Chris Goodwin

Shadowrun fans talk about how awful every Shadowrun edition is.  
 
They're like Star Wars fans, in that they both hate the things they are a fan of.  🤣

I am not entirely certain I could _read_ in another life else I would have learned about the possibility of reincarnation, and taken steps to prevent it. 
 
Unless, of course, my goal was to do better the second time around, and if I did manage to pull that off, then I am positively _jubilant_ that I can't remember the first go. 
 
Realistically, I think finding the lighter side habitually is just part and parcel of extreme extroversion, which I suffer from quite happily. 
 
 
 
Hail, and well-met, good fellow.   I neither wear a trilby nor confuse them with fedoras, so that's about as cringe as I am able to get; I hope you're not disappointed. 
 
 
 
 
I shouldn't take the trouble, Sir, knowing what I know.  In fact, you can know what I know in just a few short moments:
 
It is neither terribly interesting nor exciting, and most of our discussions here are about a game we both play.   The only pertinent piece of information from that entire list that I would bother to remember is that of all the people on this board, I am the least likely to know anything about comic books or any particular superhero, save the Iron Man and Spiderman movies (all eight of the modern ones, and the ultra-cool made for TV ones from the seventies). 
 
Oh- I also know that the Thor that starred alongside Ferigno's Hulk in the 80s looked considerably less-cool than the one that starred in the Marvel movies. 
 
Oh, and thanks to the Traveller's Tales video games, I can recognize Lego Stan Lee from up to two feet away.  I feel that this counts for something. 
 
 
 
You want embarrassing?  You should see the look my wife gives me when I am scrolling down threads and come across your name.  Much like the inability not to moo at passing cows, I have to revive the 80s jingle from the tou commercials and sing out " Gee Emm Joooeee!" 
 
I have tried fighting it; my wife has tried avoidance therapy on my behalf (whereby she avoids noticing any attempt to get her attention for the next few hours), but thus far, I am completely unable to not do it. 
 
There.  Now we are even. 
 
 
Now I am even with _all_ of you, dammit. 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
Dead on.  I really preferred Miller's meager stuff to DGP's stuff, and from Mega forward, it was pretty much all DGP. For what it's worth, even though I prefer the LBBs and vectored movement, The Traveller Book- also published in a traditional-at-that-tme three-booklets-and-a-map, all inside a box version as the "Beginner's Set-- seems to be a real sweet spot compromise of what I like and what my players like.  That is to say, it has struck perfect compromise, observable by how equal our "generally cool with it but still slightly disappointed" is spread amongst us. 
 
 
 
 
 
OH MY GOD, _SPILL_!  SPILL! 
 
Okay:  my Classic Traveller collection is far from complete, but I have only recently begun to re-collect what I chunked out years ago (that being 2300, Mega, and TNE, all of which I hated, but Fire, Fusion, and Steel was the single greatest accessory ever published for any RPG, ever, period, even though it was a DGP manuscript, and that irritates like an unsanded seam on a butt plug. (I assume.  At least, it sounds like it would irritate.)
 
I completely missed T4, and didn't even hear of T5 until it, too, was out of print.  I have yet to get my hands on either (it kills me that I don't have either of those, but I _do_ have T-20: the version I am least-likely to ever play.  Gurps Traveller was pretty good, and I am delighted that Wiseman undid the assassination, though I have only the core rules (which is all I am interested in from any of the newer versions- it's a matter. Both money and time left on earth; under the circumstances, that makes me happy enough). 
 
I have heard that T4 had problems, but I do not know what they were (yet) and I am dying to hear from anyone involved in any sort of Traveller project!  I don't care if it is a sentence, a PM, or an e-mail, asir; just _spill_! 
 
Oh, I also missed Mongoose Traveller, and from what I hear about it, all I had to do was add "and he died! " (/Nicholas Cage) back in and I would have loved it.  As it stands, I do own a hardback of the Crowded Hours adventures anthology, and three of the four are _amazing_; totally worth the four bucks plus shipping I spent on it.  :). 
 
I guess I could go the GURPS Traveller route: after creating your character, roll a single die.  If it comes up 6, throw the character away and make another one, " but it doesn't have that same 'press your luck' element of danger to it. 
 
 
 
 
 
I have hated the three I have read, but I suspect that was because of the hard push to make us choke on the DGP- developed house system GDW was moving toward.  (weirdly, it worked in both Twilight 2000 (though I didn't really like it) and Cadilacs and Dinosaurs (which presented a more polished, more fun-to-use version of it) but it just didn't capture that feeling of simplicity that somehow amplified the 'tiny speck in an endless universe' feeling that Miller's original barebones system brought forward. 
 
And of course, the "Kafers are just the bad guys; that's just how it works" that, because there will never be a better word, is overt permission to be racist.  That did't fly well with me _at all_.  Tell me _whi_ they are, like you do with all the other races, and not _what_ they are. 
 
 
But I think I can still see the topic from here; better head back towards it before I get completely turned around... 
 
 
So many stories...  So many horrible, tragic, _hillarious_ stories.... 
 
 
 
More embarrassment:  fans of Shadow run talk about how awful the first edition was. 
 
It was the only edition I really liked.   even then, though, the fantasy trappings were not exactly to my taste.  If I want your chocolate in my peanut butter, I will arrange an innocent accident at an aerobics class involving two people making weird snack decisions during their workout; that you very much. 
 

 
He absolutely nailed the 80s anesthetic for cyberpunk, I think., and that tends to be the way I like my cyberpunk. 
 
 
Yeah, ditto.  Once you start thinking of it slang of the era, it gets better. 
 
Probably. 
 
One day. 
 
 
 
Really?   You'd think you would have picked up on that "priceless collection of ancient Etruscan snoods" thing a ways back up. 
 
 
 
 
It's be just my luck that my superpower would be "immortality, except for the side effect'
 
 
 
Oh yeah; those helped me develop a comic book feel more than anything else did, I think.  I cribbed so many plot twists and locations from them early on.... 
 
 
 
 
 
It' a just elephants all the way down with you, isn't it? 
 
 

 

 
 
 
Technically, I didn't modify it.  I threw it out completely. 
 
Well no; technically, I didn't do that, either.  I opted not to back port it into my games except for very rare occasions, and decided that Skill Levels-a thing that already existed and already did what skills do- were the way to go. 
 
As an ezample: PS Archery becomes +2 with bows. 
 
KS: Engineering becomes +2 to INT rolls for engineering problems. 
 
Two weapon fighting becomes +4 with off-hand weapon, not to exceed the off-hand penalty. 
 
Area Knowledge becomes +3 to INT rolls about area X. 
 
Skill levels already have costing and mechanics in place for 'everything' to 'large, related groups,' to 'small, closely-related groups' to 'this one thing and no other thing.' 
 
A quick house rule that Skill Leves as Skills can't be allocated to something else-such as CV or extra damage-and it has worked pretty well since 4e came out a few days ago.  Maybe some extensive okay testing will show me why it' s a bad idea. 
 
For Supers and pulp, build straight off the Characteristic roll.  For more 'normal' heroic games, start with 9+ instead of 11+, and for grim, ultra-realistic stuff, start with 7+ Char. 
 
For something screwy, consider averaging 2 or more characteristics and deriving you 'bonus' (the thing after the plus) from that instead of one single characteristic. 
 
