Champions Now Character Builds

[Steve]

Has anyone converted Foxbat to this edition?

[Pariah]

Somebody certainly needs to. I don't know what that somebody will be me, though.

[Pariah]

I was fiddling around with Word today and came up with a template of sorts. So I typed one of my characters into it and saved it. Here's what it looks like:

 

American Dream

 

Feedback appreciated!

[pawsplay]

On 7/16/2020 at 1:02 PM, Pariah said:

I was fiddling around with Word today and came up with a template of sorts. So I typed one of my characters into it and saved it. Here's what it looks like:

 

American Dream

 

Feedback appreciated!

 

That looks pretty good. I do question about the Unusual Looks, unless the game is set in pre-Civil Rights era USA. It's true a certain percentage of the authorities would have a negative reaction, I'm just wondering if this really warrants a Presence Attack penalty, even on an 8-. If he were adventuring with another black superhero, do you think he would draw a particular reaction they don't? Or are you envisioning a campaign where both are subject to periodic lack of respect?

As far as the powers, I'm not sure I love the Multiform. Does he really alternate between bashing and deflecting? I think the Shield Defense might work better as Force Field, in which case it would be eligible for an Elemental Control. I think it works, if in-fiction he consciously chooses between each function. Overall though I don't see this as a case where he's switching modes.

[Pariah]

On 2/24/2020 at 8:58 PM, nitrosyncretic said:

Here's an alternate build for Morningstar's Elemental Control. First, I'll just mention that powers in an EC in Champions Now must cost endurance (p. 93).

 

On 2/25/2020 at 3:05 PM, Pariah said:

I'd noticed that. Does this mean that a power that normally costs Endurance, but is bought with the No Endurance Cost Advantage, is now ineligible for inclusion in an EC? I didn't see any commentary on that one way or another.

 

Not to pummel a deceased equine, but I saw this today on page 121, in the writeup for Domain:

 

"The Bubble: High Impact 5d6 Blast Aura 0 Endurance Limitation as above"

 

This was the second of two slots in her (their?) Elemental Control. 

 

I know villains have slightly different rules in terms of point totals and ratio, but I don't I think there's anything special about power modifiers or power frameworks. So I would interpret this to mean that a power bought with the No Endurance Cost Advantage can in fact be included in an Elemental Control.

[nitrosyncretic]

That's an error. Villains follow the same rules as player characters, except when it comes to starting points and ratio.

[Pariah]

What's the error? I was trying to say that there were no special rules about power modifiers or power frameworks. Which is what you're saying, right?

[nitrosyncretic]

The error is in the game text on page 121. 0 endurance should not be allowed in that design. I recall that a previous draft, before the change to elemental control rules, did allow 0 end -- so it is most likely a legacy of the previous draft.

[Pariah]

Warning: Rant Mode on.

 

Well, that's a little problematic.To have such a significant error in a published character--and let's be clear, there are fewer than a dozen officially published characters for this game--is confusing, and not a little frustrating. 

 

Honestly, I'm tired of the whole "Ron meant this" song and dance. It sounds like a cop-out. I don't give a flying fig what the book was supposed to say. I care about what the book says. Because that's what I--not to mention the hundreds of other people who put up good money to support this endeavor--have access to. That's it, what's in the book. Everything else is apocrypha, even if it comes from Ron's own lips, as far as I'm concerned. If Ron meant it, he should have made sure it was in the book.

 

I understand that Ron, as previously mentioned, is not superhuman. That's not what I expect. What I do expect is that the book be finished, including copy and content editing, before it is published. As it is, the book was already delayed several months beyond the promised delivery date. I understand that there were artwork issues. But couldn't those extra months have been used to fix the problems? To go over the character builds and make sure they're consistent with the iteration of the rules that's actually going to be published? To put into the actual book all the changes discussed during playtesting?

 

Did nobody edit this book before it was sent out?  Was there no quality control to keep up with all the proposed changes? Or was the book already so far behind schedule that the Powers That Be decided that speed was more important than accuracy?

 

I really want to like this game. But the more time passes and the more questions I ask, the more uncertain I am what the game really is.

 

I hope Champions Now does well enough to get a second printing, hopefully with a revision to fix all the inexplicable errors and omissions. (Also, an Index would be nice.) Until then, I'll make do with what I have--the book, as written, warts and all.

