Andrew_A

Either FASERIP or DC Heroes

Oddly enough, probably a modified version of Aberrant.

I would *really* not add 100 pages to an intro book.  Hero already has a reputation for being overly hard to get into, a 160 page "basics" book will not help things.

I'm still not sure why each character needs 6 write-ups though?

The original adventure had Armadillo, Bluejay, Brick, Cheshire Cat, Dragonfly, Green Dragon, Howler, Icicle, and Pulsar.  Rather than be too specifically out of the VIPER books I want villains who are super simple and easy to understand, with really stripped down powers not requiring knowledge of the game to understand (so no multipowers, etc).  This is meant to be a super beginners basic book so we don't want anything that is too complicated.

OK as I get a first draft down to sections of this I'm going to post them as pdfs here for people to look over and comment on.
 
My goals are these:
To create a package that has a book for GMs and a book for Players For each book to be fun, easy to read, and teach the system The scenario is in tutorial format (familiar to gamers) introducing concepts one bloc at a time, until they know enough to play the game without the tutorial I'm using the old Viper's Nest/Microfilm Madness scenario updated for modern times (so, no microfilm) Each chapter has an intro to the rules used in this section, then the episode of the scenario Players will have pre-made PCs to choose from in very familiar and well-loved archetypes with fun and colorful names and costumes Each entire book should be slender and filled with images for all ages The end result is intended as a free product for players to download and use Ideally, eventually, I'd love to see this packaged as a box set with dice, a map, a GM screen, that kind of thing.  
Please be constructive and positive, any nit picking or troublemaking comments will be cheerfully ignored.

Ah, thanks for the pm.
 
Apparently, I'm the comic relief.
 
As long as I'm not the Comic Sans relief....

I'm sorry...there are others?

Outside of the art, I'm one of the few people who liked Fuzion. I never got to play Champions: New Millenium, but I really liked creating characters in that system. It just felt clean and streamlined in a way that HERO 3-5 never did.

To be fair, the hobby itself suffered a general downturn. Only a few of the tabletop games are really prospering today, having absorbed most of a diminished player base.

It will almost certainly be available in the Hero Games store...whenever it happens to arrive. 
 
 
 
I'm not quite cynical enough to have begun to believe that just yet. I may be wrong, but I'm willing to see what the finished product looks like before making any such critiques. 

I got an update e-mail today. The artist they commissioned for the book has had some health issues, so the artwork has been delayed. They are anticipating all artwork to be submitted by October 15th, after which the book will go to final editing and layout. The PDF version should be completed shortly thereafter, with physical copies to follow. 
 
The only firm date they gave was the aforementioned October 15th, but it gives me hope that I could be holding the finished product by Christmas.

New Millennium, from what I'm told, wasn't _exactly_ Fusion, but was close enough you could pick it up if you were familiar with Fuzion at all, much the same way that if you were familiar with Justice, Inc, you could pick up any other game HERO had going at that time, I suppose.
 
I had no other experience with Fuzion, really (having already found Champions / HERO and liking that system enough to run pretty much everything I have ever played since on that platform), but I wanted to chime in to let you know that you have some support.  I think there were one or two of us on this board that like New Millennium.  I never really felt like it was "Champions," but I felt that the system was solid enough and easy enough to learn.  It just wasn't-- in my opinion, of course-- as good or as comfortable as the Champions system I had been using.
 
serious question:
 
Is the Fuzion system still around?  Is there anything out there using it today?
 
 
 
 

C:TNM remains the only version of Champions I actually played more than one session of.

Outside of the art, I'm one of the few people who liked Fuzion. I never got to play Champions: New Millenium, but I really liked creating characters in that system. It just felt clean and streamlined in a way that HERO 3-5 never did.

This is the Hero System. If someone tells you there is only one way to do something, they are lying.

I'm up for re-classification.  I have broken things into four groups, the first impacts on the starting rolls for skills, the second is all about acting/reacting and how effective that might be, the third is about the condition of the character and the last is outside combat because those numbers are routinely advantaged in some way where other numbers are not.
 
