Chris Goodwin

And I've been busy. I've added a number of power builders (Armor, Energy Blast, Invisibility, Killing Attack) and a generic power builder that I'm particularly proud of!

I posted this to some thread, but I can't remember, and it's probably locked. This thread is active, and it's on topic, so I'm posting it here. Some time back, I created a third edition Champions Google Spreadsheet. A couple of people besides myself have contributed (sadly, I'm not sure who). The two things it most reliably does are generate a Characteristics block (including doing the math), and creating a Power writeup. And, I've made some improvements. You can provide alternate text for custom Advantages and Limitations. And it does in fact create a Power writeup! Through the magic of a lot of nested parentheses. You can have it generate something like this: Some of those Modifiers are not stock 3rd edition. To create a custom, or rename an existing one, choose the appropriate Advantage or Limitation (e.g. "Limited Power 1/2"). In the Advantage Alt Text or Limitation Alt Text, type the name you want to give it, such as "Not Vs. Cabbage". In the Advantage Parenthetical Text or Limitation Parenthetical Text, type something in here, like "cole slaw only". It will then insert into the Power writeup: Not Vs. Cabbage (cole slaw only; -1/2) Warning: It's not bulletproof. It has no modifier intelligence. It expects you to know the amount and base cost; you have to select, for instance, Teleport from the list, and for Amount enter 5", and for Base Cost enter 10. It will take it from there, though. There are also occasional minor bugs in it; I'm chasing those down off and on. And it doesn't generate a character sheet; you'll want to copy and paste whatever the finished text is that you want to pull out. If you use it, I recommend saving a copy to your own Google Drive, then saving a new copy every so often. Edit to add: You can create a custom Power by selecting Custom, then overwriting the name with whatever you choose, and ignoring the warning that comes up.

You can whip it into shape; Shape it up; Get straight; Go forward; Move ahead; Try to detect it It's not too late, to whip it. Repeat as needed. Writing these up in game terms is left as an exercise for the palindromedary.

Not as in given them the write ups. I know that the Champions Universe has, in-universe, a rough power scale (approximately equal to the highest Active Points/5), and it's quite possible that in-universe entities might study other aspects of NPCs and give the PCs write ups based on what is known about them.

If it helps, a relatively small amount of the rules in the 6e core volumes are procedures and how-to. Most of it is reference material.

6th edition is completely gridless; movement is bought in meters. So no, you don't have to go by inches. Some people in 6th edition use hex grids at 1 hex = 1 meter, but most use no grids at all. Unless you're asking if you have to use 1 inch hexes. No, you also don't have to do that. You can use whatever size hex you want, keeping in mind that the scale given is 1 hex = 2 meters. At a convention recently I played in a 6th edition game where the figures were Lego Minifigures. For one of the combat scenes we used a 1 inch hex map; for the second we were gridless using rulers made out of Lego where a 2x4 stud brick was 2 meters long

1 hex = 2 meters. It assumes 1 inch hexes, which is why movement values are denominated in inches.

Here can be found a hex paper generator!

Correct. 10 is the base in all the editions, unless the GM says otherwise. Correct, but it's even more constrained than that. In 4th edition, a starting superhero gets 100 points for free, and can gain up to an additional 150 points by taking Disadvantages. It was fairly early on in the 4th edition days that it was discovered that 250 isn't really enough for a viable superhero to include Skills and all the other things a hero usually has, so in 5th edition a "standard superhero" power level was redefined as 200 points for free plus up to 150 more in Disadvantages. Correct. Characters can delay their Phases, which sometimes gives them an opportunity to act in Segments when they otherwise wouldn't. Either the GM keeps track of delayed actions, or the player speaks up when they want to use them, but otherwise those Segments are just skipped.