 

/rant

[pawsplay]

I'm not sure I own a single roleplaying game with premade characters that does not have an error.

[fdw3773]

On 7/11/2020 at 4:35 PM, Steve said:

Has anyone converted Foxbat to this edition?

Along that same line, has anyone using Champions Now designed high-powered heroes or converted powerful villains such as Mechanon or Dr. Destroyer?

[unclevlad]

You could do it, I'm sure, but it'd be horribly expensive.  If nothing else:  a WHOLE lot of stuff would have to be bought to 0 END, and that gets to be seriously expensive in this system.  You'd be moving far, far outside the system's design targets.

[assault]

I think with Mechanon, you could start with the 1e Champions version.

 

You'd still be outside the starting point range, but that's fine.

 

Similarly, you'd start with the earliest version of Dr Destroyer.

 

More generally, you would build a mega-villain with an eye towards the specific PCs that will face them. Building a "can face any conceivable PC" character is rather pointless.

[fdw3773]

On 10/31/2020 at 9:29 PM, unclevlad said:

You could do it, I'm sure, but it'd be horribly expensive.  If nothing else:  a WHOLE lot of stuff would have to be bought to 0 END, and that gets to be seriously expensive in this system.  You'd be moving far, far outside the system's design targets.

 

Thanks for the insight. I didn't know that Champions Now is a system focused on playing low-powered heroes and villains. Off hand, what you described sort of reminds me of the first edition of Palladium's Heroes Unlimited, where one could design a Spider-Man or Daredevil type of character, but would be somewhat hard-pressed to develop a hero on the same level as Hulk or Thor and a villain like Ultron or Dr. Doom within the rules framework.

[unclevlad]

Well, yeah, but sometimes the problem isn't the framework, it's the translation of the source material into the framework.  Some things become really tough.  Other times, it's the framework itself where the underpinnings tend to not translate.  That's the problem here.  Try to build a character where the guideline is 16 DC attacks, let's say.  With no damage negation or damage reduction, and in a system where you can't buy up the point where you're stunned or knocked out except by buying up the (expensive) underlying stat.  Or figure how to *use* a 16 DC attack when you can't buy up your total END., save by the same means.

 

Champs Now explicitly wants to model tactical combat, where avoiding combat matters, and where recovering and thinking *how* to u se your powers matters a LOT.  High-level supers are the diametric opposite.

[Tjack]

On 7/11/2020 at 5:35 PM, Steve said:

Has anyone converted Foxbat to this edition?

   “If you write it, he will come.”

[assault]

I've never thought of Champions Now characters as being low-powered.

 

It handles Marvel Silver Age and their DC equivalents very well.

 

Converting from "classic" early Champions should be easy enough, but CNow has a more narrowly defined scope *to begin with*. Since there's no limit on how much experience a character can acquire, arbitrary point totals should be possible.

 

The ultra-high point characters from 5e & 6e Hero don't really have any place or purpose in CNow.

[Pariah]

On 11/7/2020 at 4:33 PM, unclevlad said:

With no damage negation or damage reduction, and in a system where you can't buy up the point where you're stunned or knocked out except by buying up the (expensive) underlying stat.  Or figure how to *use* a 16 DC attack when you can't buy up your total END., save by the same means.

 

Champs Now explicitly wants to model tactical combat, where avoiding combat matters, and where recovering and thinking *how* to use your powers matters a LOT.

 

In this respect, I find CNow a lot less flexible than other versions--even 3rd Edition. Sure, I can see that this mirrors the source material (i.e., Silver Age comics) quite well. And for people who have read those comics and prefer them, it works pretty well.

 

But people coming to the superhero genre* now are more familiar with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC animated and live action series and movies, and maybe the Incredibles. And CNow just isn't built to tell those kinds of stories. If there's one complaint I have about the system, it's that imposes unnecessary limitations on character creation in the name of a 'look and feel' that only people who've been reading comics since the 70s will appreciate.

 

I understand why Ron wanted it to run this way. His disdain for modern superheroes (read: walking advertisements for media conglomerates) is apparent with every word of the first few chapters of the book. But I can't help but think that he's inadvertently made it harder for a new generation of role-players to get into Champions.

 

Or maybe it's not inadvertent at all.