It really solves the 'points auck' problem, and retains the option for broad or narrow skills (buy then as 'one single thing, small closely - related group, or large related group, so pricing is' in line' with utility for those to whom that bit matters. 
 
If you are concerned about what else they might spend their 150 points on, the don't give them 150 points.  If you are concerned about what they might spend their XP on, have a talk before hand and say 'look, I am going to try something with this campaign, but it involves reducing awarded XP along the way.  That may or may not change after we have tried it a bit, but for now, we are going to kind of ease into this. 
 
 
Most importantly, if you are concerned about either of those, you should admit that you have been using skills as a points suck all this time, and let go of that. 
 
 
 
 
Thank you, Hugh. 
 
Thank you deeply. 
 
I was beginning to think I had wasted a lot of words not getting my point across:
 
The skills section works as-is if you are a Hero player from way back.  If you are new, and looking for some guidance, you aren't going to find it in the books. 
 
 

I am not familiar with Supers, save having heard it mentioned in these forums a few times.   I am not shooting it down, of course-- I can't! I know nothing about it. 
 
I know that it is difficult to keep track of the details of what are essentially faceless strangers with a common hobby, so as a soft reminder, allow me to politely state that by and large, Superheroes isn't my bag.  I have played, and do still play, _a lot_ of Champions, because after my Travellers /Tunnles and Trolls group broke up (the GM's wife was military, and had been reassigned to another duty station) way back in '79, the next non DnD group I found was a Champions group, and even if supers was not my favorite, I confess to having a romantic appreciation for clear-cut good guys and dastardly villains, so as long as the story is good, I can play supers. 
 
I was never a comic book kid (gearhead for life.  Even as a kid, I loved tearing into engines and seeing if I could get them running again), so I had no serious self-insertion attraction to the settings or the characters, nor even a serious understanding of the tropes (he was bombarded with radiation and then _what?!! _. No-no-no-!  I think you misread that.  I think you meant gelatinous death via rapid cellular destruction and tissue degeneration.  Or at least cancer, and lots of it). 
 
My preference is science fiction, my heart belongs to Classic Traveller, Cyberpunk is great from the 80's interpretation of the genre, and it is tied with post-apocalyptic adventures (and what is Cyberpunk but a unique take on an apocalypse of social structure and not just the entire human race?).  You heard that right: I _loved_ Gama World despite it's absolute goofiness (up until the garbage that was 3e),  had a love/hate relationship with Aftermath, and all of our Car Wars games were straight up Mad Max.  There were two dozen other failed post-apoc games on the shelves, and I tried most of them. Pulp action is fun, but the people who really "get it" started dying off twenty-five years ago, and I can get into a well-realized non DND fantasy game. 
 
Then, after all that, comes superheroes and war gaming, in a constant switching of which I would prefer in that moment. To be fair, war gaming would win more consistently if I wasn't terrible at it. 
 
After all that, there is going to work, complete social isolation, self-mutilation, and repeatedly striking my thumb with a hammer.  Just beyond that there is DnD, and finally, when self-torture starts to seem sort of pleasant, there is LARP. 
 
After that is taking a third job, then bobbing for French fries, eating okra, and then military RPGs (sadly, this includes FASA'a Star Trek, which made no allowances for non-Starfleet characters): those games where you are not your own agent and are tasked with goals in which you have no actual interest, and then get shot and die.   It's like the retail industry simulator; why on earth would I want to do that to relax?
 
Finally, at the bottom of the bottom, like the earth beneath the feet of the elephants that support the world (unless you are one of those who believes it is just more elephants all the way down forever, you heathen, you) , there are collectible card games. 
 
The shorter version of all this is that alternate ways to play superheroes really aren't on my radar at all, but if I find an inexpensive PDF for Supers, I might check it out for the skills system. 
 
Now to be fair, I will read adventures and modules from _any_ game, because ultimately, stories and plots are universal, and you never know what inspiration you might find or where you might find it. 
 
 
 
Oh, yes.  It was quite an eye-opener, really, and it was the first time that I really started to notice that-- especially for 4e (latest and greatest at that time)-- too often, characters were being required to buy skills that one-hundred percent should have been everyman skills in their campaigns, and I started to realize that there were distinct levels of 'everyman skills' within a single campaign. 
 
Perhaps in your fantasy world "horse maintenance" is not an everyman skill.  Is it possible that it should be an every-adventurer skill?  If you find that you are requiring every adventurer to buy the same skill,  then that skill, Sir, should be an every-adventurer skill.  Any skill required to simply be in the game--
 
Let's paint me as the bad guy, because I did this one prior to having Miller open my eyes:
 
I _required_ characters in a fantasy game to buy some sort of skill to represent their ability to get food while trekking across the continent.  FOOD!  I didn't care if it was foraging, hunting, trapping, fishing, or woodcraft, I insisted that all of the characters have a skill related to feeding themselves. (my favorite response to that request was Seduction, if you were wondering).  You need to eat to stay alive and you need to stay alive to play in the game, and I was requiring them to pay for that simply because it _was possible_ to pay points for it, because the skills existed at all. 
 
That was when I began to look at how many skills that characters held that ultimately were not really necessary.  If the skill does nothing but keep you in the game (never once have we ever role played hunting or fishing or fungi collecting for subsistence reasons.  When we did, it was always about discovering (or failing to) something while in the process of doing the thing.  I can't tell you how many times a player has picked up dice to roll his hunting skill when the party makes camp, and I responded with "no need. Game is plentiful here, and within the hour you have returned with meat enough for the entire party"), then that skill is a points suck. 
 
If the level of your skill is the same as your most relevant Characteristic, then purchasing that skill is a points suck.   If it is lower than your most-relevant characteristic, then it is most _definitely_ a points suck because of Brick Fingers. 
 
No; that is not a typo.  You guys remember Brick, right?  I didn't use him, so other than poring over his 2e sheet for examples, I never kept up with him other than to note the squaring of his head for 4e, but if you remember Brick, then you likely remember "Brick Fingers: Cannot do fine work.". It's right up there with'"no fine manipulation" on Telekinesis. 
 
It is a _limitation_.  A _disadvantage_.  You can use your INT and DEX together for great feats of nimble-fingered adroit deftness, but _I cannot, as my brick finger do not allow me to do fine work. _
 
Here is a thing that I cannot do as well as my normal rolls indicate that I should.  It is a personal flaw worth character points. 
 
If you have an INT-based Skill worth less than the Characteristics roll.... 
 
No; I am not saying that the characters should suddenly lay claim to thirty skills at 8 or less and then claim disadvantages because their INT roll is 12 or less.  That way lies madness.  Or Davien. 
 
If you have an INT of 16 then you have an INT roll of 12 (13 under super-permissive GMs).  If you are being made to pay for an INT- based or even an INT-related skill with a roll of less than that, then that skill is a points suck. 
 
 
 
 
It won't work. 
 
At least. It won't work as a drop-in to HERO _as it stands now_. 
 
I say that because we are discussing the problems of infinitely splitting off such things as Professional Skills. And PS: X  from HERO _is_ Expertise: X from M and M.  That is what it is for:  it is a catch-all for unspecified skills related to this field. 
 
The problem doesn't go away: a lack of guidelines on when to split or just what is covered under what, and when does this umbrella not cover that problem.  
 
