Tasha

Probably just do it like +15 Strength, not for Lifting, pushing etc. Adding hand attack feels repetitive to me.

I think that top 10 list would be different as you go through the Editions of Champions. ie First/Second Edition Champions would probably be mostly the Villains at the end of the book with some from Enemies 1 and 2 3rd edition would probably be mostly the same. 4e had "Classic Enemies" Champions New Millenium would also be different. Mostly due to a ton of villains being dead. 5e ushers in the Steve Long era which helps change the list up again. 6e has the influence of Champions Online to change the list slightly again. Perhaps later I will put my list together for each of the eras.

My hero books are on an Oak Bookshelf. As long as one of the big earthquake faults don't let go, my Dog and Cats should be fine. Though my Hero Collection is very extensive and deep

They didn't just put random stuff on the shelf. It was pretty clear that there was a direction and a roadmap. A roadmap that was publically available. Also, how can you call over 30 books supporting the Champions Universe not supporting their best selling product. For Fantasy Hero there is like 8 books. That doesn't count generic books like the Equipment guide, the Players book, Ultimate Skill, Ultimate base, Ultimate Vehicle. Star Hero has 5 books all published by Hero Games. Now there's not a single adventure in the lot. Because Adventures are expensive to make and don't sell in anywhere near the same numbers as Supplement books do. Perhaps that was a mistake, but remember that their target audience was us their established base. We created a revenue stream that lasted about a decade or so IIRC. Enough revenue to keep people on full time, and not on a piecework basis. IMHO you should abandon your no vision Hypothesis, the overwhelming evidence doesn't support it at all.

Here's something that would be cool for hero. A comic illustrating play that shifts from PC to Player view. This one is for Savage Worlds. http://www.uptofourplayers.com/comic/wild-heart-page-2/?utm_source=sbn_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=savage_bloggers_network

Now that is a Fair criticism. Hero System esp since 5e has existed to stimulate sales to the fanbase. It has done little to try to attract new players to the fold. Existing players have always been prioritized. Which has lead to pretty generic supplements, because the majority of Hero players are vehemently against specific campaigns and things that they can't tweak. Voice any idea of creating a product that includes all abilities written up and somewhat black boxed and the community loses its mind with revulsion. It also isn't helped by game designers who want to quantify every little thing in the system and make sure that people pay for every shred of power they get from things.

Champions and Fantasy Hero were some of the best selling things that Hero put out. There were a TON Of FH related supplements for both 1st Edition FH and the later 4e FH. The other big seller was Steve Long's Dark Champions and Aaron Allston's Ninja Hero. Which were generically useful for multiple genres beyond the one detailed in the books.

That's not really fair to point to one product that had a lot of support from some people here on the board. That Darren and Jason were very excited to write as being a symptom of problems with the DOJ period. If you take a look at the entire output during the period minus that book you will see that vision. Steve posted his vision at the beginning with a PDF document talking about the ages of "magic" which talked about the various game world books and where they fit in a grand history from the Fantasy Hero Worlds to Champions though the Star Hero era. Not everyone liked that direction, but it did detail what Steve was going to write about.

from 6e1 pg 49 last paragraph on the page "The accompanying Characteristics Comparison Table lists some suggested guidelines that should apply well to most campaigns, but the GM can change the ranges listed for each category if he wants." The italicized words appear in the original text with that style. Besides that the text talks about the chart only applying to "Humans", which at once makes it very squishy. So an Ogre PC could have a 40Strength because they aren't human.

ICE was very much less than perfect. It's easy to look back with rose tinted glasses, but they left ICE for a reason. They would have remained with R.Tal if the company hadn't decided to go into hibernation. R.Tal was a good fit. Mike P is a Huge Hero System fan. Fusion may not have been perfect, but it had a lot of great ideas. It was just not executed well enough with the first release (ie not including the whole powerset was a HUGE mistake IMHO). Steve's output during the DOJ days really exceeded Hero During the ICE days and all of his books were larger and better put together.

From what I have seen is that Player's aren't fickle at all. They tend to be very dedicated to their game. To the point where they really won't try new things no matter how their current system annoys them. We can see this time and time again from posts to this board alone. Where people complain about not being able to attract players to a system that isn't a flavor of D&D. I think we are getting to the point where players are more annoyed with D&D and may start to think about different systems. There just has to be a reasonably easy point of entry into that other game system. Pinnacle does this very well with Savage Worlds. With it's $10 core rulebook and even a free test drive that includes characters and a short adventure. Pinnacle also supports the hell out of it's genre books by including adventures, Player's guides, Printable Figure standups, Soundtracks, even themed Poker Chips and Dice. Not to mention GM screen Inserts, one page adventures and a ton of game supplements. All in more or less bite sized books. They pretty much barf that out and then just go onto the next product.