 

--

*And yes, I've read Ron's lengthy discussion of genre and medium and idiom; no need to lecture me on those points.

[Duke Bushido]

29 minutes ago, Pariah said:

I can't help but think that he's inadvertently made it harder for a new generation of role-players to get into Champions.

 

Or maybe it's not inadvertent at all.

 

 

Be fair, here:

 

The current M&M book is larger than ever before.  The current Champions book is three hundred pages (well, 298 or so), and doesn't even have _rules_.  To use the current Champions book one needs at a minimum a total of seven-hundred seventy-ish pages of the actual rules book (though, again: being fair-- some time later an abbreviated rules book of only one-hundred thirty-six pages or so).

 

Ron isn't the only one making it harder to get into Champions.

 

I think Silver Age Sentinels finally died off, but I could be wrong (apparently, when I picked up the d20 version, I was "wrong."  Tri-stat seems to be the version that proved most popular in the long run, but I digress).

 

With Sentinel Comics and other light-weight supers games today, all of them vying for the attention of the new superhero gamer.....

 

Well, in addition to making it harder to get into Champions, they are making it less attractive, too.   

 

 

 

[unclevlad]

The other thing is, I don't think it should be too hard to make relatively few tweaks, and broaden things substantially.  #1, of course, is END costs.  It's possible the various END and STUN stats derived from BODY would need consideration;  I suspect this would be strongly related to the DC limit you're planning on.  #2 might be the Strike power adding to your HTH strike;  that cost might be too high for a higher-DC game.  There are quite a few things I like;  unified, simple defenses is a big one, as it supports "taser punches" that both smash and shock.  I think the non-combat movement enhancers might take some getting used to, but it's a very good area to use dramatic license.  (Altho it shouldn't be an advantage;  it should be an adder, by its impact.)

[Pariah]

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Ron isn't the only one making it harder to get into Champions.

 

I didn't mean to suggest that Ron was the only one making it harder to get into champions. The 6th edition basic rules are, for lack of a better word, monolithic in both scope and page count. The Champions book, as you suggest, is little better. Champions Complete is just about right. And while it is possible to generate characters without buying the software, I don't know a lot of people who are willing to do it.

 

Of course, the advantage is is that with that monolithic rule set you can pretty much create anything you want. Yes, it's a lot more complex, but it's also a lot more flexible.

 

But looking at CNow compared to Champions 3rd Edition (which is how the Kickstarter was presented, incidentally), and the tradeoff is not equivalent. It takes about the same time and effort to create a character in Champions Now as it does / did in 3rd Edition, but CNow is nowhere near as flexible. And that's not a bug, it's a feature. It was designed not to be as flexible. And that's the thing that I find frustrating. It's not really suited to creating the kinds of superheroes that new fans to the genre are seeing now. And given the name and the stated philosophy (e.g., the constant emphasis on The Now), I think it's really unfortunate.

 

(In my case this is largely academic, my gaming group is two counties away and I haven't been up there in a couple of years. But if I brought this up there to them, I know they would want to play it--even though many of them have been reading comics since the 70s--because it's just not flexible enough.)

[Duke Bushido]

No argument on the rigidity of the rules: the inability to increase your END-- that alone kills off more exotic ideas.

 

But again, to be fair: the author stated pretty early on that he was re-crafting the rules to create the sorts of games he enjoyed playing in his past.  If we assume that he nailed this goal (and presumably he wouldn't have released it if he hadn't gotten it where he wanted it yet), then we can also assume that he played _a lot_ of tactical, evade, hide, recoup, and shoot from cover with the element of surprise sort of.....  superheroes?....

 

I'm with you in spirit:  It's not my cup of tea (and, given its stated old-editions base, I was really, _really_ stoked for it when I found out about it), and I've actually played in just those types of games!  They were fun then, sure-- but really, that was pretty much all RPGs in the day: D&D?  Take a chance; roll a save.  Maybe.    Traveller?  I don't think a better fast-resolution "wow; guns are dangerous!" system was designed for several years after the release of Traveller, honestly.

 

Champions now is, in some ways, the essence of my memories of early RPGs, and of course, Champions in particular.

 

 

Just not the ones that make me smile.

