Joe Walsh

I appreciate the concern y'all, but don't worry about me, for now. 
 
I'm not hiding and never will. 
 
In any case, living in Austin, I figure I'm pretty safe until they start actively rounding us up. The odds of that happening before January 2025 are not that high. But if the republicans win in 2024, I'll probably flee to a blue state. I have my kids to think of.

Half the X-Men have no business being in a fight, even with armored costumes.  Cyclops has ZERO defenses, except against his and his brother's attacks.  My favorite example of this is Storm, who again has no defenses but environmental ones, and yet is at the forefront of massive attacks.  There's a panel in the "fall of the mutants" series where she's standing up front and center as this lame character spins and throws knives everywhere.  Knives so deadly that they hurt Colossus so badly that he's in the hospital for weeks.  She's standing in front of Colossus with her arms up as if she can protect her face and none of the blades hit her.
 
A lot of what happens in the comics, doesn't work in a game.  Tactics would be completely different; certain glass cannon builds (Cyclops most prominently) would never make it through the first adventure.  The thing we're trying to simulate here is not perfect adherence to comic book stories, but to simulate the feel and sense of the comics.  To make it feel like you're in a comic playing things out the way you would, with your character.

Generic Thugs are SPD 3, Con 15, and STR 15+ and have less coordination.  Anyone Remember Thug #1, #2, and #3?
 

This should be most of the text of the bill.  Edited to eliminate superfluous line breaks.  The line numbers are meaningless...artifact of converting from PDF.
 
(1) "Drag performance" means a performance in which a performer exhibits a gender that is different than the performer ’s gender recorded at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers and sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs in a lascivious manner before an audience.
(2) "Lascivious" means conduct of a sexual nature that is offensive to community standards of decency. The term includes the intentional exposure of genitalia in the presence of a minor.
(3) "Minor" means an individual who is younger than 18 years of age.
Sec. 100B.002. LIABILITY FOR DRAG PERFORMANCE IN PRESENCE OF MINOR. An individual who attends a drag performance as a minor may bring an action against a person who knowingly promotes, conducts, or participates as a performer in the drag performance that occurs before an audience that includes the minor if:
(1) the performance violates the prevailing standard in the adult community for content suitable for minors; and
(2) the person fails to take reasonable steps to restrict access to the performance by minors.   Sec. 100B.003. LIMITATIONS. A claimant may bring an action under this chapter not later than the 10th anniversary of the date the cause of action accrues.  
Sec. 100B.004. DAMAGES. If a claimant prevails in an action brought under this chapter, the court shall award: (1) actual damages, including damages for psychological, emotional, economic, and physical harm; (2) reasonable attorney ’s fees and costs incurred in bringing the action; and (3) statutory damages of $5,000.   Sec. 100B.005. DEFENSES. (a) It is an affirmative defense to an action brought under this chapter that: (1) the defendant reasonably believed the minor was at least 18 years of age at the time the minor was allowed entry to the performance; or (2) the minor displayed an apparently valid proof of identification issued by a governmental agency purporting to establish that the minor was at least 18 years of age to gain entry to the performance. (b) It is not a defense to an action brought under this chapter that the minor was accompanied at the drag performance by the minor ’s parent or guardian. SECTION 2. The change in law made by this Act applies only to a cause of action that accrues on or after the effective date of this Act.  
 

That makes sense. Hard to upgrade if the new edition isn't available for purchase where you shop!
 
(Those of us with easier access to RPGs may have bought more new editions of things, but we probably had buyers' remorse more often, too. 😄)
 
 
You were a lot more thoughtful than I was at the time. It took me until well into the 90s to fully figure out that just because there was a new edition didn't mean I needed to buy it (and if I bought it out of curiosity, that doing so created no obligation to play it to "get my money's worth out of it").
 
 
Reminds me of when one of the players in my AD&D group said something like, "Yay, I gained another level...but that just means I'll be fighting tougher monsters, so is there any point?"
 