Characteristics = STR, DEX, CON, INT, EGO and PRE
 
Combat numbers = OCV, DCV, OMCV, DMCV, SPD
 
Health indicators = STUN, BODY, END, REC
 
Defence numbers = PD, ED, PowD, Mental D, Flash D (all potentially advantaged with resistant, hardened etc).
 
You think breaking them up into groups like this would help in presentation terms?

I missed out on the bundle of holding because of a misunderstanding. I thought my wife was getting it for me for Christmas, and she thought I was just going to buy it for myself. By the time we figured out where we were, it had closed.

Folks (And I do mean more than one, not trying to single ANYONE person out, but this seems a good thread to bring it up...again)
 
Only in referring to cancer (the medical condition, not the poster) And COVID (In the Coronavirus thread) are we supposed to use a certain F word on these boards. The Admins have in the past reminded folks that while we tend towards older demographics we want this to be a family friendly board over all. SO...  I mention this now and then, and yet still if I do a search, folks ignore it..a lot.
 
So far my options appear to be...
Start issuing warnings and infractions
Clear them up only to have them happen again
a mix of above
Or... entertain myself in how I edit the F word because it really gets tedious.
 
So if you start seeing comments like "I really fluttershyed up at work today" where you thought more standard language was. Now you know why. 
 
And if I start to think folks are doing this deliberately just to see how fun it could be, I'll consider that making more work for me, surrender, and just go straight to the warnings or more likely infactions.
 
I am getting too fuzzylumpkin old for this Snugglypoo
 
 

The cost discrepancies were not "small"; in a supers campaign (or other high-points campaign) it was less noticeable due to the noise of more points across the board, but at a heroic level where the free points gained from the nonsensical point recursions of figureds often added up to a non-negligible percentage of starting character points it was particularly problematic.
 
But as stated before, I'm pending figureds discussion to one combined post later.
 
 
I'm going to try to tease this apart.
 
STR, as it is defined mechanically in HS, gets better the more you have of it in every way until you reach a point of diminishing returns at the extreme high end where any conceivable task is below the top end of capability. Pre-6e thanks to the free points from recursion actually granting you more points in figureds than you spent on STR, it was still efficient to buy STR well past the point you benefited much from its high end just to inflate figureds cheaply. The only thing that prevented many players from buying up their STR on a non-NCM character to extreme levels was general damage caps imposed by most GMs rather than any limit on the usefulness of STR itself. So the idea that buying up STR is efficient, except for "bricks" (i.e. characters with notably high strength), just doesn't scan. 
 
It may not have been the intent, but then the example given presumably to support this statement, postulates a 30 STR as "not abusive" in a 12D6 capped campaign because 6D6 is unlikely to be competitive vs average defenses. But, in a 12D6 campaign, a 30 STR character would not be considered a brick, at least not in my experience. In a 12D6 campaign, a character would need at least 50 STR to be considered a brick, and would almost certainly have a bog standard 60 STR, bought right up to the cap, because players are like that (campaign maximums have a tendency to turn into defacto "minimum acceptable value" in the minds of many players). So, either it was an unintended attachment of one sentence to a preceding sentence with neither meant to support the other, or it is a misleading argument.
 
 
You are arguing from the assumption that 350 points is the benchmark for starting characters. I'm assuming / inferring that you are coming from a primarily superhero perspective. But the Hero System is not a dedicated superhero game engine. It is multi-genre and multi-power level. At lower point levels the math changes considerably. 
 
 
I agree that there was a ripple effect of recosting END. Interestingly enough, we house ruled Endurance Reserves in 6e to make them more viable as they do seem to be subpar in 6e; Panpiper first brought it to my attention early on and we worked out some tweaks that brought its utility up without recosting it. A write up of it is here for the interested: http://www.killershrike.com/HereThereBeMonsters/Paradigm_HouseRules.aspx#EnduranceReserve6e
 
However, I suspect we have a different way of looking at things in general. To my eye, the increased ease of getting enough END to fuel a character's abilities means that fewer characters should feel the need to want to take Reduced Endurance (a pretty commonly used modifier in the supers campaigns I participated in over the years) or an Endurance Reserve, or seek to build powers using Charges for purely meta reasons where perhaps the concept doesn't quite match up with the mechanics used to model it.
 