 

 

And yes: the rules do feel like something of a straight jacket to keep you locked in those shoot-from-cover scenarios your 250-pt hero might find himself in if he tried to take on two whole villains at once, or even six thugs.  But after that, we learned the nuances of the game, and our fun grew.  Champions Now just stops you right there in the early stages.  It's fun; it's just not the fun I enjoy remembering of the early edition games.

 

 

That's all.

 

 

(and bring Phoenix Wright back!  Or at least put on a blue suit.    )

 

 

[pawsplay]

I don't really see the obstacles to making a mega-villain. You can give them whatever numbers they need. For the Big Fight, you should have some kind of hazard or puzzle. So you would be fighting Mechanon but also his, you know, force field generator or whatever he has going on.

 

For high point heroes, a lot of the assumptions break down, but I'm not convinced the game itself breaks down. Has anyone performed any play-tests?

[assault]

On 11/18/2020 at 9:30 AM, Pariah said:

But people coming to the superhero genre* now are more familiar with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC animated and live action series and movies, and maybe the Incredibles. And CNow just isn't built to tell those kinds of stories. If there's one complaint I have about the system, it's that imposes unnecessary limitations on character creation in the name of a 'look and feel' that only people who've been reading comics since the 70s will appreciate.

I'm not quite sure about what you are getting at here.

 

Obviously the tone and genre stuff is handled by Situations, so we can skip that. In fact the examples in the book suggest recent GrimDark styles.

 

So the issue then is, presumably, on the other side of character builds, specifically in the system as a tactical simulation. Is that what you mean?

 

It's not really that the range of power/ability sets is narrower - that's essentially a matter of system mastery. Some characters are harder to build, of course, but many others are far easier.

 

It's in the tactical simulation where the important differences lie.

 

Is the choreography of combat really an obstacle? Sure, the source material doesn't have any concept of Endurance, or any other game mechanics for that matter, but does the timing and who does what when actually differ radically?

 

Sure, it's different from how things work in D&D and similar games, but that's nothing special. Even different versions of D&D are different from each other.

 

Is Endurance a deal breaker? If the alternative is that characters just stand there and whale on each other, END management becomes a good thing.

 

If combat is always and inevitably ultra-tactical, that just means that no Situations are in play, whether they should be or not.

 

What about the balance between defenses and attacks? Is there a problem there? In fact, no such balance inherently exists in either the source material or the game. Even a character with the highest conventional defenses is subject to weird attacks that bypass them. These are downright common, or at least can be.

 

Is it just that characters aren't throwing enough dice in their attacks? Well, actually there are ways around that, and if they are using what I described as "weird attacks" they don't need to be throwing lots of dice anyway.

 

Of course ultimately there is the issue that starting points build starting characters. If you really want to play seasoned veterans you might want to start with higher point totals. The truth is, though, even an extra 20 points buys a lot of that, and it's presented as an official option. (And it's perfectly reasonable that such characters would have extra Situations.)

So I'm not sure where the issue lies. Genuinely - I'm not mindlessly defending the game.

 

Also - a lot of issues that appear to be real when just reading the rules are less of an issue when actually playing the game. That doesn't help with convincing people to play it though.

[assault]

On 11/19/2020 at 5:35 AM, pawsplay said:

I don't really see the obstacles to making a mega-villain. You can give them whatever numbers they need. For the Big Fight, you should have some kind of hazard or puzzle. So you would be fighting Mechanon but also his, you know, force field generator or whatever he has going on.

 

For high point heroes, a lot of the assumptions break down, but I'm not convinced the game itself breaks down. Has anyone performed any play-tests?

I think the lack of play testing at high points is one of the game's weaknesses. If issues do arise in play at that point, people should raise them, and explain how they have attempted to address them. Of course that means that there have to be relatively long-term campaigns, and unfortunately I'm not sure there are many going on.

 

As for mega-villains - the idea of villains that you can't defeat by just hitting is obviously built into the game. If the provisions officially included don't do the trick, just throw a few more points at them. In any case, though, such villains should be tailored to the specific game in which they are used, not just Big Piles of Points. That's the problem with generic villains like Mechanon.

 

And yes, villains, especially mega-villains, are generally going to be doing something, not just walking down the street. The scenario should reflect this.

If they are just walking down the street, they might just decide to run away, or maybe go berserk and try to crush the annoying insects that dare to challenge them. That's a scenario in its own right, but it's not the most common one.