 
Wish I'd thought of that before buying AD&D 2e, MegaTraveller, Paranoia 2e, Shadowrun 2e, et al. 😂
 
(Heck, just seeing the task system in Travellers' Digest and thinking, "Hmm, seems interesting, but it's so much more complicated than what we're doing, and there doesn't seem to be any benefit..." should have been enough to warn me off of MegaTraveller, but I fell for the hype anyway. 🙃)
 

At some point, I don't recall when but 4e at the latest, I think, the baseline shifted from "Normals have 10s across the board" to "0 point Normals have 8s across the board, 2 SPD, 16 STUN, 16 END and 23 points of skills, perks or even stats higher than 10". I think it crossed over with Everyman Skills; both were aimed at Normals having some skills and abilities, not "straight 10s and nothing else".
 
 
I think it was Golden Heroes that set actions in terms of Panels.  Supers got twice as many panels per game turn as Normals.  Whether you were a slow, lumbering rock monster or the avatar of the God of Speed, every PC got equal panel time, so equal actions.  They were not shy saying that the game emulated comic books (and were quick to note that there were war, science fiction, fantasy, etc. comic books so the system could be used for any genre).
 
 
A certain portion of points becomes a character tax. You can't be too far behind on the SPD and CV curve.  With higher SPD, you need more REC/END or reduced END, and more STUN to get you to higher post-PS12 recovery. If average attacks rise, average defenses, STUN and CON need to rise.
 
This is another issue for the Trained Normal - you're expected to have limited defenses AND limited CON, so look forward to a lot of those "4 SPD maximum - you're a normal human!" phases being spent recovering from being stunned.You nail it, Duke - slow "trained normals" are lousy genre emulation.  In the comics, they avoid attacks so they don't need high defenses, STUN and CON.
 
"But they won't be as Super!"
 
No? 
 
15 Defenses still means a Normal can't really hurt them.  5 CV and 3 SPD is still a decent advantage over 3 CV and 2 SPD. 10d6 will still KO and hospitalize some poor 2 PD Normal (5 PD won't fare a lot better). Agents don't have to all be peak human normals (isn't that what Captain America is supposed to be?) to be remotely relevant, and they still compare to other Supers in the same way they did before. But a 35 Defense Doctor Destroyer with a suite of 15d6 attacks will walk all over them - we don't need 1,500 point master villains if we tone down the standard Supers.
 
A nice thought exercise, but the current norms are far too ingrained.  It didn't take long for those 1e starting characters with 8 - 10d6 attacks, 15 - 20 defenses and 20 - 23 DEX/4 - 5 SPD average to be replaced with 12d6, 25 - 30 defense, 23 - 30 DEX, 5-6 SPD villains.
 
If we apply genre emulation and assume those 1e villains were intended to fight a team of 4 or 5 PCs, then the PCs didn't need to be powerful enough to beat them one on one. Unfortunately, 1e didn't have a supervillain team (with lower abilities but better synergies and strategies) to illustrate what PC teams might look like.
 
There's too much published material, and too little Hero capital for new material, to abandon backwards compatibility now. Imagine if Hero had the resources to change all the ground rules and republish all the old Enemies to a new standard - that's basically what every new edition of most games does today.
 
If we take the published Champions characters and drop every Super by 9 DEX, 3 CV and 2 SPD, they don't change much relative to one another.  We can drop Agents a bit less, and mooks a bit less than that, and non-Supers are more credible threats too.
 
I've toyed with dropping every NPC villain by 10 defenses and adding 3 DCs (tougher to address exotic or unusual defenses and exotic attacks) to speed up combat.  If everyone has 12d6 and 35 defenses, an average hit does 7 STUN and combat takes forever.  Leave the PCs at that level, but give the villains 15d6 and 25 defenses.  The Heros average 42 - 25 = 17 STUN to the villains, and the Villains respond with 52 - 35 = 17 average STUN back. Just as easy to have everyone reduce defenses by 10, but that requires the PCs be revised.
 