It looks like you're starting all of his base Primary Characteristics at 20. Which is fine if that's a particular set of rules for a particular game, but the standard starting value is 10 in each. Starting them each at 20 is effectively adding 125 points to the character. Usually for a regular game, a player saves a few points out for things like background and noncombat related Skills. Combat Time: The system used here is "phased movement" or "impulse movement". If you've played Car Wars or Starfleet Battles it's similar to those. If you haven't: A Turn is 12 seconds long, consisting of 12 Segments. A character's SPD tells how many times they can act (Phases) during a Turn, and those Phases are spread out as evenly as possible throughout the Turn. So SPD 2 goes on Segments 6 and 12, 3 goes on 4, 8, and 12, and so on. SPD 6 goes on 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. Combat typically starts on Segment 12, giving almost all characters a chance to act. During a particular segment, characters act in order of their DEX, from high to low. This can have some interesting effects; in Segments where they both have an action, a character who is DEX 23, SPD 4, will go before a character who is DEX 21, SPD 5. On the Champions board, forum user @Cassandra has started a thread where she posts 250 point characters created in 5th edition. Even though there are some rules differences between 4th and 5th, there aren't many, and you can get a good idea of power levels and attacks and defenses. A Champions player named Mathew Ignash (who may or may not frequent these boards; I'm not sure) has a web page with a very large number of 4th edition 250 point characters as well. These all might prove helpful to look at.

Lots of people here would be happy to help! Probably the first thing to decide is what about Superman you're going to focus on. He won't be the Kryptonian demigod; he'll be a starting superhero on 250 points. You'll be deciding basically how far back you're going to trim him. The powers themselves will be pretty easy; Champions was built to emulate four color superheroes, so it shouldn't be hard to look at Powers and decide what he's got. We'll start with the super strong flying brick. Superman pretty much invented this. 60 STR, Flight, Armor, N-Ray Vision, probably Telescopic and Ultrasonic Hearing, for starters. Energy Blast to represent the heat vision. Rounding him out some might be pushing close to 250 with this build; we can start with exact numbers once you're ready.

One of my players writes: Another one writes: Edit: Forgot to add, the above messages were shared with permission.

Hunted by the Federal Department of Jason Bourne. (I mean, that's totally a thing in the movies, right? There's an entire federal bureaucracy dedicated to keeping track of Jason Bourne.)

Brian, did you ever figure out which genre you were going to run? If you're running a heroic genre, and if you're using the Hit Location Chart, I'd say go ahead and use it the first session. My two new players in my DI game loved it. They wondered why we didn't do it in the Champions game. What I found with my newer players is that if you give them a number to roll against, and it's on the sheet somewhere, they're happy to look on the sheet to find it. So I'd go over the character sheet first with them. Maybe say something like "These are some values here that we're going to refer to frequently," and point them to OCV, DCV, Perception Roll, DEX, SPD, phases, PD and ED (both normal and total), CON, and where they mark off BODY, STUN, and END loss. Maybe make up a second sheet with all of that info, plus the combat maneuvers with their effective OCV/basic attack roll and DCV pre-filled, and nothing more, to go along with their main sheet. For combat, I would go over the combat sequence checklist. 6e2 p. 34 has the one for 6th edition; I think all of the previous editions' core rulebooks have one as well but I don't recall page numbers offhand. I would give an explanation of the Speed Chart ("HERO's initiative system"). Explain roughly how phased movement works, how combat starts on segment 12, how the post-12 Recovery and Recovery in general works. Then I'd run a short basic combat against easy-to-dispatch foes. Whatever you call OCV and DCV, I cannot strongly enough recommend that you pre-add 11 to OCV and have that written down on the character sheet. When they say "What do I roll again?" which they will do often Remind them "It's a combat roll, so 3d6, and you're rolling against your Offense / Basic Attack Roll" or whatever you end up calling it. Or "It's a Perception roll, so roll 3d6 less than or equal to where it says PER Roll" and make sure that's on the sheet somewhere. Or "It's your Climbing Skill" or whatever, "and roll 3d6 less than or equal to your Climbing value." Or, "It's a damage roll, so look for the Power/weapon/attack/maneuver/etc., and roll that many dice. You want high numbers here." I can't believe I forgot to do this, but I've just now asked my new Hero gamers from the Danger International game for their feedback. I'll pass that along.

I am still looking for a Hero game in the Portland area. I... may be persuaded to GM, some.