 
 
 
I do not believe that you are in the minority for liking it; I believe we all have a considerable appreciation for it, as there is nothing inherently wrong with the concept.   The problem is a complete lack of guidance (again, not really an issue once you realize that this skill means what the players and I have decided they mean, but still: that is considerably different from any sort of explanation or even an example of "this is too broad" and "this is too narrow.".  If I may borrow your own examples:
 
 
 
I don't know who Reed Richards is, but I have seen enough Marvel Movies to know the others.  Hank Pym was Kirk Douglas, Tony Stark was RDJ, and David Banner was some other guy.  I must have missed Reed Richards, but these three will do. 
 
Let's look at Stark.  From the movies and your suggested differentiations, Stark has engineering, Robotics, and physics. 
 
We look at Pym, and the ant man suit and the wasp suit, which the movies specify that he designed and built himself-and he, too, has engineering, Robotics, and physics. 
 
I didn't watch any of the Hulk movies, but given Banner's use in the movies I did see, he clearly knows physics and engineering, and I am willing to be that if we asked enough comic guys, they could cite examples of every one of the three (four, because of Richards) casually knocking out feats of all four of your categories, bringing this right back to 'how many of these skills was it necessary to separate and charge individually for? 
 
Please be aware that I am not saying you are wrong; I am simply asking if, between these characters, there was enough difference in their documented knowledge bases that they could not just as easily bought "super-science" and declared a specialty within the field of super-science (because I know Banner is supposed to be the most knowledgeable about gamma rays or radiation or some-such to warrant a specialty there)?  Stark buys Super-science and declares a specialty in Robotics or engineering, or maybe he has a double- major, but except for shrinking, there seems to be a ton of overlap between him and Pym (and Banner and Peter Parker, whose single limitation seems to be access to funds as opposed to a lack of super-science know-how). 
 
So does it seem more correct that each Character pay five points a whack (or whatever 6e is charging for them) for the identical four skills then buy either one up or three down to create an essentially negligible (and in the source material, generally ignored) distinction between the four, or to buy the one similar skill, and either declare a specialty, or buy a second skill for the specific specialty or- my favorite _at the moment_: buy two skill levels for use with rolls pertaining to their particular 'specialty'? 
 
The problem is that all of these are valid.  All of these are accurate.  Alll of these are rules-legal (so long as you are ignoring the 'most expensive is most correct way" rule the same way that the published material does). 
 
The only guidance is'"look how our amazing free-form skill system let's you do exactly what you want!" without even a fingerpoint in even one direction you might wish to go. 
 
Put another way: at one table, the same four skills at differing levels for these guys is perfect.  At another, it is not enough, and at a third, it is a waste of fifteen points, 
 
And all of these are correct. 
 
 
Precisely.  I get what you are going for, but the source material-- and in-games, the GM-- kind of invalidates it. 
 
In the source material, we know that these characters will be gifted with the knowledge of any field pertaining to the desires of the author.  I am not familiar with the source material, but I have seen that just in the movies. 
 
I saw a couple of flinches when I said the GM will invalidate it as well. Well, here is why I believe that:
 
The GM designs your adventures and he approves your characters.  He helps you build them and makes suggestions to ensure that your character lines up with what the adventure has in store. 
 
If your GM approves your hydrophobic desert-dwelling non-swimming character and then declares that this campaign will deal with ancient and mysterious forces massing in the Marianas trench, and only characters with Submarine Ops and Scuba skills need apply, everyone on this board would call this 'a dick move," except possibly Hermit, who would have a much nicer way to say that it was, in fact, a dick move. 
 
The GM is going to make certain that either your characters work in the story, or the story works for your characters.
 
Why?
 
Well, what are Skills for in-game?  Finding short-cuts, solving puzzles, and finding clues. 
 
Short-cuts:  hey, if I use my PS: electrical lineman right now, I can route the power directly to those massive servos and make this hidden gate open up, and we won't have to spend the next two hours combing the hills looking for a concealed airshaft to sneak through! 
 
That is a pleasant little windfall for the players, and shortcuts them further along.  But if no one has PS: electrical lineman?  Absolutely not a problem, because there is a hidden ventilation shaft that can be used to gain entry. 
 
If no one has Concealment?  Well, there is a narrative delay as the troupe spends _hours_ looking for a back door, (and any timed events advance that much closer), but the heroes  _will_ find a way in, with or without the appropriate skills, because the story is _jnside_. 
 
I have yet to see a GM (outside of old school DnD) who would say "well, no one here has PS:electrical lineman, and no one has concealment.  You comb the hills for several days, and the thermonuclear device goes off, resulting in a TPK and the death of over twenty-million people.  You guys suck; buy the right skills next time. "
 
If you have the right skills, a spectacular shortcut will reward you.  If you don't have the right skills, then the GM will have a less-glorious and possibly more time consuming alternative route for you, and it was probably the one he built the adventure around to begin with, because what kind of killer GM builds the adventure around the necessity of you finding the way forward with a die roll? 
 
 
Finding clues (because I no longer remember the order in which I laid out the topics of discussion, or exactly what those topics were, and the new larger keyboard I downloaded means I can see even less of the screen now.):
 
As Chris Goodwin once perfectly stated, clues _want_ to be found.  If a clue is hidden behind a die roll, then the odds are that either that clue is helpful (providing a certainty for something the character already suspects and is investigating anyway) in a shortcut-for-the-plot kind of way, or was a fun an interesting but otherwise unessential tidbit (that may or may not come around elsewhere, later), or that you haven't found that essential clue _here and now_, because if it is essential to the plot that it be found, the GM will move the clue to the next opportunity for discovery, or reveal it blatantly just before it is too late, or, depending on the kind of game you play, just as or after it is too lye, but again: if it is essential, it shouldn't be hidden behind a die roll at all,  but if it is, then it will be hidden behind a die roll for a skill or skills already found within that character group, and there will be multiple opportunities to find it. All you are really rolling for is to determine where and when you find it. 
 
Solving puzzles.  This is your typical deathtrap situation: Hailey and Henry Hostage are tied to a rocket pointed at some culturally-important building in an antagonistic nation, and there are only seconds before the rocket launches!  You must have Science Skill: Rockets to deactivate the rocket! 
 
Or Professional Skill: rocketry. 
Or Computer Programming. 
Or Security Systems. 
Or make a perception roll to notice the data cord going to the rocket and the terminal it is hooked to seems to still be uploading data. 
Or make a Luck roll to see the large red Abort button. 
Or shoot it in the computer. 
Or have your brick mangle the fuel nozzles. 
Or knock it over, and let the failsafe kick in. 
Or any of a dozen other the things the GM already knows will be acceptable, with perhaps varying degrees of success (you know: for fun!).   Maybe Henry doesn't make it or something. 
 
Still, if it is absolutely essential to advance the story, there is more than one way to succeed. 
 
In your pivotal moments-the climax of the session, that is really the only point at which a pass/fail is really likely to occur, the only point where it is all going to hinge on a roll of the Skill dice, maybe, and unless you are playing for humour or your GM is really in to the TPK concept, that one critical skill has already been determined to be one that at least one party member has a 'close enough' version of. 
 
Yes, that is all incredibly meta, but that is the tool by which we measure objectively, as well as the mindset of the writers of the source material: if Banner needs to know something about Pym particles, he just will, because it falls under the superscience skill,  but only if there are no Pym particle specialists on stage at that moment. 
 
