Sean Waters

So I was thinking about DCs and caps and such, and got to messing with an old spreadsheet I started ages ago and got this. It is a very basic way of comparing two characters and how much difference a point or two of extra Combat Value or DC will make. There are any number of problems with this approach, of course, as it necessarily runs on averages - it would be more accurate to actually do a breakdown of a hundred combats but I lack the maths and programming skill. Nonetheless, it is interesting. There are other factors at play in Hero too: every so often a roll exceeds the targets CON, which usually has a dramatic effect on a fight, or you just keep rolling badly. Moreover battles are rarely one on one. It is not a bad gauge of how long combats will go on for though and gives a feel for how tweaking one number or another might impact the game. Most of the games we play in do have DC caps, and often AP caps too. We are not obsessive about it, and you can trade DCs and CV to an extent, but generally in a 12DC game, most of the characters will do 12DC of damage or less. Say you have a 12DC game, and one character has a 14d6 attack - only a couple of dice but it hugely increases the chance that they will land a Stunning blow and reduces the number of hits they have to land to KO an opponent. Upping OCV by 2 or 3 points has a similar but less dramatic effect: a similar reduction in the overall length of combat but without the increased likelihood of stunning an opponent. Of course if everyone is OCV/DCV 8 with a 12d6 attack, you might think that it would get monotonous, but that isn't my experience. Look at the sample superhero characters in 6E2. The OCV/DCV assumes levels are put on OCV. Taurus: 10d6 attack, 10OCV/8DCV, 20/10 Defences, SPD 5 and 60 Stun 20 Rec Eagle Eye: 12d6 kick 10OCV/9DCV, 21/11 19/11 Defences, SPD 6 and 30 Stun 8 Rec Hardpoint: 12d6 Blast, 10OCV/8DCV, 20/15 Defences, 5 SPD and 36 Stun 20 Rec Maelstrom: 12d6 Blast, 11OCV/8DCV, 23/10 27/10 Defences, 6 Spd, 40 Stun and 10 Rec Out of interest, two of the four have MPs. Most one on one's between this lot would not last a full turn. Well, not if they were going all out to take the other fella down, anyway. I'm sure there was more of a point to all this, but I've written it now, so I'll post it... Hero Combat Comparator.xlsx

I very much appreciate that. As for a system for quantifying Wisdom, well, that is probably what honest obituaries are for. I so want to put a smiley face in there, but, again, I'm not going to. I could probably build something in Hero to make me look wiser, but it would almost definitely involve Mental Illusions. No need to apologise to me: it wouldn't be half as much fun if we couldn't have a frank and honest discussion or were worried overly much whether out opinions and way of expressing them might offend anyone. It's been a weird week: I became a grandfather. Normal service will be resumed soon.

This being Hero... To expand on Killer Shrike's comment, what you can also do, if you want cheap, if just add 'Detect Magic' to the sight group and that allows you to see magic like you can see other stuff: it would be blocked by all the things that block sight and you would not be able to see magic in the dark, but it is cheap. That is also easy to administer in-game because everyone knows how sight works - it would just be a bit like The DiscWorld - people with Detect Magic can see Octarine as well as the other normal colours. All you really need then is 'Detect Magic (Sight Group)' for 5 points and you get a PER Roll - probably pretty good already as the character presumably uses Magic. I would not bother with discriminatory, unless you really want, as normal sight is already 'partially discriminatory' (a phrase that gets my hackles up every time and a wholly unnecessary complication) and you can discriminate plenty with normal sight. Another approach would be to buy N-Ray Vision, again link it to the Sight Group, because I'm cheap, (which gives you all the modifiers you need for free) and that will allow you to see magical things inside boxes, on the other side of the wall and so on. I mean, technically N-Ray does not let you see Magic (that is, strictly a Detect as mentioned above) but if you were to say you can see Magic with your N-Ray but not non-magic I'd handwave that. You know there is a magical sword on the other side of the door, it is not obvious though that it is strapped to an enormous Barbarian. I mean, you don't need to link it to Sight. Maybe you can smell magic, or it makes a distinctive whine?