I've always assumed it was because SPD 1 is so slow that they don't get to act right away when combat starts; given that they start on Segment 7 of the next turn, literally everyone else has gone at least twice before SPD 7 gets to go once. Also, combat didn't officially start on Segment 12 until someone wrote in to Adventurer's Club and asked a question about it. I think it was never actually specified in 1st edition, and it could be that they always started on 12 in-house at Hero Games and forgot to mention it. I remember in 1989 playing with a group who thought I was nuts when I insisted that combat did in fact start on 12, and even pointed out several books where it said that. They all started it on segment 1.

Nope, SPD 1 has always moved on segment 7. What they did in 5th and 6th editions was physically flipped the Speed Chart by 90 degrees (edit) and mirrored (or, technically, mirror flipped along an axis going from the top-left to bottom-right corners). Up through 4th edition, you found your SPD on the top and looked down to find your Phases. Now you find your SPD on the left and look across for your Phases, the way you'd expect. Nothing has changed about which SPD moves on what Phases. Edited to add the chart from 3rd edition.

Yes, and you should have!

Thanks again for running it, Mark. And it was great to finally meet you! And Tom, I'm sorry I didn't know it was you. I'd have made more of a big deal of finally meeting you too!

I don't even want to talk about Fuzion. Let's just let it lie where it is. As far as editions go, the major giveaway would have been the fact I was using the first-gen linear Range Modifiers. If you had gone over the characters with a fine-toothed comb you'd have seen I used the original Danger International costs for Skills. And, that was about it. (Oh, they all had COM scores, but I think they were all 10, and it never came up in play.) While I noted down END costs for STR Minimums in weapon use, 1 END per 5 STR is a perfectly cromulent rule for 4th, 5th, and 6th edition heroic level games. Compare that with the Champions game I played in on Friday night. The characters were all pregens; the only giveaway there would have been the fact that the Characteristics omitted COM and were listed in 6th edition order, and CV's weren't CHA/3. We used hex maps for the first combat, scenery on the tabletop with rulers for the second; some of the characters had movement listed in hexes/inches and some in meters. I don't remember if point costs were listed on the sheets or not. In play, I couldn't have told you whether it was 4th, 5th, or 6th edition. As far as rules changes go, there are two sets of significant "generational" changes: the changes from 3rd edition to 4th (buying Reduced END Cost on Powers, Range Modifier switching from linear to exponential, loss of diminishing returns costs in Disadvantages and Enhanced Senses), and the changes from 5ER to 6th (decoupling of Figured Characteristics and Combat Values; switching from hexes/gridded to meters/optional grid). All else is tweaking of costs. I declare the Edition Wars over.

How about something like: Xd6 attack, Standard Effect (only on attack roll of half or lower of target number; see text) plus Xd6 Attack, only on attack roll of half or lower of target number (see text), Standard Effect. That would do it exactly, I think. The first part of the attack is diced regularly on a hit, but on a critical hit it's considered Standard Effect; the second part of the attack is the same dice value as the first, and does nothing unless the dice come up a critical hit, in which case it also does its Standard Effect damage. Together, that comes to the same amount as the max damage roll on the basic attack.

Ah, ok. That's more or less what I tried with my group last year. I think that can work, but the character concepts I got weren't exactly superhero material, which is why I think pregens would be better. Eventually the idea is to get them to the point where they can make their own characters, for sure.

It's really more about campaign feel, character guidelines, and campaign setup. And I've proven, at least to myself and five players, that a no-powers military campaign can work just fine.

I keep bringing up editions, but! I could have run the exact same game under 6th edition, and it would have gone about the same. Maybe not quite as smoothly, as my DI old hand was a huge help, but mechanically for sure. Assuming I'd pregenerated the characters with the same initial assumptions, that is.

I'm going to disagree with you here. For the Champions game I tried last year, I asked them what they wanted and made the characters for them. It would have completely fallen apart if I'd tried to hand them the books or even HD and had them create their own. Too many options. I'd say that pregens are probably best, followed by asking them what they want and building it for them. This, for sure. In a state of madness on Friday morning I ran to the dollar store and bought several bags of classic green and tan plastic toy soldiers (plus their assorted vehicles); those worked exceedingly well for a military game.