 
 
 
Agreed.  I badly-stated a similar comment up-thread regarding cost complaints: skills _are the powers_ of heroic-level games.  Drop 60 points on an RKA and no one cares; that is what you do when you are building a superhuman.  Drop ten points on two world-class level skills, and it is too much.  Well, if you are playing supers, it does cut pretty deeply into your powers budget,  but if you are playing heroic, well, as long as those skills aren't just mandated points sucks, go for it.  It is your area of excellence. 
 
 
 
 
 
Agreed again.  Now let me go a little bit into my comments about being inspired by Marc Miller. 
 
Miller ran the game such that the characteristic roll was the important roll.  Everyone's complaints that Classic Traveller had too few skills and too few opportunities to earn buckets full of them were generally because they didn't understand that this was intentional.  (to my dismay, in each subsequent edition of Traveller, to include the career books that eventually got published, Miller capitulated and made more skills and made them more attainable by the bucketful.) 
 
It was Miller's position that the character's backstory- both his service history and his history before that-determined if there was a chance that a character knew how to do something. 
 
You are going to hate that, Scott; and to be fair, it is one of only a tiny handful of pure-narativism bits with which I agree. 
 
If the character did not have the skill, then he made a characteristic roll.  It was Miller's stance that a list of skills could not possibly be assembled that would cover even a portion of what a character actually knew, and that listed skills-those skills actually on the character sheet-represented those things at which the character was exceptionally-well trained or learned. 
 
I find that adopting that idea to Hero means that 'exceptional skills' can be represented by specific skill levels, and even combinations:  two levels of 'life sciences' and then two levels of the more specific 'botany' and one more for 'plants with unusual effects on humans.' 
 
 
Now the standard defense of all the zero-guidelines rules and optional-optional-optional rules, at least since 6e published, is "well, it's it is no longer a game; it is a set of mechanics from which one picks and chooses and creates a game.'". But let's remember a couple of things:
 
One, there are no useful guidelines for what is possible and 
 
Two, it has been like this since 4e, when it actually was still mostly a game. 
 
 
Now a look at going the other way-going toward increasing and possibly hyper-specificity. 
 
There are myriad little problems, but I think the most important one is lock out. 
 
Look at the example given above: for every single skill created, you are making the rule that 'no other skill does this.'. We can have superscience, or we can have superphysics, superchemistry, super radiation expert.... 
 
Going more humbly:
 
We have paramedic.  My character wants paramedic.  Your character does not, but he thinks first aid might come in handy.  He buys that for the same campaign.  You have three choices:  let their matching costs slide, alter the cost of one, or remove first aid from the wheelhouse of paramedic.  Another character decides that he learned triage as a corpsman, and now the paramedic must buy three skills when before he needed only one. 
 
Forensics can be broken down into... Well, _lots_ of skills, taking each one out of the skill forensics and creating a CSI skills group worth over a hundred points. 
 
At the end of the day, there is absolutely no single solution that solves this problem for everyone short of either preparing an exhaustive list of every available skill per campaign, with definitions (hello, APGs three through forty-one) or removing skills entirely from the game, and let's be honest, the only reason that this solution is equally-just for all is because we will all hate it equally. 
 
 

were I on my computer, I could move that to where I wanted to group it, but... 
 
Anyway, there are some interesting thoughts coming up from folks that shows a bit of concensus here for this idea. 
 
 
 
 
You and me both.  Though for what it's worth, it is easy enough to add back in.  Yes; I know that you know that, and that your complaint refers more to it being officially axed, and I know that you can't get Hero Designer to accept it for a 6e build, but I always hope there is a new guy out there reading these threads....  That was more for him.   
 
My own "issue" (I can't say complaint because I still use both of these things the way that I believe they were meant to be used) with Elemental Control was the interpretation that the community took and ran with for both Elemental Control and Multipower. 
 
You remember the early days: we had nothing.  No settings, no modules, just the rules books.  Eventually we got an adventure or two (honesty time: the original Island of Dr D was _terrible_, and we all know it.  Christopher's rework of that piece is a billion miles ahead of the original-not just for the update, but because it is an RPG adventure and not just a war game capture-the-flag scenario.) and we got an enemies book.   We didn't even have Adventurers club or a third-party rag with any interest in us in the early days. Best of all, we didn't have an internet.  We could do whatever made us feel right about the game and not have to check in to make sure that remote faceless strangers agreed with us, and us remote faceless strangers couldn't get our kicks telling you that you were completely wrong, and therefore were not having a good time correctly. 
 
All we had were the examples in the rules, and by dribbles, in latter supplemental works. 
 
From those examples - the 'how-to' bits in the rules and the actual characters that we would come across, I got the distinct understanding that Elemental Control was more of a theme thing-- like Spiderman had a spider theme, and all of his wall crawling, leaping, and strength would fit into that, _and so could his web shooters _. 
 
Multipower, however, seemed to be reserved for characters who had single power source that they could use multiple ways:  my command of gravity waves let's me fly, repel objects, create strength-sapping zones of heavy gravity, and generate concussive waves of tightly-mixed variable gravities, doing massive damage to whatever I strike. 
 
I can use my ability to create and manipulate heat to loft myself on tightly-controlled thermals, generate blasts of white-hot flame, and create a wall of heat so intense projectiles are vaporized before they get near me. 
 
All of these are _super cool_, right? 
 
And they are _one power_.  The very nature of Multipower demonstrates that:  I buy a control, which has the bulk of my 'stored geavity' or whatever, and slots, each of which represents things that I can do with that gravity. 
 
In fact, because I can only generate so much intense heat, if I raise my forcefield to it's maximum, I have to sort of hover, because there is barely enough left over to fly; blasting someone is just out of the question.  (anyone else remember turning off Flight in mid-air, using a held action to attack full-force, and then turning Flight back on?  Anyone?  Okay; it's just me.) 
 
If you went with ultra slots, it was _painfully_ obvious that you were manipulating a single power source. 
 
The idea held for guns, too- a perinnial favorite build of the Multipower because then you could take that sweet Focus limitation as well (as you do when you are building 'the most expensive way'    ).  You have six slots, (usually Ultras) representing different ammo or different features of the gun. 
 
This holds up as evidence that you really have only a single power: Gun.  If Arkelos the Mage casts "Dispell: Gun," you are _screwed.  If the GM decides it is time for that Focus limitation to bite you just a bit, you do not have any of your slots because you lost the only one power you had: Gun. 
 
The most telling thing- to me, I mean-- was the rebate.  The rebate was _huge_ (still is) for Multipower, which suggested some significant drawbacks.  In modern discussions, when someone prooeses a 'not in the presence of X' type build where they cannot use one power when using another, or the two are somehow scaled, we recommend 'lockout' and similar limitations, which are fine, of course, but they don't offer the rebate value of Multipower. 
 
Finally, and this one goes all the way back to 1e: Multipower did not start out listed as a power framework.  It was listed as a power. (as was Elemental Control, actually).  I know a lot of you that never played 1e bought the Bundle of Holding when it popped up.  Go check it out: Multipower was listed as a power that allowed one set of points to feed multiple abilities.  Much like today; the wording really hasn't changed much at all. One set of points rolling from one power to another, or being split amongst the slots-- a single power : a multi-use power; a power that can be tapped and expressed multiple ways. 
 