As far as characters buying up cheap END and then applying Increased Endurance to the their powers...the long standing precept that limitations that don't limit characters are not valid applies here. A GM can and should veto players trying to milk points from limitations that don't really limit their characters; this is HS GM 101 level stuff.
 
 
This isn't entirely precise. Changes to non-orthogonal aspects of a system do have side effects (sometimes predictable, sometimes surprising) on other aspects of a system. However, not all aspects of a system are non-orthogonal to each other, and in a well factored (but likely very limited) system it is possible to have high orthogonality where nearly all components are self contained. 
 
It would be more accurate to say something like "END is the fundamental resource used by the game to limit a given character's frequency of use of their various abilities, rather than using an X / per day or strict action economy or cool-off model such as is done in some other games. Options that allow characters to limit the frequency of use on an ability in a different way (or remove the END based limit altogether) are priced comparatively to the standard cost of END. Changing the standard cost of END or its supporting elements such as REC would therefore call into question the pricing of all END related and END equivalent options".
 
Progressing down that path, one possible perception is that change is bad and wrong, and someone changing something "fundamental" can't possibly conceive of the possible repercussions or take action to prevent them and therefore should not change anything. The old saws "if it ain't broke don't fix it", "it works well enough, don't #@(% with it", and "that's how we've always done it" are often trotted out at some point in discussion about such changes...and sometimes they are even appropriate and pragmatic depending on the risk vs reward of tinkering. 
 
However, it is also possible to adjust multiple non-orthogonal (i.e. interrelated) parts of a system as part of an overall re-balancing or refactoring to keep them in tune with one another. If you take your car or other mechanical device to a good mechanic for instance, they might just replace one part and call it done, but they also might run some diagnostics and adjust a few things to tune the machine as a whole. Game mechanics are no different; sometimes a simple repair is all that is needed or warranted, other times a more holistic approach is called for.
 
Now, I did not play 6e as extensively as I did 4e and 5e, but in the time I spent with 6e I did not notice an issue with the frequency of use options other than by the book END Reserve not being viable. It all trundled along nicely, and we had a mix of characters using END and Charges for various abilities.Your mileage may vary. 
 
Put simply I did not encounter the issues you suggest are present in this area; but I'm willing to hear more about your 6e experiences or horror stories, or just a point break down establishing that the costs of Charges, etc are out of whack in 6e due to changes to END costing.
 
 
Well, ok, that has not been my experience, but I invite you to list those problems out and engage in discussion about them. 

Straight off the bat, I believe 6E is the best edition of HERO mechanically. I would not say it is the best it could be, but it is better than the previous editions. Most of the problems I have with 6E are not mechanical but rather with presentation.
Presentation
Again, I will declare it from the start, I love the two big-blue 6E books. I find them beautiful and neat and as reference manuals, they are golden. When it comes to look at general rules though, Champions Complete or HERO Basic are much more convenient.  Behold hindsight 20/20, with better production value (and completeness for Basic) they could have been the equivalent of HERO Rulebook and Champions BBB for 4E. I would have seen them both on glossy paper, full color and using the layout template 6E1 and 6E2 use while the two big books could have been softcover and black and white (what they now are in POD I suppose).   
But my main presentation problems in 6E are on the character sheets. The wall of characteristics is horrible and with just a better layout could be easily avoided. Categorizing them like it was previously suggested in this thread would go a long way to make them look less intimidating. At the very least, grouping them slightly differently (example below but somewhat messed up) would definitely help.
CHARACTERISTICS
STR           40       17-         STR Dice 9d6, Lift 6.4tons
DEX          36      16-
CON          19       13-
INT            18       13-         Perception Roll 13-
EGO          15       12-
PRE           13       12-         PRE Attack 2½d6
 
OCV           10             OMCV      3
DCV           12              DMCV      3
SPD              5              Phases     3, 5, 8, 10, 12
 
PD              12              Total         12 PD/0 rPD
ED               9               Total         9 ED/0 rED
REC           10               END         40
STUN         40               BODY       12     
 
MOVEMENT
Running 12m (24m)         Swimming 4m (8m)
Leaping 30m (60m)         Swinging 40m (80m)
 