I'm with you - my general approach is deregulation of the rules and regulation by the GM, where it is needed. I just wish the rules avoided this sort of unnecessary confusion in, what I assume, is an attempt to avoid abuse. Personally I think a little abuse, judiciously applied, can be quite refreshing. I believe the rules should either ban adding powers in the same or different frameworks, or allow it, (with 'allow it' being favourite) maybe with a side bar to advise on ways to ameliorate the worst excesses.

Has anyone suggested punching the target unconscious and then shooting him? Only guns sound rubbish. Ultimately you can only improve your chance to hit something by increasing your OCV, decreasing their DCV, using an AoE or having more goes. You can Spread an attack (6E2/49), but that may violate the hard cap on OCV. You can't generally decrease an opponent's DCV on your own unless you sneak up on him or PRE attack him (which does not require a roll to hit!) You therefore would seem to need an AoE attack, either on the basic gun attack (which could be a naked advantage if you are in an Equipment game) or on a suppress/drain if you want to make the target easier to hit for everyone, not just you. As a side note the Suppression Attack would work if the target was moving because you get multiple attacks, potentially (and the fact that you can stand still in a field of Suppression Fire and never be hit is a definite lacuna in the rules), but you can do the same with Multiple Attack and that is kind of what is being described - firing several shots to increase your chances of hitting - the chances of hitting are increased because you get more than one go at it rather than because the DCV of the opponent is reduced, but it has much the same effect, at least one on one. It does not help if the intention is to make a target easier to hit for your mate, but that is what coordinated attacks are for.

You can do this, at least to an extent, with campaign build guidelines: if you use Active Point caps on powers - and there are pros and cons to that - you can say that the entire cost of a MP has to conform to the cap, as if it was a single power, or you can come up with something along those lines if you feel the consequences of that would be too harsh. Of course the rules on MPs are such that, as well as spectacularly making no sense, you can always buy two frameworks and have them add together to make a bigger power. What? No you can't! Well, actually... Whilst the rules specifically forbid slots in a MP adding to each other or slots in other frameworks and uses attacks as examples, it goes on to say: A character may have two Power Frameworks, or two slots in the same Framework, that both add to or affect the same ability bought outside any Power Framework (or the same Combat or Martial Maneuver, or the like). For example, a character could have a Multipower slot of +10 PD, and a Variable Power Pool slot of +15 PD, that both added to his PD, since his PD is not in any Power Framework and the two powers are not adding to each other. First of all how are the 10 and the 15 not adding to each other? Secondly, why can't I buy 6d6 Blast in a slot in MP1 and the same in a slot in MP2 and, so long as I buy 1d6 Blast outside a framework, have them all add together, based on the same odd contortion of logic? Anyway: AP caps. Worth considering.

Then again, in the military, people either have to do what you say you you have to do what they say, and hard feelings be damned. I am unlikely to get upset about anything you say about me or my opinions or, if I do, I'll calm down before posting a reply: we have known each other for a very long time through these boards and I am definitely older and in some ways wiser. It may not be a coincidence that Hero does not have a skill that is directly analogous to 'Diplomacy'. I feel I ought to put a smiley face in there, but I'm not going to.

