actually used that advantage-- partly because Superleap doesn't get used a lot in our games, and partly because.. well, it doubles the character's movement speed (though in _practice_, it's more of an eye-catching technicality than a real problem.)

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

18 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

Seemed odd to me, too, as it effectively doubles the movement speed of the character.

 

I've never actually used that advantage-- partly because Superleap doesn't get used a lot in our games, and partly because.. well, it doubles the character's movement speed (though in _practice_, it's more of an eye-catching technicality than a real problem.)

 

 

I might of not explained it well. It doesn’t double your speed. It just makes Superleap go from Full Phase to a Half Phase. 

[Duke Bushido]

Oh no; you were quite clear, Sir. 

 

I was pointing out that doing a 10" move in a half phase is _technically_ double the speed of doing a 10" move in a full phase. 

 

Because of the arguments a out how to interpret this, we just gave leaping a half-move like everything else and opted to not use the rest (essentially, everyone wanted to use that same build on all their movement:NCM multiplier, without the "NC" restriction) 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

Ok. My interpretation of the said rule was to  just make Superleap work like the other movement powers. 😂 

[Duke Bushido]

I agree with you, actually, as did our whole group.  We parsed it at length and eventually figured it was some sort of correction to allow a "half move" in half a phase, as leaping had been in earlier editions specified as taking a full phase regardless of distance. 

 

It just struck us as a bit unfair to have a relatively limited form of movement to begin with and then make it cost more to do what all the others could.  Besides, we had already instituted a "half move /half phase" rule just to make it work like the others. 

[fdw3773]

On 1/3/2019 at 6:43 PM, Pariah said:

For the first time in literally decades, I've been looking back at the Third Edition of Champions. It's the version I learned to play on, and there are times when i miss the simplicity--especially as I contemplate teaching new people to play. So I've begun building characters again. And I've got to tell you, here's something really cool about building a character with pencil and paper. I've had to relearn how a few things work, like END (Holy cow! How did my heroes ever stay awake for more than a Turn?!) and proper Elemental Controls, but I'm now able to create a new character in ~30 minutes, start to finish. It's been a lot of fun.

 

Anyway, I've created a handful of characters under the 3rd Ed rules, and I'm going to post a few of them here. Feedback is, of course, welcome.

Well, Pariah, I'm following your lead and am simplifying my previous 5th and 6th Edition write-ups to 3rd Edition. I really miss the simplicity also, coupled with nostalgia, and is much easier to introduce new players (I recently posted about the topic). Here are a few samples of what I've started, and will post the Hero Designer and Excel files in the downloads section once I'm done. 🙂

Superman.pdf Firebrand.pdf WonderWoman_Modern.pdf

[Christopher R Taylor]

Most of what later editions did was to codify these kind of logical rules and variations like half move leaps etc.  As a result the rules necessarily got a bit longer, to state what people were generally doing in the past.

 

Then people started to get upset that the rules are longer.

 

I mean, some GMs had a small book of house rules, like 10-20 pages.

[Chris Goodwin]

I still have a third edition Champions spreadsheet here; the character generator as a whole isn't really finished, but the power writeup sheet is.  That will generate something resembling a 3rd edition power writeup vaguely compatible with the writer's guidelines for 5th and 6th edition.  Do copy the sheet to your own Google drive before using it, and I recommend using a copy of that so you have a pristine version.  

 

Edit:  And because I can't seem to leave well enough alone, there are now Disadvantage builders!  For Psych Lim, Phys Lim, and Berserk/Enraged!  More to come!  

[Scott Ruggels]

I think that I may try a one shot for second or Third edition Champions to see if anyone wants to try out Superheroes. At least try and get their feet wet with the Hero System. 

[Chris Goodwin]

All of the Disadvantage builders are present and usable!  

[Chris Goodwin]

I have determined that the power build sheet and many of the Disadvantage build sheets need fixing.  Those will be worked on.  (END Cost for Powers is incorrect; some of the Disadvantage builders add the totals incorrectly.)

 

[fdw3773]

Below is the link to my contribution to the "Third Edition Renaissance" that consists of various characters converted from 5th and 6th Edition to a more simplified format using 3rd Edition as the base. The following is a list of Hero Designer files and the asterisk (*) indicates that there is a character write-up included. If the interest is strong enough, I will convert more.

 

Third Edition Renaissance

 

Enjoy! 😉

 

Alexis Adakai* (Modern adventurer/explorer)

Aquaman with Hook

Aquaman (Classic)

Batgirl (Barbara Wilson from Batman & Robin film)

Batman*

Batwoman (Carrie Kelley)

Beast*

Black Canary

Blue Beetle

Booster Gold

Captain America*

Captain Atom

Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers)

Colossus

Cyclops

Firebrand*

Iron Man*

Kristina Harker (Supporting cast)

Superman*

Wonder Woman* (Modern)

Wonder Woman* (Classic)

Yankee Girl*

[starblaze]

On 1/3/2019 at 6:47 PM, Pariah said:

The first new character I created was one that I originally created and played under 5th Ed (I think...maybe it was 6th? It's been too long.). Her name is Morningstar, and she's a flying character with a mace.

 

I actually have a picture for her!

 

 

 

 

How do you post these sheets?

[starblaze]

Sorry bad post

Edited July 7, 2022 by starblaze
Mistake

[starblaze]

Grimsteel - Character Sheet.pdf

[Pariah]

6 hours ago, starblaze said:

How do you post these sheets?

 

Personally, I did them as Google Docs and then just posted a link. PDFs work well, too.

[Chris Goodwin]

On 7/6/2022 at 8:49 PM, starblaze said:

Grimsteel - Character Sheet.pdf 59.53 kB · 1 download

 

I really need to make that look better.  

[fdw3773]

On a similar note, I'll be simplifying my previous 5th/6th Edition Hero System game materials to try generate interest in new players at the Extra Life game event scheduled for November 5, 2022, starting with 3rd Edition Champions and Fantasy Hero as my base and drawing from the 5th Edition source books as needed (e.g. Book of Dragons). Below is an example of what I mean by simplifying previous character write-ups I posted with Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) and Warduke (e.g. minimal to no Perks & Talents and extraneous acronyms like OIF, OAF, listing only main skills vs. a massive skill list that covers every minute detail, etc.) and going with a more visually pleasing layout even if that will take up more ink from my printer. 😉

[Scott Ruggels]

Sounds good.  Very interested in hearing about how this works out.

[Stirling.N]

The 3rd edition was smooth. You just had to specify the corners. I had a spread sheet for character creation and the were a few places where the rules could be parsed several ways.

[Pariah]

Bump.

[Joe Walsh]

Yeah, Champions 3e was great! It was the last edition released as a saddle-stitched book, for one. And it was the first edition that was properly typeset.

 

But after chewing on the idea of a simpler core for HERO System for a while now, I decided to dump the Espionage! PDF into a text file yesterday and plan to go through it and see if it can be massaged into a smaller, better core for how we use the HERO System. (The core's basically word-for-word the same as JI, so no real conflicts with 3e in general).

 

I have a vague plan to use bits of HERO 3e stuff as optional supplemental material (Weird Talents from JI, for example) along with (probably) the Champions 3e (or 2e?) Powers system.

 

But first I need to cut Espionage! down to size, reformat it, etc.

 

Unfortunately my free time is very limited, so it's going to be very slow going. But it should be fun and I'm looking forward to it.

Edited April 11, 2023 by GM Joe