Another issue brought up previously is how some powers were deconstructed and need now to be built from other powers. While I have no problem with the approach, I would have preferred if they would have defined and used a simplified nomenclature on published character sheets (basically what they did with Talents). A few basic write-ups would have benefited from it (Force Field, Instant Change, Transfer, Super-Running (you know, the one not built with Running but with Flight or Teleport), etc…). In short, I would have liked if they looked for a way to declutter the character sheets and make them look more appealing, more fun (and yes, I would be totally happy not seeing Real Cost per line item and the advantages and limitations +/- values).
Legacy
Another aspect that clearly irks long time HERO fans is the loss of some legacy components. The two examples constantly referred to are Comeliness and Figured Characteristics. In both cases, I was initially against their departure but after the fact, my opinion is that the game is better without them.
Comeliness was not doing much mechanically and every attempt I have seen to give it a purpose were heroic efforts for sure but ultimately unconvincing. I much, much prefer Striking Appearance as a mechanic. That being said, I agree that adding Comeliness in a sidebar as a potential new Characteristic would have been a must. It is clearly important to some of us and we should respect that.
Figured Characteristics were a tougher nut to crack. The challenge is to balance a linear point cost progression per characteristics with what is fundamentally a breakpoint progression of abilities. Some benefits of characteristics increase every +1 but others only in +2, +3 or +5 increments. GURPS can balance its Attributes with its Secondary Characteristics by the simple fact that most benefits progress on a +1 for +1 basis. ST is equally divided in three components, Lifting, Striking and Hit Points, +1 in ST means +1 in all three components and the sum cost of the three components equals the total cost for ST. Trying to balance that in HERO was next to impossible and at best could have been better approximated than in previous editions (this is what I was hoping for while 6E was being developed). In the end, figured characteristics were not figured anymore and it suddenly became much easier to build any concept desired without worrying with point efficiency.
But something was lost. Call it guidance or verisimilitude but the fact remains that a deeply entrenched paradigm, the relation between Characteristics and Figured was erased. Again, a few solutions were possible. First, a sidebar re-introducing Figured Characteristics with better balanced costs could have been added. Second, and even easier, a sidebar could have introduced “suggested values” for Secondary Characteristics based on Characteristics (example below).
  Base Cost Suggested Value OCV 3 5 DEX/3 DCV 3 5 DEX/3 OMCV 3 3 EGO/3 DMCV 3 3 EGO/3 PD 2 1 STR/5 ED 2 1 CON/5 SPD 2 10 1+DEX/10 REC 4 1 (STR+CON)/5 END 20 0.2 CONx2 BODY 10 1 10+STR/5 STUN 20 0.5 BODY+STR+CON)/2
 
From a cost perspective, nothing would change. You would still buy STR at 1 pts for +1 and no Secondary Characteristics would be automatically recalculated. If you wanted to bring your Secondary Characteristics in line with the suggested values, you would still need to buy them up. Suggested Values would simply give an indication of how the Characteristics could influence the Secondary Characteristics and the player would still have full power to buy them up their desired values based on their concept, may it be the suggested value or something else. Unless of course a campaign strictly enforces them.
I haven’t touched on mechanics at all in this post. Hopefully will have time to do so later.
 

I view both the MA maneuver creation rules and ranged MA as more "core" than APG because I believe the ability to design maneuvers should be in the system. 
 
I would include some APG material in Core, if it were my choice - things the core rules cannot reasonably achieve.  For example, the CE to STUN, and to Suffocate, which provide effects fairly common in the source material, and pretty much impossible to pin down in the core rules.  Most, however, belongs in "optional rule" territory.
 


For me, magic stops feeling like magic when it is governed by specific rules enabling me to know exactly what it can and cannot do.  Such definitions are essential in game rules, so we lose much of the "magic" feel.
 


My inclination was to revise the cost of Figureds (STUN, REC, END), revise the formuli a bit and end up with cost-balanced primaries and figured.  That would also add "no figured" being a limitation that removed the cost of the figureds from the specific stat (so a much greater limitation for CON than for STR or BOD).  Steve's point, that once we balanced the costs we did not need figured's, makes sense to me, though.  I argued for decoupling of CVs - it made no sense to have "figureds you cannot buy directly" , and even ;less when we decoupled the other figureds.