Yep, I read through. My responses tend to be either pithy or prolonged. You had the pithy version, so... First of all you have to look at what you were responding to, for context. MPs are too cheap was the point Toxxus was concerned about because you get a raft of different things for relatively few character points, which in turn encourages that build behaviour behaviour. Your response was, well you only need a few things for a well rounded character, but more options give you, well, more options. You then start talking about vectors. I’m not sure what you mean by that, despite your explanation, hence my comment about ‘if you mean what you seem to mean’. I might have to jump about a bit here, but you end up saying you are not overly concerned if a character has 5 flavours of lethal attack, but you are more concerned about multiple vectors of attack. Now, I’m assuming when you talk about ‘5 flavors of lethal’ you don’t mean 5 slots each containing the same KA, but in different colours – you mean 5 powers based on Killing Attack with different advantages, so, maybe: 1. RKA 2. HKA 3. 1 hex AoE RKA 4. Radius AoE RKA 5. No Range Modifier RKA …something like that? I think that your vectors are a red herring. Being able to throw a normal or killing attack is far less of a problem than being able to throw an AoE Blast as well as a ‘normal’ Blast, for very little extra cost. With the former, you are still targeting DCV of the target character and you have to guess which of the attacks is going to be more effective (Hint: the KA, over time), but with the AoE plus Blast combo you can hit high DCV targets and low DCV targets and it is usually pretty obvious which is which, at least after the first round of combat. Similarly you say that each flavour of exotic attack is a vector – I’ve not seen a MP stocked entirely with Entangle or Flash variations – there will be something damaging in there too. AVAD being a ‘vector’ is also problematic – having a multipower of AVADs, all presumably stopped by something different is again trying to be effective against everything, and, IIRC, frowned upon. I can understand that impulse, I can, and I accept that some MPs are more effective than others, depending on what they are stocked with, but the problem that creates, to my mind, is the one-man team: I don’t really need anyone else because I can do it all – I have an answer to every situation. You go on to say you are more worried by a character with multiple defence options than multiple attacks. The reason that people want to build multiple defences is because of multiple attacks, especially if characters take a ‘Dial-A-Gun’ approach. The point I’d make is that, in most cases, characters will be part of a team, whether PC or NPC. The team should cover all the bases, or a good number of them – the individual characters, generally, shouldn’t. That is not to say that the occasional versatile character should not appear, but it should not be the norm – and the relative cheapness of MPs encourages people to use them to cover any and all perceived weaknesses rather than, in some way, making them simply more interesting. You’ve already made a substantial investment, why not chuck in, for very little more, a Missile Deflection (you only use it occasionally anyhow), or a Barrier (it is Fire and Forget) or a Teleport to overcome Entangles or a Flash or a Drain or a Healing or…well, why not have multiple MPs to give you a huge range of potential abilities, or, well, whatever, really. The flip side is that MPs are point efficient, so you are not giving up much power (and if you play AP limits or maximum DCs, possibly none at all) for a whole raft of new shiny toys that do not necessarily encourage team play. In addition, especially in 6E where the base points for a build have increased, without the overall power levels necessarily having increased, the investment in a few MP slots is far less of a burden. My comment was that the idea of MPs is not a bad thing mechanically, but as with most things in Hero, it is how you use them in practice, and the effect that has on the game. It has been my experience that a clever player, or GM can justify more or less anything as being ‘in concept’, and some do. I admit to doing all the things you are concerned about, and I would be surprised if you did not admit the same. So, to circle back to the start, Toxxus raised a valid point: MPs are a cheap way to get extra powers and that means that to compete, most characters have one. My point was not that they are too cheap per se but that price point does tend to encourage overuse, to the point where many character builds will have an MP or VPP. Rather than making characters nuanced, it becomes an almost necessary part of every build. I don’t agree that “A different way to look at it is, any more than you need of something is surplus to requirements.” Unless you are suggesting everyone ‘needs’ a MP packed with options. Which would be bad. Another way to consider this is that the existence of the MP reduces the need for players to make hard choices about powers. Unless you are playing in a heavily CP restricted game with relatively high DC, Defence and Movement expectations, you can pretty much always afford the extra points for a few MP slots. Ultimately we are probably disagreeing on definitions and detail more than principle, but that is where you will find the Devil.