So from the earliest days of Power Drain, we applied those Drains to _the whole multipower_.  We treated it as one power.  To this day, those are the types of builds for which I encourage Multipower (assuming the player is willing to accept the inherent drawbacks, of course). 
 
Now until I got online, I had no idea people bagged on Elemental Control so badly.  (I also had no idea how many people were using incorrectly, and over-discounting the powers within, but that's another story.  Well, a couple of examples: pay full price for your most expensive power and all others are half price.  Pay full points for your first power, and all others are half price.  How many people, do you suppose, had Instant Change or +1 STR as their first power at _that_ table?!). 
 
From chat rooms, then to Red October, and finally to these boards, people were constantly trashing Elemental Control.  (I would like to point out that, much like "Killing Attack is broken!"  the complaints almost always seemed to come from the "points are for game balance" camp.  I do not know if that is significant, but the possibility is strong enough that it seems worth mentioning.  Ironically, when used properly, the discount for EC didn't outweigh that of Multipower until you got up to eight or more powers, possibly more depending on how you built (you could over-pay on your control and end up paying too much for a slot with a low-cost power in it, or underpay your control cost and end up paying additional full-cost points far too often.  You want my honest ooinion?  People bagged on EC because it was complicated. )
 
Then along came- was it 4e or 5e?  I seem to remember it was 5e, but that may just be the first time I noticed it- the declaration that Elemental Control was, in fact, one single power with Multiple aspects, and that adjustment powers that affected any EC power affected all EC powers, etc. 
 
Now I have read everything 4e, just as many of you have.  I am pretty certain that I own everything 4e up on the bookshelves, including the dual-stat ICE stuff, because if you wanted a module for anything that wasn't Champions, then you had best be playing Fantasy HERO.  (For those who did not venture into the world of Kulthea, it could be a bit dark.  It could also be a bit murder-hobo ish, if you weren't careful.) 
 
Anyway, I have read it.  Yes; I saw the same trends as everyone else: Multipower popping up on lots of places I would have gone with EC, and a few the other way around.  My only thoughts at the time where, the construct doesn't really seem abusive, and Multipower _is_ easier to use, but the limitations..... 
 
Anyway we got to a point where the official rules stated that EC now has all the drawbacks that you assumed MP had, and MP does not. 
 
And I just kinda moped right out of that.  Well, there commentary.  So much commentary.  So very much overly-colorful commentary.... 
 
Some of the less colorful was "yes; this make sense.  Because Peter Parker got bitten by a radioactive spider who came back a week later and handed him some sweet web-shooting bracelets.  That is just how these things go.  Because draining his web"-shooters should automatically reduce his vertical leap. 
 
 
Anyway, as has been suggested before, "Unified Power," applied to enough slots, will eventually get you to the rebate point that Elemental Control used to get you, but it removes all the hoops, so now you can apply it to two powers.   Not gonna stop using EC, though, and you aren't going to get all of your powers modified because one got adjusted. You will with Multipower, though. 
 
 
Gid dinged right it is!  More than anything, this is the biggest use I have for it these days. 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
Agreed again! 
 
Dude, even an inch of stretching, held as a surprise, can totally change a tactical situation, plus the fun things you can do: ersatz Swinging, climbing, grabs and holds.  By far, though, my favorite use of just a small amount of Stretching is "Surprise! Looks like _one of us_ is in melee range!" 
 
 
 
That!  That right there!  Cascade skills are the thing for heroic or realistic type games, and I heartily encourage someone who does not write the rules (because I cannot imagine anyone thinking we need a longer rule book) to give this a try.  You might go around and gather your players' skills and create your own lists for them to have when playing, though I would recommend asking your players something like "pick 5 skills that fall under that heading that you want at that level, then pick either two each from each of those that you want at (some lower level)" or even  "then pick ten skills under that main heading you want at (some lower level), and possibly go to 15 total on a tertiary level. 
 
Shoot me, but I think that as an exercise, it would be _awesome_!  Of course, I forgot to take all of my blood pressure and heart meds today, so I am feeling much better than I have in months, with energy and excitement to spare, so bear with my enthusiasm, please. 
 
I think it would be fun to do; seriously.  I also think it would be a pain the rear to play, because there will be some aspect of police work that you or the player did not consider, and now he doesn't know how to do that. 
 
So here is an alternative:  pick X amount of skills that believe comprise your specialty in 'police work.'. Pick Y amount that you are only passingly familiar with.  The first set will be at the level of your Police work skill; the second set will be at 8 or less; all other aspects will be at (some agreeable midpoint).  This way, the player gets to specify both his strengths and his weaknesses, but he won't necessarily come up shot in the clutch because he had to create a specific list of everything he knows. 
 
When Police work goes up, they all go up by the same amount, or, just to keep it lively, all but one from each group goes up with it (players choice, of course).  You get a degree of granularity (possibly with increasing variation), and you are still reasonably close to Hero-normal. 
 
Just thoughts, and I would love to see someone try them.  I likely won't, because I took a lot of inspiration from Marc Miller and don't often play a skills-heavy game: buy skills for things that you do exceptionally well, and we will do characteristics rolls or what-have-you for things that you just know or know about.  (in supers, anyway). 
 
 
 
 
Right up until you are looked in a windowless room, anyway. 
 

 
I  agree with the sentiment, thought, that skills are priced a bit high, at least for a superhero game.  That is why I tend to (see above). 
 
For heroic games, I find them to be about right, and I don't go o super-granular (like that guy that wants me to tell him what five parts of my job I suck at).   I run them tighter than I do in supers, but I also keep in mind that for normals, skills kind of _are_ their "special powers," so the pricing seems more fair.  Besides, I fold a few things into them, 
 
Even then, though, this is a conversation about value for your points, and points balance because costs are similar and values are not.  It doesn't make one of them wrongly"-costed, though.  Still, because the skill system in Hero is so fascinatingly devoid of explanation, the best thing I can suggest is selecting a level of breadth that you are comfortable with: woodcraft instead of survival, msybe: I can survive, build a fire, hunt game, skin it and tan the hide, and build a log cabin.  I can dig a well, read the seasons in tree bark, and the weather by the turn of the leaves.  I can walk without leaving a trail, and am unimpeded by underbrush.  I can craft a jug from tree bark and a canoe from deerskin.
 
That sort of thing. 
 
 
 
 
Sorry; wrong quote. 
 
 
 
That's the quote.  And honestly, I feel that stating precisely that would be far, far better that saying "use the most expensive build" and then demonstrably violating it a few dozen times in the rules ever was. 
 
It encourages the new player or GM to get comfortable with the rules-comfortable enough to identify a 'cheaty build' - and provides actionable advice: you make a build that does the thing, but it should have a reasonable price tag.  It also doesn't say hat this price tag has to be the most expensive option.  It just works better all around. 
 
Still, there is one more thought,  but not right here. 
 
 
 
Right here. 
 
I think we should _encourage _ chesty builds, at least for a while.  We _all_ did it during our learning phase.  We did it because it was _fun_!  We all _loved_ coming up with something outlandish (I once wiped out all my friends with a super I had built on eighty-eight points.   It was _awesome_!) 
 