I am pretty sure that those were there to help GM's come up with characteristic averages, not to use as a hard limit in Heroic Level gaming.

The numbers I have seen suggest that the player base is actually quite a bit larger than in the 80's and 90's the problem is that we are divided up into a bajillion systems(Mostly D&D Clones) so the pool of gamers for other systems seems small.

He means that with Hero, you can use it to build a fully realized game using the whole system. You still have the core of Hero for the basis and for play. You build talents, spells, equipment etc with the toolkit. Then players use those built items to make their characters. It's something that is very powerful for Heroic Games, but not really as useful for Superhero games

I don't cut all of the white boarders and use gluestick to put map pieces together

No both 5e and 6e Fantasy Hero Books have a greater depth than FH 1st edition and FH for Hero 4th. Both are designed for a D&D ish fantasy.

Both Tradition and that 2m hexes take up less space esp for Champions game where characters can move very far. ie 50pts of Flight would be 50" or ~4' of space on a table to full move. Turns into 2' of space used on a 1"=2m hex. Also all of the maps in every Hero system product ever sold uses 1"=2m scale. On top of that assuming 2m hexes makes adapting D&D maps easier/possible. Just assume that 5' is close enough to 2m and go from there. That opens up a TON of maps that exist both Preprinted and PDF maps. Also, If you do use a gridded map, it's much easier to tell players that they can move X hexes for a full move or X/2 hexes for a half move. The only pregenned maps that us 1"=1m scale are Early GURPS maps (I don't know if SJG kept that scale in modern products or not).

I have seen Bennies used to prevent characters from dying. So I don't mind using it for some sort of damage soak. I always run Cinematic games, so I don't mind if the PCs shrug off the mega attack once.

With JW2 I find myself even more intrigued by the Criminal Organization that is centered around the Continental Hotels. With the Coins as currency for stuff done by criminals for other criminals.

That's pretty much how FFG's system works. It begins with a dice roll by the players. Depending on what they roll the point either goes to the GM or the PCs. Every time a point is used by the GM, it becomes a player point and vice versa. I may try to carry that forward into other games.

PEG Sells Poker Chips that are themed with their various game worlds. They make a great way to give out stuff like HAPs.

I Love the idea behind HAP and have used a similar thing in Savage Worlds. Where it works well. Also FFG's StarWars has something like it. What I dislike about the Hero Implementation is that it's complicated. THe players need a cheat sheet to know how many HAPs can be used to what effect. Also, I find that it's easy for the GM to forget to award any HAPs. I prefer a simpler system like SW's Bennies. Where the players get 3 or more Bennies at the start of a session which can be turned in for a number of things. You can even get them back during play for doing something really epic.

You can get Battlemats, Gaming Paper and a bunch of other gaming accessories that have either a 1" Hex or a 1" Square. So it's very much a path of least resistence to use 1" hexes. Also the rules are designed for Hexes which comes up for Shield coverage and attacks from the back (We do still have facing). Also there's a ton of both Metal, Plastic and Cardboard (printed or printable) figures that assume 1" grids. The reason to sometimes use a 1"=1m scale is to take advantage of GURPS maps, which are usually in the 1"-1m scale (check the accessory to be sure).

In 6e real weapons cannot do more damage than double their base DC. "Real Weapon" is a -1/4 limitation that can be taken on weapons. Including ones in Champions. Check out the section on creating weapons.

I have been playing for decades at this point. I have played with a variety of players including some of the original players of the game and their friends. This system has consumed the majority of my gaming since at least '85. I have been participating with Hero online since the days of the Hero Discussion Group on AOL. I don't know where I read that or heard that. I am pretty sure that it came up during the question phase of 6e. When people wanted to know why EC's disappeared along with Figured Characteristics. So I know that you want to sealion my assertions to death. That's fine, at this point I don't give a fig about what you believe or how you want to run your game. Both Chris and Netzilla gave you other reasons that it was removed from the game. To my knowledge none of Hero's designers have talked about why they designed things in a particular way at least not until Steve asked our opinions about the changes he was bringing to the system. Oh, and Removing Figured Characteristics was non-negotiable. It was going to happen whether we liked it or not. I wish the Archive had those posts so I could refer you to the 1000 pages of rules discussion about 6e and you can see how the design evolved. The SETAC folk (including Netzilla and Chris Goodwin) were a subgroup that helped Steve closer in designing and redesigning stuff that went into 6e. IMHO Unified Power is a much more elegant solution and in many cases saves as much if not more points than ECs did. It's way more flexible as well. YMMV, I am sick of arguing with you.