Hmm. I'm not sure I can get behind the idea that any power that is more than you need is surplus to requirements, at least if you mean what you seem to mean. Very few actual characters built by players are ever going to buy a NND as their only major attack: it is going in a MP. You also almost never see an Entangle outside a MP, or a Flash. There are many other examples. The problem with MPs is not the mechanic, as such, but the way it seems to be habitually used - to cover a wide range of bases to make characters effective in a wide range of situations because that is play-efficient rather than because that realises a concept. A lot of example characters I have seen are guilty of that. You get powers with really complex builds that are there for synergy rather than anything else or powers that are situational. You'd never splash out on that particular power if you were paying full points. Well, almost never. Remember Starburst (I think that was his name, could have been Opal Fruit) from 1eChampions? He had a MP with an attack, defence and movement power in it, IIRC. He was damn interesting to run.

Ha! SNAP!

In reverse order...I was playing in a cyberpunk game, years ago. Can't really remember which one. Possibly Cyberpunk Next Year. God, that's depressing, isn't it? Anyway, they used exploding dice. Well, they did after we'd dosed them with Nitrogen Tri-iodide. Seriously though, you roll a d10, add it to your stat. If you roll a 10 you roll again and add, and so on. First roll of the game, the very first roll, I had to make a Perception Roll to see if I spotted some trucks rolling over the desert toward our compound. It was an Easy Task. I rolled five 10s and a 2. I could have seen ants rolling over the desert half a mile away. Mind you, I do like to mark a roll of 3 in Hero. if I was GMing you would have formed a special bond with one of the horses and possibly acquired it as a follower.

I'd assumed that this was axiomatic. I make characters spend 120 CP on eating utensils and anyone who wants the ability to skin a cat is going to wind up points poor. What?

Pish pash posh. We worry too much about balance. 1. Hero is not a balanced game, much as we would like it to be. Two characters built on the same points are not equally effective: what determines how effective they are is the game they are run in. If the game is very dungeon and combat oriented then the subtle diplomat is going to be useless, or nearly so. 2. In pretty much every other game, equipment is free or, at least, only costed by in-game currency and in-game availability. This does not tip the game over because it is not just PCs who have access to all this loot. 3. The attempts to bring balance to the rules are about as successful as the attempts to bring balance to The Force, and we all know where that leads: Jar-Jar Binks. As an example I was reading about killing attacks, while I prepare a rant, and saw this gem (1E242): Increased STUN multiplier (+¼): This Power Advantage increases the STUN Multiplier of a Killing Attack. Characters can purchase it multiple times, with no limit to how many times they can buy it, but must have the GM’s permission to buy it more than once for any particular attack. Sheesh. 4. What stops the pointy hatted Wizard buying a bow and using his magic to enhance his ability? Nothing, but all the NPCs can do the same thing. What stops the heavily built Barbarian buying a sword then using skill to enhance his ability? Nothing either, but no one is getting upset about that, are they? Another example from also 1E242: Swordmaster’s Skill: HKA +1d6 (adds to any sword-based HKA), reduced endurance (0 END; +½) (22 active points); only with swords (-½), requires a DEX roll (-½). total cost: 11 points. Whilst I do not think that is a very good example build, it does illustrate the point. Badly, but it illustrates it. 5. RAW Hero makes you pay for bases. I, well, I don't even know where to start. I've never used that whole section. You tell me the last time a band of adventurers took over an abandoned keep then failed to improve their fighting ability for 6 months to pay for it. 24th of Never, I believe. 6. We've had the discussion elsewhere about why swords should be Character Point free and spells are not. Well, why shouldn't spells be CP free too? Sure, you don't want every angry mage running round with an 200 point Apocalypse Spell just because they got invited to Neverland as a child and had to spend the hush money somehow, but in any sensibly constructed game-world there will be restrictions on supply, or you could hybrid it: everyday swords and spells are cash only; all the special stuff, you have to splash out for. Just like in Neverland. My advice to GMs is to fix it in the mix i.e. pitch the game so that it is challenging to these particular PCs and also not be afraid to tell a player 'I don't care if it is technically rules legal, no you can't, because I said so.' If a player makes a sad face, well, you'll just have to find a way to live with yourself. Hopefully, however, they will accept that it is wrong to ruin the game for everyone else just so they can go on a mad ego trip. Obviously being on a mad ego trip is the GM's job. Happy Goram Valentine's Day.