12d6 and 25 defenses is comparable damage to 9d6 attacks and 15 defenses, if you want to scale it back further.  10d6 attacks and 15 defenses actually makes being STUNNED with a 23 CON an occasional event.
 
Now, let's assume we did drop those 23 DEX, 8 CV, 5 SPD, 12 DC, 25 defense average characters by 9 DEX, 3 CV, 2 SPD, 2 DC and 10 defenses.  That saves (pre-6e) 66 points (ignoring rDEF and the spinoff effect on STUN, REC and END).  In 4e, we save 78 points.  Those points can go into character-customized cool abilities, or we could just reduce total points to compensate.

Would love to dive deeper into this, and may later, but I we are taking a host break from the game right now, so I am limited on time.
 
 
I have received reactions from laughter to appreciation to scorn for not moving beyond 2e, and I cant cite anyone rwason we never did, but I can say this:
 
3e never came anywhere near us.  When the tiny xorner of a craft store drom which we could order games finally closed up (small town story) and the corner shelves were again filled with crocheted dollies, we would find ourselves drivibg from seventy to a hundred and fifty miles one way to get to our "local" game stores.  If no one in that range had it when we made our quarterly pilgrimages, we didnt get it.
 
So we never even saw a 3e to move on toward.   When we got 4e, we kind of choked on a lot of things--  and to be fair, we did manage to nab Fantasy HERO (the original) on the same trip that netted us BBB, and we already had Star HERO and Mystic Inc and Robot Warriors, and our own home brew vehicle rules, etc, etc--
 
What it amounted to was that 4e seemed to be about pulling stuff from other HERO Games (which we were already doing anyway), a few new powers that "solved" problems,we had either already adressed anyway or never actually had because our interpretations had apparently differed from the 4e (or 3e. It would be a xouole of decases before I got a 3e book, so we thiught some,of these changes may have come,from there; no way to know at the time).
 
The most xommon example I point to is "other than a phenomenal vehicle for min-maxing, what is so different between "Multiform" and "only in appropriate identity" that MF needs to exist at all?
 
Beyond the grotesque pointa discount, we couldn't find any difference that didnt fall under SFX.
 
It went on and on like that throughout the book.   We loved the skills system, right up until we noticed that even though "Security Systems" might be a PS or a KS, it still had (as did most of the legacy Skills) its own rules, costings, etc, so we balked on that, too,
 
There were things that we really did like from newer stuff-- things like the Time Chart, for example, but 
The biggest thing we noticed was that it was more of a step in power levels overall than anything else, and that the same "meta rules" that made your character no more powerful or resistant than he ever was before _comparatively_, and that a lot of the rules seemed,geared toward building world threat level characters on the cheap-- even time Time Chart (which we really did love) made adjuatment powers permanent for a very small investment compared to what we already had in front of us.
 
Points creep and power escalation-  I totally understand the appeal.  But if there is no change in relative power, then it's just pointless.  It is an exercise in trillionairism:  once I have _all_ the money, what is the challenge in using it?  Who can stand against me?
 
Or, to borrow from my old friend and player back then JW:
 
"look, the Hulk sometimes has a good heart, but he has unlimited physical power-  physics-defying, mountain-lifting unlimited physical power.  The Hulk is stupid _for a reason_."
 
So once you have built the Hulk on the cheap, what are you going to spend points on?  INT is going to wreck the character.
 
Granted, if you believe that points grant chracter equality, then you should simultaneously have no problem with this and see the same,pointlessness that I do.
 
If you believe points are just a metering tool to prevent you from starting with everything all at once, why all the over-the-top rebating with the Time Chart and Multiform and other stuff?
 
Why move on beyond what was already working great for us?
 
