Ninja-Bear

I wish I was good at coding!
 
I don't use a rule of X, but do something similar.  I know the kind of combat I want in my game, if players go toe to toe, fights will be brutal and short, I want the character builds to effect that.
 
So I have a campaign "straw man", based on best offence, and best defence, I run a "combat" based on average roll/average damage and see, over two turns, the damage delivered/taken.
 
So (picking numbers off the top of my head).  If straw man has offence (12D6 damage, SPD 5, CV 6, defence 20, STUN 50, CON 30) and the player has offence (8D6 AP, SPD 6, CV 7, defence 25, STUN 40, CON 25). 
 
I can say that the player, in an offence versus offence fight, has a 74% chance of hitting, doing 18 STUN and 0 BODY with less than 1% chance of stunning his opponent.  Over 2 turns that would mean on average 9 hits doing 162 damage.
 
At the same time his opponent has a 50% chance of hitting, doing 17 damage and 0 BODY with a 10% chance of stunning.  Over 2 turns that would mean 5 hits doing 85 damage.
 
I do thus straw man three times with each PC and villain, it gives me a decent idea of offensive and defensive power and whether I want the player to tweak his character up or down to get the kinds of fight I want.
 
Obviously players are unlikely to stand and trade blows but that comes into tactics for me, a good thing and irrelevant to raw power.
 
My issue is that it is reasonably work-heavy.  It should be possible to do a spreadsheet to do this for me, but I am a pen and paper man at heart, and so I use a LOT of scrap paper at the start of a campaign!  And I do not often test characters against villains, which I should.
 
Doc

I would put Batman at about 25 STR, 23 DEX and 5 SPD.  In the group I game with we try and keep the DEX and SPD down unless the character is supposed to be superhuman.   In our games most superhero are a 4 SPD and a speedster is 6 SPD with a really fast character having a 7.  

Figured is better, precisely because of the cookie cutter effect. It makes sure that the characters are within the guidelines, and not too far apart from each other.  The other problem I have, is that in fifth, and before the point system was economic, and in sixth, its more like taxes.  I prefer the looser accounting and bargain hunting from the earlier editions. In Fantasy Hero the Package deals made character creation a lot quicker, where one would just copy down a stack of package deals, and add a few items outside the deals for flavor. Character creation demands  software to create the charactersm now, It is nigh unto impossible if you have poor math skills like me.

I find these builds annoying.

Batman is stronger, faster and tougher than most other supers, not weaker, slower and less tough. Those that are better than him in those areas are generally the ones that are super-strong, super fast and super tough.

That's the source material, generally speaking. There are exceptions, obviously.

This is why it is a good thing that the Normal Characteristic Maxima Disadvantage was dropped. It encourages dumb builds, or ones that circumvent it, meaning it's not actually a Disadvantage.

2e and 3e Champions had the "Reasonable Characters" section, which concisely laid out characteristic ranges that work for many (not all) superhero games. If players followed them, their characters were a lot less likely to suck in play. Something like that would be useful for 6e, or a notional 7e.

I wonder if the difference between liking and not liking figured characteristics depends upon how you build characters. I, for example, always looked at every characteristic, figure door non-figured add determined what it value should be. As a result, I'd basically say no difference, except in how I figure out the cost of the former figured characteristics. But I can see that for those who seldom modified their figured characteristics, suddenly having to look at what each value should be, would be a major difference.

I was thinking that a good twist can be that the artifact in question is a Eed Herring of sorts. Yes the Nazis would like it but they really wanted to kidnap the good professor who discovered it. Naturally the Professor knows where Atlantis is! Or at least a colony.

The one reason I never liked Gnolls is that to me they look like Hyenas. And what are Hyena doing in a faux Europe setting? Am I the only ine thinking that they look like Hyenas?

What about density-based powers affecting it? 

I like having Figured Characteristics for Superheroes. For Heroic Level though No figured are better.

Back to Gnolls. I pulled up the classic “where there is a whip there is away” from The Return of the King animated movie. It got me thinking that if you portray Goblins/Orcs as lazy bullies that could be negotiated with. The Gnolls as listed in DnD could be blood thirsty fiends if you will. The difference could be that if captured by Goblins you could be ransomed. You be treated roughly but not excessively. Whereas with Gnolls expect no mercy. Better to die than to he captured by them.  

How about chasing Nazis through town because they stole an ancient artifact? Of course this was during the grand opening display at the museum.

I was thinking specially Vikings. One group trades and another raids. You weren’t sure which group was visiting you.