Just to toot the 'roll high' horn, contested combat rolls could be done on a straight 3d6+OCV vs 3d6+DCV - no need to modify both sides equally. Technically you could say the same with a 'roll low' mechanic and have OCV-3d6 vs DVC-3d6 as the +11 to both sides cancels out - trouble is that you then run the risk of negative numbers, and that is going to cause consternation and confusion, or FUD as Killer Shrike recently styled it

At present you hit a DCV equal to your OCV on an 11, which is 55% chance, IIRC. If you had people rolling for both attack and defence (in the way you do Skill v Skill) - which might be appropriate for a duel or somesuch - the attack would logically be taken first and the defence would then be a response: assuming even OCV and DCV for all concerned and rolls of 11, ATTACKER would roll 11, hit the DCV (so the attack is a success) then DEFENDER would roll, and would also succeed on an 11-, so the attack would miss. This would mean that there is a 55% chance to hit and a 55% chance to avoid a successful hit. That would mean that there is only a 30% chance of a successful hit. What we'd need to do is roll simultaneously rather than serially: you have OCV+11-3d6 vs DCV+11-3d6, with ties going to the attacker, to emulate the current chance of success. The other way you could do this, to perhaps speed things up for the GM is to have your NPC characters 'take 11' on attacks, and the PCs roll to avoid their attacks - so a NPC with an OCV of 6 would have an attack of 17, and the player would then roll DCV+11-3d6 and try and get 18 or more to avoid the attack (or, more neatly, roll DCV+10-3d6 and equal or exceed that attack). Obviously when players are attacking, they roll to hit against DCV as usual.

You could have created a character of a given concept in any edition of Champions or Hero, and they would have played similarly. You can certainly game the rules, but then you always could and always will be able to: even actual reality is played better by some people than others. The difference would be that in 1st edition Champions the character would have been mechanically woollier (to use a technical term), 6e more precisely defined. You had to bend the rules or just make stuff up in Original Champions to get some of what you wanted, 6e has almost all of the bases covered, but they are both recognisably the same system, which is remarkable: almost every other game system that has run to several editions that I can think of has made major changes to the way it works over the years. We should probably rejoice now.

They are exactly the same, mathematically, so why present them in different ways? One mechanic for resolving everything makes the game easier to learn, and the rules section shorter. Funnily enough a lot of games have adopted a very similar mechanic to Hero, including D&D.

So...much...to...say... Do we need COM? No, we don't need COM. I liked COM and I'd have preferred it to be left in as a sidebar, perhaps with other optional Characteristics, like Passion, Soul and Spirit (sort of Str/Con/Dex for magic). Hero is all about options and building what you want. I mean I almost always spent a few points on COM, even though it never really did anything in the games we played, just for colour. I can do without it or build it with limited PRE, but it was a useful shorthand for 'good looking'. Ah well. Figured characteristics, pretty much the same. I liked figured characteristics, but I can build characters without them easily enough, although that took a little getting used to. It even makes sense that we do it the 6e way, for the reasons that Hugh and others have expounded. I'm not sure they would have been easy to leave in as an option though because that would substantially change the point cost of characters. OK if everyone is built that way, less so if only some want to do it. I still remember my mind being blown by the character Ogre in 3rd edition who was Dex 18 (24 points), Spd 4 (12 points) and had 3 overall combat levels (24 points) - yeah, I can remember that from decades ago, can I remember where I put my keys? Anyway, that made him OCV/DCV 6 + 3 levels, which inevitably went into OCV. If you binned the levels and increased his DEX to 30, you would be spending an extra 36 points (30-18)*3 but you got back the 24 points from the skill levels and didn't need to spend the 12 points on SPD, so that was 36 points saved. Ogre was now DEX 30 and had OCV/DCV of 10! So, yeah, I can see the sense in getting rid of figured characteristics. I think some powers are probably better and some worse, from my point of view. I’d be surprised if even the most ardent fan of 6e didn’t have some gripe, however minor. In a way, I don’t think that 6e went far enough in breaking everything down and putting it back together more logically. I’m not a fan, for example, of compound modifiers, like Focus, which means that your Magic Stick can be taken away from you but you get UBO, sorry UOO, for free. There are other examples. Many other examples. I think that 6e probably is the best Hero has so far achieved, mechanically, but, at the same time, I don’t think that Hero is as good as it could be – and I’m not just talking tweaks. Things like the way that grappling works, to the complete lack of a mechanic to address ignoring opponents in combat and acting as if they were not there. I’m also not a fan of balance as a justification for a rule. I’d rather we have a realistic rule (for a given value of ‘realistic) and a sidebar on how to mitigate the harsh. I also don’t think that you can entirely divorce substance from style. “Technically a great game!” is never going to sell, and I want Hero to sell, so lots of new content comes out. I have a much longer list of gripes here, which I will not rehearse in full, but it starts with the constant repetition of the phrase ‘unless the GM decides otherwise’, or something similar, followed by the fact that Book 1 was Character Creation. Can we say “Barrier to entry”? I have suggestions. I imagine you can imagine.