The last thing, before everyone gets back, is this:
 
Christopher:
 
I am sorry we wrwcked what started our as a nifty idea for a thread.  If you want to start another one _with nothing but Goodman-esque tips, maybe any discussion on the tips can be sequestered in this thread?
 
 
 

I had a lot of hopes for this one, but I think I stopped after two or three episodes. It was painfully slow. 

I remember sitting at the kitchen table in 1981 with a dozen half-made characters scattered about. You see, I had very definite ideas of what I wanted for each character. I no longer had to follow the poorly designed “classes” and “races” that tried to copy Tolkien without paying legal fees. I could create anything I could imagine.
 
I can’t count all the times I needed “just one more point” for a language fluency, or Area Knowledge, or Professional Skill. I’d take a point from Pre or ED, then put it back when I decided to up the Code against Killing to Total.
 
Was it min/maxing? Absolutely. But the role-playing always drove the decisions. Did I really want to play a character Vulnerable to lasers? Did a stage magician need 14- in Acting? Could the speedster run 20 miles and still have End for a fight?
 
But not everyone in my group wanted to sweat this level of detail. Goodman’s guidelines were written for them. All the things I had worked out on dozens and dozens of notebook pages were written out, neatly and succinctly, for everyone. Now I didn’t need to feel like a shark and everyone else knew their characters were well made.
 
Goodman listed the most common ways to make an efficient character. Now we all have the same information and we can jump into some awesome role-playing. 
 
 
 
 
 

The girl in the red leotard was Wonder Girl. Related to Wonder Woman, although she's one of the classic examples of botched continuity.
 
More importantly, series like the New Teen Titans were direct influences on Champions. To an extent it was a simulation of them.
 
It wasn't a simulation of "reality".
 
The economics of Champions points reflect this. That's why you have to work so hard to make low Spd/Dex characters work. Yes, even in 6e.
 
 
If you stayed within the guidelines given in 2e and 3e, things were pretty good. They still are.

A lot of that is covered with combined attacks, automatic weapons, and special combat maneuvers.  There's a big difference between leaning back in your chair with a controller and actually being out there doing it in person.

Star Trek: Picard Season 3:  Many long-time Trek fans have had serious issues with the first two seasons of this series, myself included. Season 3 has a new show runner, and the change in direction, tone and style is dramatic. If you're fond of The Next Generation, this will put a smile on your face. The hallmarks of TNG writing have returned: strong character arcs and interactions; insightful discussions about the nature of humanity and our place in the universe; gradually unravelling mysterious threat; technobabble obstacles and solutions; mixed with just enough action and spectacle. Several familiar faces from the old days have returned, recognizably the same people -- including, finally, the title character himself -- but having clearly grown over the years. Some new characters are introduced, but unlike in the first two seasons these make sense and behave like real understandable adults.
 
Strange New Worlds went a long way toward recapturing the best of The Original Series, and only four episodes in (as I write this) this season is accomplishing the same for TNG.

Thank you!
 
(Just having a group that wants to work together so everyone can have fun goes a long way.)
 
 
We always played it that way because on page 7 of 1e and 2e, and page 11 of 3e, it says, "A normal person is considered to have the base value for each characteristic, on average."

Thank you!
 
(Just having a group that wants to work together so everyone can have fun goes a long way.)
 
 
We always played it that way because on page 7 of 1e and 2e, and page 11 of 3e, it says, "A normal person is considered to have the base value for each characteristic, on average."

Just out of curiousity, am I the only guy who assumed that the blank character sheet-- straight 10s and do Figureds from there--  _was_ the human baseline, and you compared against that and the few examples from the book to decide how "super" your characters were?
 
 

You can.  Enough levels, or the right power set, and finesse the speed chart just a bit...
Even the super-efficient 23/5 is 16 points the 20/4 character can put into 5 martial arts levels, or 4 & a DC, or 2 all-combat if they're more diverse combatants.
 
