Tasha

I think that it would be more useful and would be a bigger draw to new GMs to have settings that defined those things up front. Then all of the supplements can use those Power levels, and other things like that as a baseline.

I am finding that I am not alone as a Hero GM, that the time and work required to build a campaign is a bit daunting. It leads to playing other systems that don't need that amount of preparation.

Champions Universe is anything but generic. It's as detailed as The Inner Sea World Book (Paizo's Golarion master Gazetteer book). It has everything you could want out of a world book. I am REALLY not sure what you are envisioning that isn't in CU. IIRC even the Premade Champions characters (The team that is built at the level that PCs are). It MAY even have a sample campaign. If you are looking for a RPG product that is selfcontained and is pick up off the shelf easy to play. Champions Universe and any superhero game just isn't the right vehicle. The Supers Genre needs the full toolkit or nearly all of the full toolkit to actually work. Supers is the hardest genre to use to teach people how to build characters and how to play. That's because of the Powers. Also Supers doesn't really lend itself to choose these off the shelf abilities and play. Perhaps that will be different once the Character Generation Deck is released. Oh and CU IS being supported we will be getting a new Villains books full of Organizations by the end of the year. Also there are 2 or 3 other Champions supplements. http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/94419-news-from-high-rock-press/

Depends on how he ran games. Some GM's don't keep notes some do.

I hear that his artwork grew by leaps and bounds as he matured. That he drew much better than he did on those old Hero Games products. It's sad that he died

I understand that a Guardians Sourcebook would be difficult. One thing would be talking George MacDonald to write the thing. Also getting the IP rights to all of the PCs could be difficult as well as the original artwork (IIRC Mark Williams has passed away).

The problem with CC is that there seems to be an assumption that players KNOW the older rulesets. Most of us who have played older rulesets would have just assumed those rules things work like previous editions. Which IMHO lead to mechanics that don't include basic rules like "When a Zero Body Barrier takes damage it's completely destroyed". That's a BASIC foundational rule for the power and it's never spelled out. I find that in CC time and time again, where basic mechanics seem to be implied, but never put down in plain english. Which IMHO makes CC one of the weakest Editions. (FHC's rules were copy pasted from CC and not changed in any substantial way). I am wondering if perhaps 5e might have been a better starting place for CC, Just adding in the changed 6e mechanics.

BTW Welcome back! Can't wait to see what you come up with for SACoH

A "real" Champions Universe comic would have been cool. I had hopes that Cryptic could pull it off like they did with the licensed City of Heroes comic. Unfortunately, Champions Online never caught on so no comic or other licensed things outside of what DOJ published for the RPG.

Yeah, because they lost the Licence to all of the characters ex the ones that belonged to Dennis. I am not really sure that I liked how he changed the color and the name of the characters to get around the IP problems.

BTW CC and FHC ARE a subset of the 6e rules. They aren't considered a different version of the rules. Yes you can use limitations to achieve the same thing. BUT, doing it that way makes every published 6e character with 0 body Barriers work differently than their creators meant. Which means that CC/FHC doesn't achieve that 100% compatibility that is implied. So again 6e1 IMHO is the Authoritative version of the rules here. Which is backed up by Steve ONLY answering questions using 6e1&2

Pretty sure that is Derek forgetting to put that in, rather than an official rules change. Because doing that would make it impossible to use it to recreate Force Walls from previous editions. Also it creates a rules hole. ie If you can buy Zero Body Barriers wouldn't they then automatically have 2m x 2m x2m Hole in them? The rules as stated say "When a Barrier’s BODY has been reduced to 0, that creates a 2m wide, 2m high, 2m deep hole in it, and that hole remains in it for the rest of the Barrier’s existence. If the Barrier is smaller than that, it’s destroyed; if it’s larger, the rest of it remains.". Which is why I will default to 6e1 clearer rules.

The change was that for 5e and later, Hero Started to write for a REAL Champions Universe. Not just generic supplements that you MIGHT be able to adapt to your campaign. Everything is toward that campaign. So metaplot elements are included and are VERY interesting for playing in that campaign. It makes things MUCH easier to write for if they can define a campaign's power levels, organizations etc. It makes them less adaptable to non CU campaigns. I am glad that that there ARE more plot elements given for the villains. It makes it more likely that I will connect with the Villain and want to include them in an adventure. IMHO there should be NO appendixes that include customization information. That should be a separate document for system mechanics. I'll bet that most GMs and players won't even care about the doc. Most people won't care to make their own spells, talents, weapons etc. IMHO it will only be a small minority of players who will even care about it.