 
 
I'll go out on a limb and guess Steve decided that Transfer was either a sample "New Power" or a sidebar ability, and he chose the latter.   A couple of examples seems like enough to me, but I could see adding Transfer, or replacing one of the others with Transfer.

I first started playing Champions/Hero System with 3rd Edition in the late 1980s and over the years collected earlier edition books followed by 4th, 5th, and 6th Edition. In terms of 6th Edition products, I have Champions Complete, Hero Basic, and Champions. Am not sure if there is an overall reason why 6e is disliked, but here are two observations for your consideration that I gathered from my own experience as a customer and from talking with the dozen or so players/fans I meet in game conventions over the years when I run Champions:
 
1) In terms of style and graphic design, Champions 6th Edition products seem dated compared to other superhero game systems. Champions Complete's cover and interior b&w art was average and the soft-cover binding was okay, but previewing it next to other games like Mutants & Masterminds, Icons, or even Savage Worlds: Supers on the display rack, there was a distinct different in quality in terms of style. While some in this forum liked the textbook design for the 6th Edition rule book covers, the fans I spoke to in person didn't care for it (myself included). People still do judge a book by its cover to see if it's even worth previewing or passing on it outright.
 
2) The amount of rules made it difficult to introduce new players to Hero System. I had Hero Basic, but others had saw how many other rule books there were to get started for 6th Edition and were immediately turned off. A common occurrence was that the players had previously played Champions until <insert edition number here> for one reason or another but then stopped, most commonly due to the excessive rules being piled on in later editions.  The Champions Now kickstarter is drawing upon 3rd Edition or early rules for various reasons, drawing a mix of support and criticism of Hero Games senior staff being out-of-touch as to what their fans want as mentioned in other discussions. Even now, my go-to system of superhero games for brand-new players has been Icons and not Champions, and that's even with simplified versions of characters that I created (4th Edition versions). 
 
People who still play Champions/Hero System are going to choose their favorite edition and pull aspects from others accordingly to round out their campaign. It's unrealistic to convince them which is better than the other (or vice versa) in terms of game mechanics. Some like the simplicity of 3rd Edition and earlier (hence, Champions Now that's under development), some like the completeness of 4th Edition (BBB with George Perez cover art), others like the detailed comprehensiveness of 5th Edition (sourcebooks are extremely well done), and others like the new mechanics of 6th Edition (e.g. no "freebies" from Figured Characteristics).

Well, that's one response, but it wasn't what I was going for. Please don't go away mad, instead consider staying and conversing. 

6e wasn't designed by a committee. Game designers polling their constituents as to what they would like to see in the next book does not a committee make. 
 
4e itself was a work of many hands. If anything 5e and 6e are far more the product of a single authorial voice than 4e. 
 
I draw the conclusion that you don't like committees (who does?) and have conjoined your dislike of two different things for reasons of your own. However, it is not really relevant because committee or not committee doesn't seem to be the main thing you object to, so I'll move on.
 
 
So, the underlying premise here is that 4e's team had a philosophy (or design goals as we might say) for what they wanted to achieve with 4e, and DoJ / Steve L did not have such a clear philosophy of what they wanted to achieve with 5e and so on.
 
However, they did. It's printed in the back of the book. It's also consistent and compatible with the 4e design goals. Now, you may review those goals and opine that they did not meet them, that is your prerogative. I think they did. 
 
Also, I don't recall the exact details, but the 5e manuscript was work for hire Steve L had been contracted to do by the original Hero System folks but they couldn't come up with the money to publish it. I have never heard that they did not want to publish it, or did not agree with its content; only that they couldn't afford to publish it. Someone with more inside information might add clarity around that. However my understanding is that 5e had the blessing of the old guard. When DoJ bought out the assets of the previous owners, they didn't sit down and write up a new rulebook, they blew the dust off the 5e manuscript and published it. Again, that's my understanding of it, I may be misinformed.
 
Having been around back then, actively playing 4e and then early adopting 5e, I know from experience that there was no schism or disconnect between the editions; it was a pretty seamless transition with a few characters requiring a bit of a tweak but nothing majorly discombobulated.
 
 
Yes, perfect balance is a myth. The idea that point buy systems equal game balance is also a myth. Nothing is immune to min maxing. Every game system has some kind of exploit by which one character who leverages it can gain an advantage over another character who does not. 
 