That works.
DEX/SPD is relative, if everyone backs off a little, you don't miss it. The groups I was in, '84-99 were like that.

I couldn’t agree more! I think the guideline should be create character. Slim down where appropriate then use  some of Goodman’s tips where needed to make concept/playable character.

OSS 117 -- Double Agent: A 1968 Eurospy movie. At first I thought it was a James Bond knockoff, but it turns out the character was created several years before Bond. The movie was entertaining enough, but some parts were laughably bad.

Some people need to learn religious freedom isn't the freedom to inflict your religious beliefs* on everyone else.
 
 
 
 
*Or misbeliefs, in most cases.

Well, I don’t live in California because I love the politics. I live here because my family and friends are here, and because of the geography. So probably not, but not because of their government.
 
 Edit: I did live in Oklahoma for about seven years. There were things I can look back and say were better than here (sense of community, as in if the older person in the neighborhood got sick the neighbors signed up to mow their lawn… that actually happened once). There were differences I appreciated but had costs (greater value on self reliance than here versus expectations of government). And things I hated (the casual sexism in stratified gender roles, that sort of thing). The weather was horrific. The people were lovely, much nicer overall. I moved back for many reasons, but mainly the weather and wanted to raise my kids in my home State. They had as many misconceptions about California as admittedly I had about them moving there. 

I'm a believer, and I approve this consequence

IShort on time, so forgive the lack of quotes: suffice it to say that for the most part, I am in line with Hugh's thoughts on this. 
 
The biggest thing I am seeing is a laundry list of issues that could be resolved by splitting Grab and Hold into 2 distinct actions:  a Grab would of course have the automatic breakout roll; it may be possible to replace that roll with a STR v STR toll.  As this is an attack action, the grabber's phase is now ended. 
 
If the breakout roll is failed, then on his next phase (remember that a higher SPD target may get additional breakout attempts), the grabber may then attempt to either place the target in a solid hold, or execute a follow-up attack.  Grabbing someone makes it much harder to avoid that Haymarket, after all.  Of course, the grabber has the option. To release his target at any time. 
 
So what does Grab do that it achieves without Hold? 
 
For one, it interrupts any Extra Time Required actions the target is attempting.  It serves as a distraction to the target's concentration, and may even re-orient him enough to affect his OCV (If a brick snatches a sniper around to face him, he will lose track of his own target. 
 
My own suggestion (that is to say, the way I have been doing it) is that a grabbed character who succeeds his initial breakout roll is at 1/2 OCV for ranged attacks and is at 1/2 DCV against the grabber.  If the grabber is unsuccessful with or chooses not to make a follow-up attack immediately (first action in his phase), the grabbed character gains a +2 bonus for his breakout roll. At the end of this phase, the person in the Grab will be free, presumably by his own actions. 
 
Why? Because a grab is not a hold. It is about disadvantaging the target to gain the upper hand with your next move. 
 
With this in mind, a tackle is a grab with a move element, and the penalties that the attacker falls, and his only viable follow up action (if the iooent does not succeed his breakout) is to go into a Hold with the Target falls element. 
 
Both are prone, and the target may even receive partial cover from his own attacker. 
 
 
 
 

The way the groups I play with handle that is for everyone to limit their stats especially DEX and SPD.  Our normal SPD is 4.  A few characters like martial artists may have a 5, speedsters usually have 6.   Some characters like bricks may even have a 3 SPD.   Most agents are 3 SPD.  We also reduce the SPD of any published characters.  We warn people when they join a campaign.  It actually works really well in keeping combat moving and character functioning.  The lower SPD also reduces the need for END.
 
If too many people boost their SPD, it will trigger a SPD increase for all NPC’s.  When the players know that they cannot win the SPD war most of them don’t even bother trying to fight it.  We occasionally need to warn new players of this, but they usually come to understand it is in everyone’s best interest to keep the stats reasonable.