I will throw in the suggestion of electricity: you still have a nervous system, and it does not like electricity at all.
 
And of you are altering nothinf but your density, heat as well as the above-mentioned cold.
 
 

I would think cold sfx too. cold seems to slow everything.

I ran out of ink!

You're not the only one who thinks that, every online description of Gnolls I can find explicitly says they look like hyenas. I imagine that's the official published description. I can't recall whether the original Monster Manual also said so.
 
Hyena species have lived in Europe prehistorically. Changing climate changed the European landscape, replacing grasslands with forests, for which canines were better adapted. Gnolls being humanoid, can spread and adapt to different environments just as humans can. But for purposes of fantasy gaming, I would guess Gnolls look like hyenas because most humans have certain mental associations with the species, that the writers for D&D wanted to translate to this "monster."

I agree that the originals look like Hyenas.
 
I changed the pack in my current game to have black/gray fur and more Egyptian hound features so they look like Anubis.
 
The underlying stats and skills are basically the same, but they fit in better with the ancient empire that is part of the setting.

The actual what now?

I am of two minds on this.
 
I like figured characteristics, a lot.  I really love the feel of it, and it seems to make sense: the better your health, the more stun you have, etc.  It was one of the things that attracted me to Hero to begin with.  If I were to design a game, I would have figured characteristics.
 
However, in terms of game mechanics, balance, and build, having no figured characteristics works better.  Its more balanced in terms of cost and it makes stat-based characters balance better against skill/power-based characters, for example.  It makes the cost of various stats make more sense (STR, DEX, and especially CON was way too efficient).  But... it feels too plain and mechanical to me now.
 
Edit: so I guess its a push: I would have been happy either way, although my heart leans toward figured.  I know there are some who are more number crunchy that were deeply offended by the math though.

Ultimately though, you don’t need Complications for Roleplaying. All you need is an idea of what your character is about.  

I absolutely agree with this and it is one of the better changes to keep things tight and actually have them matter. I will say with the lower point total for Complications that Vulnerability and Susceptibility are much rarer, as well as Enraged. I’m fine with the way it is though because players aren’t stretching to fill up the total. 

Short Forbes (gag) Review of the Marvel Multiverse d616 RPG
 
Tl;dr: 3d6+ability vs. target number, with "Marvel Die" bonus mechanic.  6 power levels for characters.  Not clear whether chargen is points- or class-based, but mentions "power trees" so it might be a bit of both.  Designed for quick pick-up-and-play with 130 stat pages for Marvel characters.

I seem to recall assertions in LOTR that Mordor-Orcs were generally bigger and stronger than Orcs from elsewhere.
 
 
 
The 6E Hero System Bestiary, as well as Monsters, Minions, And Marauders for 5E, include a Hobgoblin character sheet, and indeed, more strength and overall better stats are their primary differences. (The books also say Hobgoblins run faster than goblins due to longer legs.) Both books declare them a hybrid of Orc and Goblin which can breed true with each other, producing a new race. That follows the precedent from The Turakian Age of Gnomes being, in origin, hybrids of Dwarf and Halfling. They're supposed to be nearly as strong as but more tractable than Orcs, hence favored by evil overlords for their armies. I never used them as such in my Turakian Age-based games, because they're never mentioned there and don't seem to be a factor in the world. But I did keep them as the result of individual hybridization, like Half-Elves and Half-Trolls. Sometimes they're battle leaders for their tribes, at other times outcasts from them, depending on their particular tribe's attitude toward half-breeds.
 
OTOH I did declare Ogres to be a race spawned out of the mating of Orc and Troll. While Gnomes got some of the best qualities of both their parent races, Ogres got most of the worst from theirs.

Speaking of samey, I remember looking at the old Fantasy Hero for fourth and they had Goblin, Hobgoblin, Lesser Orc and Orc. And I thought besides STR, what are really the difference? In one game I used the Hobgoblin stats and named but said in game Hobgoblin means chief and usually they have bigger goblins rule the smaller ones.

Sounds like you would just LOVE Mouse from Ranma 1/2. He is one character who shouldn't have a Focus limitation at all, but a Variable Special Effects advantage, a "Can Be Disarmed" limitation (-1/4 at most), and maybe a zero point "Subject To Running Out In Moments Of Funny" (-0).
 
Optionally it could be an excuse for a Variable Power Pool as a "Hidden Weapons And Tools (Kept Inside Robe Till Needed)" Pool.