I am quite sure that Steve L, a professional game developer with a solid resume prior to becoming attached to 5e, did and does in fact understand that perfect balance is unattainable. 
 
I also reject the notion that the intent of the rules changes made over the course of the DoJ era editions were done in a quixotic attempt to achieve the impossible dream of perfect game balance. I'm fairly confident that the number of windmills tilted at were few to none.
 
The overarching theme from 5e to 5er to 6e, the most noticeable trend, was application of official rulings and adjustments made to existing rules based upon the thousands of "ask steve" rules questions fielded from actual players of the game as well as tinfoil hat wearing maniacs like me and Sean and ghostangel and OddHat and a few other system theorists poking and prodding at the game system. 
 
Thus the driving factor was not a theoretical attempt to achieve the Philosopher's Stone in ruleform, it was instead a dogged determination to patch and fix and reconfigure and tinker with an eye towards responding to actual feedback from the field.
 
This is desirable, if your goal is to make a comprehensive universal game system. Get a lot of people to play your game and tell you how it broke under pressure, and get another group of people to deliberately try to break your game and then tell you about it so you have the option to address it or not, and to the extent possible harden the system to reduce the fails and gaps and inconsistencies.
 
If your goal is to make a "good enough" game system for the purpose of selling splatbooks and adventures, then it isn't as desirable, and indeed can be detrimental. Most people don't crave change, even when it ultimately benefits them. If people are happy enough with your product and are willing to live with its flaws, great.
 
Now, as a business strategy, it can be argued that the later has proven, over the last 40 odd years, to be the more successful strategy overall. However, to the subset of gamers who prefer abstract universal game systems suitable as an all purpose tool for whatever strikes our fancy, the DoJ approach was at least laudatory; even if one did not ultimately buy their product it could be appreciated for their strong commitment to what they were doing. 
 
 
I would hope that we could discuss DoJ's and their predecessors work without disrespecting the people involved. It just seems unwarranted to me.
 
 
Yes, as would you if you became the lead designer and primary author of a game line. It's actually his job to have ideas about the game and then implement them.
 
 
Adders are good, IMO. I wish more things that preexisted Adders had been refactored to become Adders.
 
 
Not sure why that is notable. If the cost of a jug of milk changes does it require the price of everything else in the store to also change?
 
 
I'd be curious for more detail.
 
 
And water is wet. The same is always true in any scenario where one person picks up the work of another and carries it forward. 
 
 
Can you expound on this a bit?
 
 
Instant Change was a Power, and it was removed because it was basically an unnecessary tax upon characters, and also was almost entirely a single genre construct (superheroes). It was established that "activation of powers" could cover cosmetic changes as a sort of quality of life hand wave, and for those who liked the idea of Instant Change it was pointed out that changing a set of clothes into a different set of clothes already existed in the system in the form of a cosmetic Transform.
 
Seems reasonable to me. 
 
 
Shapeshift is certainly an odd one. I understand the _logic_ behind it, but it is certainly non-intuitive. Personally, I think Steve should have renamed the power to something like Facade or maybe Guise. The word "shapeshift" literally means changing shape not altering how various senses perceive ones self. "Shapeshift" could then have been a sidebar example using Facade dialed in to produce the effect of shapeshifting. 
 
The main issue with "shapeshift" in the hero system, is that if one "shapeshifted" into a form with wings, one would expect to gain the ability to fly (and so on all obvious permutations of that idea), but of course in the HS you'd need to buy Flight, and so on. Thus shapeshifters often ended up with a VPP or occasionally an MP to allow them to gain abilities that one would expect to gain with shapeshift alone in most games. Further complication, if you want to use Flight to fly, what it looks like is by default SFX...you don't need a separate power to first change your shape to grow wings, you could define the activation and SFX of your Flight power to be "I 'shapeshift' to grow wings and thus can fly". 
 
So, with "shapeshift to gain abilities my original form lacks" off the table, that only leaves "shapeshift to deceive others into thinking I am whatever I changed my shape to look like" and you end up with a sense affecting power. The nature of how that is costed is then driven by how senses and detect are defined and priced. That gets you to 5e Shapeshift.
 