There is an interesting thread on whether 6e is mechanically the best version of Hero. It strikes me that ‘mechanics’ can cover a lot of ground, so I thought I might throw a spotlight on particular mechanics and see how we feel about them. Determining if you hit in combat is essentially unchanged since Champions began: OCV+11-3d6 Roll gives you the DCV you can hit. Then there are skill rolls which are done by rolling under your skill on 3d6, with modifiers to the roll. Essentially this is the way it has always been done, so no change in the success mechanics between first edition Champions and 6e (although IIRC there were almost no skills in first edition Champions – possibly Acrobatics?). There are a number of ways we could change these mechanics, the most obvious one being to just pick one and use that for both combat and skill determination. I'd rather avoid discussion at the moment on whether we should roll high or low, and I am assuming that we will use one or both of the current mechanics, not something entirely different, but you may think otherwise If we were to go with the Combat Model, skills would be determined by having a SSV (Skill Success Value), which would be the equivalent of OCV and DCV. You would roll OCV+11-3d6 and the result would give you the SSV you could beat for opposed rolls, or the TSV (Target Skill Value) you could beat for non-opposed rolls. We could say that the TSV always starts at 0. The TSV and SSV would be modified by circumstances. I'm certainly not wedded to the terms and abbreviations - they are there so we know what we are talking about. So The Acrobat is trying to swing off a flagpole and has a SSV of 4, his 'skill' is at 15 (11+4), subtracts 3d6 (I just rolled a 10) and the result tells him what TSV he needs to beat. In this instance he could beat a 5 or less. That easily beats a 0, so he would succeed, and (if he was trying to get an advantage in combat he would get +1). However, if it was icy that might act as a penalty (which increases the TSV) of 3, and if he is falling and is at full reach that might be another penalty of 2, so the TSV is 5. He would still succeed, but it would be a much closer thing (and no combat bonus!) Alternatively you could use the Skill Model for combat: if you have an OCV of 8, then you have a Fighting Skill of 19-. You need to roll 19 or under on 3d6, which is easy – only a roll of 18 would fail, because a roll of 18 always fails (I just rolled a 9). In this example I succeeded by 10, so I could hit anything with a DCV of 10 or less. You could also do this as an opposed roll (Defence Skill = 10+DCV) or use Defence Skill where it is dramatically appropriate – for instance when a PC is trying to avoid falling debris, it might be more interesting to have them roll to ‘dodge’ than have inanimate objects roll to hit. The skill is at DCV+10 so that the odds don’t change i.e. are still slightly in favour of hitting. Fighting and Defence would be General Skills that always start at 11- i.e are not Characteristic based. Results wise they are the same, but they have a different feel to them, even though all you are really doing is re-arranging the equation. I think the feel is important though, and I don’t think having a single unified mechanic would hurt at all. Thoughts?