I can one-hundred percent truthfully say that if it wasn't for various challenges from Jim like 'we are doing a free for all tonight.  You have one hundred fifty points to make a character, and we start fighting in twenty minutes, " that there is very little chance that I would know this system the way I do, or that I would have even been interested in learning it so deeply.  (I have to say that we never really appreciated Jim as the GM he was.  So much of what he did that we thought of as silly, or copping out because he had forgotten to prepare something, or tons of other things-- he had been gone for over a decade before I really understood how much he had taught me about not just learning a gsmr, but understanding it and running it in a way that worked for everyone-players and characters-at the table that nihht- about not just _knowing_ the rules, but totally _underdstanding_ them-- not as instructions, but as a favorite piece of fiction, to be enjoyed over and over.  Jim was awesome, and I didn't know it in time to properly thank him. 
 
 
Anyway, you can't really _see_ some of the more clever "cheaty builds" until you know exactly what you are looking for.  Or, as my gransfather once said, you don't look anywhere you don't already know a fella could hide. 
 
There are a number of reasons-famiarity with the system being topmost-that I feel we should _encoursge_ cheaty builds, even if only as a fun exercise with which one could do a battle Royale and show off to his friends. 
 
I also think it might be helpful to explain that this type of build can be harmful to a campaign, where not every player is going to be as savy as any other player, and mention that learning to "cheat" on a legendary scale can both demonstrate the problems with such builds, and help lewnr how to look for them.  Whatever else we might do, I think we should encourage it as a 'special ourpose' sort of event that is catahrticc every now and again. 
 
I still enjoy doing it once in a while, and I have ebeen playing a long time.  I learned so many things that way: Crain End (old rules) was stupid cheap; drain Recovery was more brutal than Driain Body, and for the same price.  Nothing goes with T-form like a nice round of Drain: Bidy, though.  Desolid: usable as Attack takes anyone completely out of combat, instantly.  +10 Recovery usable as attack makes you everyone's favorite teammate. 
 
These aren't particularly cheaty, mind you.  They re just a list of some of my favorites from way back when. 
 
 
 
Exactly. 
 
 
 
You're welcome, Sir. 
 
Always delighted to make an OG Champions playtester happy.   
 
 
 
 
Well, you know I didn't.   
 
Hinestly, I would have loved to see the new ideas keep coming in the Champions II and Champions III type format.    You know: here are a few new ideas, and we have some revamps if you have found X to be too troublesme.  A few disads, and we thought you might like these new disadvantages.  That sort of thing.
 
Maybe one a year, and after 5 of them, release a new core rules that is the original rules with the new material worked in.  I know me well enough to tell you that I would buy bith: I couldn't wait five years for the new edition, so I would buy the updates as they came about, then I would buy the new edition to have it all organized so I wouldn't be flipping throu so many books to find what I want.  Your core system wouldn't change: you would just have more powers, Disadvantages, limitations, and such to play with.
 
4e got some mileage like that out of Hero System Almanac, but it hasn't really been done since.  One could say the APGs were kind of like that, but I read them essentially as 'here are some pre-built powers you might like" with some light advice scattered about. 
 
 
 
 
Oh, I agree.  I very much agree.  But as I said: it was an example of something that we have all seen right here.  I chose this example specifically because I was confident it didn't involve anyone here; I wasn't trying to call anyone out. 
 
Barely related note: has anyone seen Filksinger since Red October shut down?  I miss that guy. 
 
 
 
 
 
This isn't even an edition complaint.  This happened in the age of chat rooms!  When we all had free internet because those AOL disks just kept coming.... 
 
At the very latest, they could have been playing 4e.  This was a the game is the mechanics / the game is what you do debate: which is more important?  Creatively solving the problem with the resources and mechanics at hand, or mandating every mechanic be adhered to at the expense of a creative solution debate.  This was the birth of 'Powe skill' kind of debate, where we created a catch-all to make certain that no possible action goes uncharged for. 
 
 
 
 
That is because it _is_ clever.  It is players using their skull meat to plumb the depths of possibility, and teaching themselves how the elements of the game can be combined to interesting effect.  I cannot discourage that practice as an exercise because it has too much value as a method of learning. 
 
 
 
 
Also agreed.  It should not be allowed in a "regular" game, but I still think a nice throw-away munchkins cage match can inspire a lot of self-directed learning. 
 
 
 
Ditto on most counts. 
 
 
 
There is a guy on this board who might want to compare notes with you.  He is currently running a HERO Star Wars game.
 
 
 
 
You still remember how much fun it was at the time, though, right?  Who are we to suggest depriving new players of those sensations when there is so much to be learned from the doing? 
 
 
 
You lost me there, Sir. 
 
 
 
Really?  You never at any point saw character creation as its own game, and sat down to see how much you could get for some minimal amount of points?  Not once?  Or wondered about a particular combination of powers or moddlifiers- never wondered enough to just try it and see what happened? 
 
 
 
Similar here, but that is primarily because I am browsing for things I might want to add to my already-extant game; I have zero quibbles about just ignoring rules changes or new constructs with which I disagree. 
 
 
 
Agreed completely. 
 
 
 

The "you have to pay for everything" approach is what kept me away from online HERO discussions for years. It was just so far removed from my way of doing things, and would make the game into such a chore to me, that I just stayed out of online HERO discussions entirely. Showing up with my minimalist designs just didn't seem worthwhile in the face of giant, detailed character postings that seemed to be the standard everyone adhered to. (Whereas with Traveller I just needed to stay away from the gearheads and their starship design discussions. 😦 )
 
Some of that did come in with 4th Edition, and then more with the later 4e products when character statblocks started getting bigger and more detailed, but to me it really showed itself with the removal of Package Bonuses with the release of 5e, and then it accelerated into 6e with the removal of Elemental Controls. The system moved steadily away from trusting the GM and players and toward trusting the official rules as The Final Word which could only be altered with great care by your local professional Authorized HERO System Service Technician. (I kid, but sometimes the fans' discussions and many of the questions to Steve Long sure seemed to spring from that viewpoint even moreso than the rules changes.)
 
 
Great example! Until I encountered the online HERO fanbase, I'd thought it was normal to use the bits of the HERO System that you felt were right for your game and leave the rest behind. So, if it made sense for your campaign not to use the Skills System in a detailed way, and instead rely mostly on PS:whatever that was fine and certainly in the spirit of Champions 1e-3e. 🤷‍♂️
 
Obviously, it's always been perfectly fine to me when a user of the rules takes a maximalist view of things and designs incredibly detailed character statblocks. I admire the thought and cleverness that goes into those designs. It's just nice to see a more relaxed approach make a return as a legitimate and accepted choice. It'd be great if someday the published materials made it clear that either way of doing things is equally good and equally supported.

I did play champions, but I mostly GM heroic level games, and this usually had me ignoring powers, but paying close attention to stats and point totals. I saw it as my job as GM to present problems for the players to solve. Granularity of skills in later editions looked like inflation and a legalistic point sink. 

Ahh the Late Steve Goodman. He was a regular at Hero games and was famous for rules hacks. He played more Fantasy Hero than Champions, but he was a member of The Guardians. Very chill guy and a font of information. I’ll raise a shot glass of Glenlivet in his memory. 

Technically, to be a doctor, you need KS: appropriate field, such as KS: Medicine.
 
Even in the real world, that is all you need to be a qualified medical doctor.
 