I would love to have "free content" (aka available for download on PDF) that gives all of the crunchy details that the Hero Grognard Mechanics crave.

What would be the real difference between a 12 def forceWall and a 10 def 1 body Barrier? They work the same way and take the same damage to break down.

It making a game that doesn't have the power construction section at all. It has all of the Superskills, Spells, special abilities totally prebuilt. All Monsters, vehicles, equipment, etc prebuilt and ready to go. A game fully built and not requiring that the GM do anything more than Generate NPCs, Plotlines and encounters. It would include a fully fleshed out campaign. At least in the general sense of the word. You could still have future supplements that add stuff to the campaign and add detail to the world. The rules would only include those that are used for that game (ie FHC does this to some extent). A set of Pregenned Characters would also be nice. A superhero setting would be difficult to built in this fashion, but pretty much any heroic game would be wonderful. This would eliminate most of the work required to run a Hero System game. It could also give Hero a potential revenue stream It would be a different mindset. Going from being a Hero System Supplement, to Powered by The Hero System. PS Yeah I know that I am replying to a year old post.

I think that it's you misinterpreting the chart. 6e2's chart shows everything having at least 1 body. You should ask Steve about what is right, your interpretation or what he wrote in the only version of the rulebook he will answer questions about.

The tables in CC are incomplete. From 6e2 pg 171 Material or Object PD ED BODY Glass (1) (1) 1 Glass, reinforced (2) (2) 1 Defense in (parentheses) is Normal Defense (i.e., it doesn’t apply against Killing Damage). --- Clearly Glass has at least 1 body. 0 body = broken. Double base body = destroyed. --- [6e2 pg 171] "Broken Machinery An object that takes more damage than it has BODY is broken. ---- The text on Zero characteristics and Negative characteristics used to be better IMHO.

It has to have a minimum of 1 body to not be broken. I would say that normal window glass in a house is probably ranges from 0-2 def depending on how thick it is. Armored glass like on Glass doors probably have 4 or more def. Glass on skyscrapers are even tougher than that, so if a clumsy exec trips and falls against the glass it won't shatter perhaps def 6-8. Hurricane Glass is stronger still and won't shatter when you drive a 4x4 wood beam into it. That's is probably def 6-8 with 3-4 body. There are also different kinds of glass that break in different ways. Safety Glass ie in Car Side and rear windows, just shatters into a bajillion little glass balls which you would have to be extremely unlucky to be harmed by it shattering. It's designed that way. I personally have been showered with the stuff with zero ill effects .Windshields are different with 1 def and 4 or more body. Because the glass is stuck to plastic that traps the glass shards well when hit. BTW people also use Acrylic plastic as windows and that has different properties. Probably good PD and more body than the glass. So the answers are complicated.

I round Villain Character sheets like they were PCs. So half move rounds up. Mostly because it's habit.

In this case, no matter what Steve says I'll continue doing it the way that I have always done it. Though I will probably add on Netzilla way when it's mind-controlled PC vs regular PC. Though I may just stay consistent and rule that the Mind Controlled PC is a foe and is rounded down.

Yep.

I don't allow PvP in my games, so rounding in the Player's favor works well.

I always round 0.5 in the player's favor. It's been a core rule of Champions since 2nd edition at least (pretty sure it was in 1st edition too).

Somethings I don't bother trying to model in Hero. The droids walking across a hallway though active blaster fire is just one of them. It's just the filmmaker's way to point out how droids don't matter beyond being expensive property. They never did the same thing again in other films, so I would just not bother. One thing that I think that this discussion of Deflection is missing is that Hero is a Toolkit. That not all of the rules are used in every circumstance. Which is why the Deflection rules are pretty "GM's option" when it comes to being able to deflect stuff without the power or a "focus". Perhaps Block should have a similar GM's Option esp for blocking Killing attacks or Big Normal Attacks. So In some campaigns it may make sense for everyone to be able to deflect all missiles. Other campaigns it doesn't make sense at all. Others are middle of the road where PCs can deflect some things and not others. In all cases buying the power should override the campaign default, ie a Fantasy Shield spell which deflects magical projectile spells, but fighters couldn't buy the power.