Yeah, but you knew what I meant That's the thing though: mechanically, building a character that can shapeshift is no longer a matter of deciding how many different shapes they can assume, it is deciding if they still look like their normal selves in infra red and sonar . If you just want to look different to normal sight but like yourself to other senses, that's Self Only Images, to my mind. Or if you want to look like something different to long range radar, ditto. I mean, I can not think of a single example of a shapeshifter that looks like its normal self on sonar but can actually fit through a six inch hole because it is long and thin to the touch group. That might allow you to do some interesting things but is very very unhelpful if you are trying to actually run a game with a shapeshifter whose player did not think of all that. I mean, they shouldn't have to. It is a conceit too far and an overlap too far. I like 'sensical' though. I might steal that.

I think that is a very helpful approach: it looks less daunting and breaks learning characteristics and their interactions into chunks people could understand. I mean, there is no right way to do this and no way that will be ideal for everyone, but I think improvements could be made.

I think, on balance, my view is that, mechanically, Hero has not changed since it was first edition Champions. It has a simple but effective mechanic that it has stuck to, despite a number of people pointing out that rolling high for good makes more sense. What has changed is the way the powers are presented, and whether that is better or not is a matter of debate. Certainly some of the powers are more logically presented but I have a problem with some of the maths (mainly how you go about calculation a modifier value - there seems to be some inconsistency and unfairness) and the detail. By 'detail' I mean that, for example, Shapeshift is now a sensory power. That sort of makes sense, I suppose, but it is confusing for new players and some old players too: actually building something that can change shape, as most people would understand the concept, is not straightforward. Everything takes a lot longer to actually read, understand and build now. 1eChampions was a slim volume and you could still do (almost) everything that you can do with 6e, given a bit of imagination and a following wind. I'm pretty sure there are bits of 6e I've never actually read. If we are referring to 'build mechanics' therefore, well, it's Betamax vs VHS: Betamax may be technically better, but VHS is the one that actually gets used. Got used. Maybe I should have gone with DVD and BlueRay, but even that is showing my age. How about Apple abandoning the Lightning Connector for USB C? 6e is definitely the best iteration in some respects, but not when it comes to excitement and fun, which is what the mechanics should be aimed at achieving. The last time I really felt that was when I got my hands on 4th edition Champions, the Big Blue Book. In summary, the actual game mechanics have never really changed - what we appear to be arguing about is the build mechanics. The build mechanics have improved in some areas, not so much in others. They have certainly become more complicated, which can be a barrier to entry. I daresay if I went back to 4th edition now it would seem more limited, so in that way, 6e is better, but then I'm an addict and I'd get 7e if it came in 4x500page lever arch files. I don't think all the changes have been for the better and I don't think all the things that could do with changing have been. 6e is (build) mechanically different. I think I'll leave it there.

I never thought that it did though, and I don't think that most new players did either. It has the same six characteristics that D&D does (more or less) plus Comeliness, or it did. Everything else was a figured characteristic, and did not really feel the same: it certainly did not feel a burden. Most games have the equivalent of defences and initiative and hit points, they just don't call them characteristics, but they are there. Hero set up its shop front and centre. Anyway, we never used to include OCV/DCV/OMCV/ODCV - that is a 6e innovation, so if you want to argue that the system presents too many characteristics then they should be re-classified for a start. You argue, sir, against your own position. To argue against my own position, I did not feel that COM was ever necessary and there are certainly other ways you can represent it, but I simply liked it being there. We also never used RED in our games, but we did have REC. ?

Indeed!

History remembers those who are both bold and fortunate. Bertolo as a PC might feel he's going to be seen and shot dead if he does not do something, and he might consider that attacking is the safer option in the circumstances. Anyway, RPG players rarely do the sensible thing, except when you least expect them to.