The Perk would be a lisence to practice, which you only need to practice, and even then, only if your GM deels you should pay points for it.  Truthfully, I dont know how one could define PS: Medical Doctor that isnt covered under KS: Medical Doctor.  All I can think of is business-related things and scheduling, and typically, there is staff to handle that.
 
Either way, though, your point is well-understood: 4e,qas the point where skills became lind of a mess, owing to the combination of looser (or free-form, if you will) implementation and then leaving it up to,individual groups to define thw skills and what sub-skills were or were not umbrellaed by the Skill:  does cooking include open fire _and_ pan-frying?   Boiling _and_ baking?  Does Baking include pasties, or just meats and casseroles?  What about smoking meats to prwserve them?  Is that under cooking, or is that a separate skill?  Or is it a knowledge skill that combines with the professional skill of "cook?"
 
And as we went forward, we embraced that mess and leaned into it hard.
 
I am am for open skills:  define a new skill and pay for it, but I think it might have helped to stop the divide at Characteristic-based and Knowledge-based, and let the KS/PS separation just die.  If a player wants his "skill" to be likitwd in some way- perhaps "academic knowledge only" or "learned by rote," then let him take a small limitation on the Skill (the horror!) to represent that.
 
Another option is to get rid of familarity as it's own thing.  Yes; it was and continues to be an interesting idea, and so far as I know, unique to HERO.  Why not just assume that a Skill level of 8- means "Familiarity?"  As opposed to an in-depth knowledge, I mean.
 
Yes; you are correct: what about Transport Familiarity? 
 
Well, what about it?  As I said, so far as I know (again: just within my limited scope of experience), other games seem to do extremely well without this construct, and for most of my HERO career, I have never seen it used in any way that wasn't a points vacuum first, and an important mechanic for the setting second.
 
The typical construct is "I see you want to buy 'street racing,'  but you haven't bought Transport Familiarity with any kind of car yet.  What kind of car do you want to be able to street race?  Okay, muscle cars is cool, but remember, you can't drive the company can until you buy a TF: Vans.  Oh, and specify automatic, stick, or ODT transmissions.  Yes; they drive differently.  No; you'd never really know the difference between an ODT and an Automatic as more than the difference from car to another, but they are different, so pony up."
 
Currently, for 25 points, I can make a guy who breathes fire and levitate in the air.  For forty points, I can let him fly a bit and do 2d6RKA- with a Ultra multipower, I can have him do 3d6 or fly pretty well.
 
For _fifty_ points, I can make a guy who can drive some cars real good, and others not so much.  It is not necessary.  I have long suspected the whole point is to slow the rate of character improvement buy slurping away a proportion if earned experience on prerequisiste hoops through which he must pay to jump.
 
If you want to control the rate if development, work up a leveking system for the campaign or let the players know up-front that "hey, XPs are going to be a little harder to come by in this campaign.  Are we all good with that?"
 
Of course, neither suggestion can address the skills-breadth issue, but they do get rid of some things that for a lot of folks has been nothing but a caution-based points-vacuum anyway.
 
With the right combinatiin of advantages and limitations (nit permissible on skills without special permission), you can blow a hold in a bank vault and make off with milliins for fewer points that the skills needed to earn 50K a year.  It does not _matter_  what can or cannit be modeled via the system (which could be modeled via "skill do this" and limitaions to exempt certain elements- such as the 'manual skills only' or 'academic knowledge only' examples mentioned above).
 
Fantasy games that require TF: horses always make me recollect an anecdote I heard in college.  Allegedly, there was a polish-langauage dictionary took a no-nonsense approach to its job as a handy rederence for things unfamiliar.  Supposedly, it contained many entries like the following:
 
Horse.  Everyone knows what a horse is.
 
Same with a feudal Europe styled fantasy:  even a peasant knows horses can be overworked, must be collee after work, can sprint only briefly, can eat certain grasses and not others, etc.  It makes more sense to have a character who _doesn't_ know this take a limitation:  physical limitation: "what's a horse?!"
 
Yes: the standard answer is "well that should be under everyman skills!" and You are _right_!  But it so very rarely is.  I am willing to bet I could open one of Steve's fantasy books- genre, world, or NPCs- and find someone from some middle earth analogue who has TF:horses.
 
I won an auction some,years back for a spare copy of  Fantasy HERO companion to give a friend.  Inside of it were two pieces of looseleaf notebook paper that had been pressed into service as character sheets.  Each of them had TF: Horses.  One had TF: Chariots.  The other had TF: wagons.
 
That is when I really started thinking about the "value" of familiarity.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Yeah- kinda....
 
I mean, I know where you are coming from (I think; forgive any erroneous presumption, please).  I think following the traditional "if it is worth points, it comes up in play" helps put a stop to that:  "Tobasco!  My only weakness!  How do they know?  How do they always know?!"
Though the GURPS "Quirks" thing works reasonably well, too; we have had a couple of discussions about that:  "Okay, these are more "role play required traits" than mechanics. But I will give you a point apiece to a maximum of five points for as many as you want; if you fail to consistently role play these things, you lose the points.  Agreed?"
 
It"s a pretty tidy way to kind of wrap all those "but I think it would be interesting to play a character with X" where X isn't seriously worth calling a limitation.
 
The diminishing returns thing on Limitations seems to work,fairly well for my groups, but I have heard horror stories about people wanting two points for a missing finger (because a hand is worth 10) or having 6 Hunteds and 6 crippling phobias, or that a penchant for a particular brand of socks was in fact Unusual Looks and worth 15 pts or that you should be abke to take CVK twice because you also have a code against doing it on accident, too, or that the bone-stock 10 COM was unusual looks because of how strikingly normal it was, or that hay fever was debilitating in unfathomable ways.....
 
I got lucky.  The worst I had was a player who, during Char Gen, needed fifteen minutes to figure out that EGO Attack was a,power he could buy and not a disadvantage that affected him.  The same guy couldn't wrapbhis head around UNTIL, either:
Okay, we are going to lay low and wait for UNTIL.
 
Until what?
 
What?
 
Until _what_?
 
What?
 
We are waiting.
 
Right.
 
Until _what_?
 
Just UNTIL.
 
Just until _what_?  Until _what_?!
 
Just UNTIL!
 
Something is going tobhaooen, right?
 
Right.
 
And we are waiting until it happens, right?
 
Right.
 
And how Will know when that has happened.
 
Because UNTIL arrived.
 
_and how do we that until is here_?
 
Because we will see them; they are looking for us.
 
Who is looking for is?
 
UNTIL is looking for us!
 
Until _when_?  Until they stop?
 
I dont see what is so hard about this!  You guys have contacted UNTIL.  They are on the way-
 
Who is on the way?!  What is this secret?  Is it screw with the new guy night?!
 
UNTIL is looking for you!
 
Wait!  Wait a \%#$×( minute!  Until is a _person_?!
 
Pealsbof laughter all aroubd the table.  
 
GM:  okay, wait; let me back up a bit..,,,
 
Yep.  That was the worst I had to-- oh; no.  Sorry; wait... That was me.  Both times, actually.  That was the worst Jim hd to deal with.
 
The worst I had to deal with was Davien.....
 
Davien left shortly after 4e debuted, but I will never forget his attempt to ravage the new skill rules to turn in a character with Knowledge Skill: everything, professional skill: everything, and Familiarity: everything and everywhere.
 