Does it make sense? Well, yes, from a procedural progression perspective it is clear how the outcome was arrived at. 
 
Is it consistent with the larger skein of the rules? Yes, it is consistent with the axioms and precepts of the system as a whole.
 
Do I like it? Well...not really. It feels unsatisfying and inelegant and unintuitive. It does actually work in play for the very narrow thing that it does. I find that it works fine for projecting misinformation for sensory detection, but I struggle conceptually when it is used to accomplish things that involve actual deformation of physical structure via the Touch group. I wish the Power was little bit purer in deciding if it is really a sense affecting power or a body alteration power and stick to it. But, I don't lose any sleep over it.
 
Also, the overlap with Images (also a poorly named power as images are sight only and Images is not) is suspicious. At some remove, the way Shapeshift works as a defacto sense affecting power minus the Touch / physical deformation kind of seems redundant / overlapped to a degree that violates the meta rule of a power duplicating functionality of another power.
 
Anyway, I would agree that Shapeshift deserves an asterix as "questionable".
 

I agree that the 5e Damage Shield is borked. I seem to recall discussing it on these boards back in that timeframe. It is not efficient or practical. I think it would have been more correct to have the Damage Shield advantage itself include the desired functionality and just bump up its modifier a bit, or to define a variant option for Continuous itself that modified Continuous to express the "Damage Shield" behavior. 
 
I prefer a self-resetting trigger based build for a "damage shield" type of effect, personally.
 
 
I'm unconvinced that it is a different game philosophy at all; my perception is that it is a logical continuation of the direction 4e took away from pre-4e.
 
 
That's actually not true at all. If anything, DoJ era HS is much more rigorous about basing costs via comparison to the effectiveness of equivalent abilities. A lot of the discussions about "why was this costed in this way" turns into a breakdown of the costing of other things in the system which were used as interpolation. 
 
 
I think you may be reading too much into the Arkelos Spell example. 
 
TARGETS AND RESULTS
When buying Transform, a character must
specify what he can Transform targets into. Thus,
he might be able to Transform “targets into toads,”
but could not Transform “targets into cats.” The
character may purchase an Advantage to broaden
the scope of what he can Transform targets into
(see below).
The basic target of any Transform is “anything.”
If a character wants to restrict the target group,
he may take the Limited Target Limitation on the
Power (see below).
 
 
I don't feel that you've made your case on this point.
 
 
I've observed the nature of the "abuse" to be the same as it ever is...min maxing, universal to any game system.  I have observed that volume and frequency of that type of abuse to be lowered though as there are fewer loopholes and gaps to hide in and more explicit explanation of how certain things are meant to work together thus blocking more exploits of unintended interactions.
 
 
So I infer that your belief is that the feedback given to DoJ by the posters on these boards previous to 6e being published is in some way responsible for some sort of committee effect? 
 
If so I can opine that it is not the case. While feedback was given, as has been done on many other books, DoJ made the decisions as to what they wanted the book to be in their own time at their own discretion. 
 
 
Out of curiosity, which is worse for you? A write up that is complex or a write up that is point inefficient?
 
 
Not sure why this would be an issue for you.
 
Some people seek exactitude, others seek "good enough". Some of the exactitude seekers may also be showing off their system mastery, some may be fending off nitpicking and criticism. All of them are still attempting to contribute something to whoever asked for the build, and as always the person asking for advice is free to take something offered, or use it to inspire them in their own approach, or ignore it all.
 
And of course you are welcome to not click on those threads, or lurk, or contribute as you see fit. And if you do contribute you are free to offer your preferred approach to the problem with a build that favors your style of using the system which might be less exacting in rigorous application of every nuance and obscure rule as some and might be more efficient than others. You might even sway some people to your way of approaching such problems. 
 
 
So, if you are reasoning from a position of "4e was nearly perfect, 5e was a step away from near perfection", then sure, 6e would then be a bigger step away from near perfection. And you are of course welcome to a position of "No, 4e is mechanically the best version of the rules". I personally don't think 4e was nearly perfect, though I love it dearly. I think it was a big step in the right direction, and 5e and 6e have taken more steps in that same direction. Maybe stumbling around a bit, but heading in the right general direction.

This is an example of why I am not posting on this forum any more.