I rejected it out of hand, and he resubmitted it with PS: Do Stuff, KS: Know Stuff, and had ditches the familarity.  If even that guy cant find a compelling reason to keep familiarity, I certainly won T ever be so lucky.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Sure.
 
That's the brilliance at the core of Champions - you don't buy what you do or how you do it, but what you accomplish. 
 
Flying across town, whether eagle form or jet pack or self-TK, is just flight.
 
If some other aspect of to the special effect is something you want - like rending talons or TKing someone else - you buy those things, too, or they're glossed over, ignored or explained away.
 
 
And that was, like, 1981.  Other games were all "should armor deflect or reduce damage? How can multiclassing work better?  Classes or skills? Can I play a Balrog?" And Champions just casually cracked how to do a universal system.
 

The Champions Character Creation Cards would be ideal for short cut characters like this.  I think one of the original use cases was to put the cards together on a photocopier, made a copy, and use that as your makeshift character sheet!

Big Blue Book was the dawn of 4e.
 
[And why did I start typing a response about the "Blue Book" from the first Basic D&D?]

Looks like we're turning to our favorite subject, "What's wrong with HERO and how I'd fix it."
 
This morning on the long drive to the office I was thinking about HERO (as one does) and the RPG industry in general (again, totally normal thing to do -- I don't know why you're looking at me funny) and I started to draw a hasty conclusion (something no one online ever does) and wondered if it was worth anything.
 
Hypothesis: Tabletop RPGs with enduring popularity tend to be beautiful messes.
 
White box D&D, Champions, Shadowrun, D6 System...all were games that did something new and neat with easily digestible basics -- but there were major flaws in design and/or presentation. All became popular enough to get several attempts by different designers and publishers at fixing their flaws, but those attempts don't seem to have boosted their popularity (aside from D&D, which is in many ways its own thing due not least to making it into the mainstream, with a mainstream budget for much of its life).
 
Maybe, from a hobby perspective, what works are games a hobbyist can learn in an afternoon but which cry out for tinkering. As long as there's something neat about them that provides a compelling enough reason to tinker with them and want to share their tinkering with friends and family.
 
Maybe that's why beautiful, orderly designs with great execution like EABA get lost in the waves.
 
And maybe that's one reason why making HERO System more orderly and logical didn't yield more customers.
 
Sure, there are many reasons for HERO's current situation; we're all familiar with them. But maybe this is part of it too?

If you want a Fuzion-like system that is open licensed (via the OGL 1.0a), the Action! System is what you're looking for.  It was written by Mark Arsenault and published by Gold Rush Games.  It sits at a midpoint between Fuzion and Hero.  
 
The core rules can be had from archive.org:  

https://archive.org/details/action-core-free
 
They've been available at various times from DrivethruRPG, but not at the moment.  There are a bunch of extras that go with it that I think are all free, but I can't find through Google searching at the moment. 
 
 

If you want a Fuzion-like system that is open licensed (via the OGL 1.0a), the Action! System is what you're looking for.  It was written by Mark Arsenault and published by Gold Rush Games.  It sits at a midpoint between Fuzion and Hero.  
 
The core rules can be had from archive.org:  

https://archive.org/details/action-core-free
 
They've been available at various times from DrivethruRPG, but not at the moment.  There are a bunch of extras that go with it that I think are all free, but I can't find through Google searching at the moment. 
 
 

The HERO System puts falling and movement into slightly different sets of rules, and the interaction between them isn't always straightforward.  
 
1 hex of Flight will let you hover; I'd rule that it would let you float safely to the ground as well.  Because I dislike "advantage stacking" (i.e. 1 point worth of a power with +6 1/2 in Advantages) I'd go with, say, 10m/5" of Flight.  Put a Trigger on it, and Only For Preventing Falling Damage, and (in 6e) the Gliding (-1) Limitation.  For me as GM, that would be enough.  
 
If the "general you" want more rigor, 120 meters or 60" of Flight/Gliding spread out across a full Turn would be enough to exactly counteract gravity.  120m/60" divided by the character's SPD would "technically" be enough, but I'm not sure I'd push the issue too much.  A character with 6 SPD could spend 20 points for the base Power, with whatever for the Trigger, let's wave our hands and say 30 Active Points, and -2 for the Limitations to make it 10 points.  I'd wave my hands a bit more and make it cost that regardless of a character's SPD.  30 Active and 10 Real points to ignore all falling damage?  That doesn't sound like too much or too little to me.  The one in my paragraph above is half the amount, and while I might like to see it cost more than 5 points, 10 is enough.

The HERO System puts falling and movement into slightly different sets of rules, and the interaction between them isn't always straightforward.  
 
1 hex of Flight will let you hover; I'd rule that it would let you float safely to the ground as well.  Because I dislike "advantage stacking" (i.e. 1 point worth of a power with +6 1/2 in Advantages) I'd go with, say, 10m/5" of Flight.  Put a Trigger on it, and Only For Preventing Falling Damage, and (in 6e) the Gliding (-1) Limitation.  For me as GM, that would be enough.  
 
If the "general you" want more rigor, 120 meters or 60" of Flight/Gliding spread out across a full Turn would be enough to exactly counteract gravity.  120m/60" divided by the character's SPD would "technically" be enough, but I'm not sure I'd push the issue too much.  A character with 6 SPD could spend 20 points for the base Power, with whatever for the Trigger, let's wave our hands and say 30 Active Points, and -2 for the Limitations to make it 10 points.  I'd wave my hands a bit more and make it cost that regardless of a character's SPD.  30 Active and 10 Real points to ignore all falling damage?  That doesn't sound like too much or too little to me.  The one in my paragraph above is half the amount, and while I might like to see it cost more than 5 points, 10 is enough.

I sont know if any bozed sets still exist complete on the open market (Chris Goodwin and I opened mine-  forgotten in storage for a few decades until I stumbled across them- two Christmases ago), for all I know mine might have been the last surving complete sets.  However, you can pick off individuals of the original metal Champions miniatures on eBay and other sites-- usually costume painted, but that's not too hard to fix.
 
However, those are the Champions from first to third edition, so they might not suit your tastes.  Well, that, and Grenadier were never thevminis you _really- wanted back then; you wanted Ral Partha and you knew it. 
 
As has been commented above, HERO Forge has diddly-squat options for creating supers unless you're either an "everyone in spandex and no details!" or "no one in spandex of any kind! A leather jacket is my costume!" Sort of person.  I think most of us fall in between those two points.
 
 

Gurps Old-school Renaisance.
 
GOR
 
I anticipate no issues.

https://www.dicebreaker.com/categories/roleplaying-game/news/pathfinder-call-of-cthulhu-rpgs-sell-out-dnd-ogl-backlash

This was from yesterday:
 
 

[  sorry. ,I was working,on a very unrefreshed window.]

And WotC blinks: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1439-ogl-1-0a-creative-commons
 
 

How about malignant?  Tumors aren't evil, but they can sure cause a lot of trouble, and even kill you. 
 
I think the best we can hope for is for corporations to be benign.  I'm not sure we can say Hasbro is. 

I used Drain STR (arms) or Drain Running (legs), both going against normal PD and recovering per month.  
 
(The character was called Greenstick...)
 

I'm aware Hero Games will likely never release any part of the HERO System under any kind of open license, and I'm okay with that.  But, is there any way Hero Games could support the effort by Paizo, Kobold Press, and others, with the ORC?