Chris Goodwin

I've been playing Champions in 6th and it's been growing on me.  If I had to pick a second favorite, it would probably be 6th.  

I know your favorite edition is Champions 3e while mine is 6e but I read your post and pretty much agree with all of it. Having 6e as my preferred does not mean I agree with everything that was done (I dont).

If you’re a GM who likes to play out the more real world byproducts of certain powers. (Without worrying about strict point values)  Flash attacks are also very noticeable at distance triggering possible Perception rolls. (I had a player use one as a distress flare once) and can have a lingering after effect on the victim such as seeing spots for a time. Darkness would do neither of these effects. For me it’s all about the special effect.
 
     P.S.   Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Chris:
 
Thank you _so much_ for posting this!  It's nice to see my groups aren't alone in this.    (I know: it's not your favorite thing).  On the plus side, I don't have to fret over typing up an electronic version of our house rules on vehicles / mechs / robots / etc, because that is almost spot-on to how we have done it since we first learned to play: it's a universal creator; create with it!  (though in all fairness, it's a bit buggy for ships-- water or space-- unless you want to buy DEF per location then build custom hit location charts).

I've been working on some house rules, and one in particular has led me down a path, to wonder why we need both a Darkness and a Flash Power.  For starters, both of those Powers have the same base cost for the initial Sense Group (5 for targeting, 3 for nontargeting), and the same additional cost to add one Sense or Sense Group (targeting: +10 per group / +5 per sense; nontargeting +5 per group / +3 per sense).  
 
If you were to take No Area (-1/4) and Usable As Attack on Darkness, you would effectively have something like a Flash that lasts as long as it is maintained for.  In fact, Usable As Attack specifically calls out Darkness as its use case.  
 
So... why not combine them into a single Power?  My tentative name for it is Obscure.  Ranged, Single Target, Constant.  Senses and sense groups are as per the current common cost for Darkness and Flash.   The character can buy up the power level -- duration?  Intensity?  I'm not sure what.  Maybe both?  5 points per +1 to either.  Costs END to maintain; when the user stops spending END (which could be immediately), Obscure stops affecting the target at the end of that Segment, +1 Segment per +1 to power level.  An Obscure bought to 0 END Cost would require some way for the target to stop being affected, as per normal for these kinds of Powers.
 
Flash Defense would be renamed to Sensory Protection, and would protect against Obscure.  If a character has enough Sensory Protection to reduce the Intensity to 0, then instead of being completely blinded (or whatever), they instead take a PER penalty equal to half the Intensity (the penalty reduced by 1 per additional point of SP), and those penalties go away completely when the Obscure drops.  If the target has some Sensory Protection, but not enough to reduce it to 0, then each point reduces the number of Segments they're affected. 
 
Example: a target with 10 points of Sight Group Sensory Protection is hit with an intensity 12 Sight Group Obscure; when the attacker stops maintaining it, they're still blinded for an additional 2 Segments.  Another target with 15 points of Sight Group SP would instead take a (Intensity 12 / 2 = 6; SP 15 - Intensity 12 = 3; 6 - 3 = 3)  -3 penalty to Sight PER while the Obscure is maintained, and none at all when it drops.  
 
Comments?  Thoughts?  

Oh, hey.  We have Entangle with the option to block senses as well.  Instead of that, you'd link Obscure to it if that's what you wanted.  If you made your Entangle Costs END to Maintain, then the Obscure would automatically act as above.  If you didn't, then the Obscure would completely drop when the Entangle is broken.  
 
And you could apply the Instant Limitation to Obscure to essentially make it into almost-Flash.  (Side note: why is Flash still a diced effect, count the BODY?)

The house rule I was looking at was noting that some Powers (primarily the Mental Powers) are Instant, but the user can spend END to keep them active at the same level, so they're more like a Constant Power.  Some other Instant Powers have the option to cost END to maintain, and at least a couple (Aid and Drain in particular) have an either/or kind of thing between that and their normal fade rate. 
 
My thought, and the house rule, was what if we broke that out as a separate duration type.  The general notion is that it applies to the Mental Powers, Aid, and Drain, and then I thought, what about Flash?  And the instant realization that if you do that, you almost have Darkness, and you can make Darkness into a sort-of Flash by making it Usable As Attack.  Then I checked the costs of Darkness and Flash... and here we are. 
 

Works for me.
 
Honestly, after Change Environment came along, I always felt that Darkness should have been folded into that.  However, earlier editions weren't fully-priviledged to do more than tinker with SFX and various environmental vulnerabilities.  With the newer editions allowing CE to have mechanical effects against characters, I find Darkness even more suited to be just another CE build.  
 
However, there's no reason that, given the ability to buy up the duration, it wouldn't work just as well as a "kind of long-lasting Flash."
 
 

I've been working on some house rules, and one in particular has led me down a path, to wonder why we need both a Darkness and a Flash Power.  For starters, both of those Powers have the same base cost for the initial Sense Group (5 for targeting, 3 for nontargeting), and the same additional cost to add one Sense or Sense Group (targeting: +10 per group / +5 per sense; nontargeting +5 per group / +3 per sense).  
 
If you were to take No Area (-1/4) and Usable As Attack on Darkness, you would effectively have something like a Flash that lasts as long as it is maintained for.  In fact, Usable As Attack specifically calls out Darkness as its use case.  
 
So... why not combine them into a single Power?  My tentative name for it is Obscure.  Ranged, Single Target, Constant.  Senses and sense groups are as per the current common cost for Darkness and Flash.   The character can buy up the power level -- duration?  Intensity?  I'm not sure what.  Maybe both?  5 points per +1 to either.  Costs END to maintain; when the user stops spending END (which could be immediately), Obscure stops affecting the target at the end of that Segment, +1 Segment per +1 to power level.  An Obscure bought to 0 END Cost would require some way for the target to stop being affected, as per normal for these kinds of Powers.
 
Flash Defense would be renamed to Sensory Protection, and would protect against Obscure.  If a character has enough Sensory Protection to reduce the Intensity to 0, then instead of being completely blinded (or whatever), they instead take a PER penalty equal to half the Intensity (the penalty reduced by 1 per additional point of SP), and those penalties go away completely when the Obscure drops.  If the target has some Sensory Protection, but not enough to reduce it to 0, then each point reduces the number of Segments they're affected. 
 
Example: a target with 10 points of Sight Group Sensory Protection is hit with an intensity 12 Sight Group Obscure; when the attacker stops maintaining it, they're still blinded for an additional 2 Segments.  Another target with 15 points of Sight Group SP would instead take a (Intensity 12 / 2 = 6; SP 15 - Intensity 12 = 3; 6 - 3 = 3)  -3 penalty to Sight PER while the Obscure is maintained, and none at all when it drops.  
 
Comments?  Thoughts?  

It wouldn't work with previous editions before 4th. They had an extra step for Reduced Endurance between Active and Real calculations.

Earlier editions seemed to rely more on GM judgement. Later editions have just become numerating every screw and nail holding the place together.

This is me too.  The only reason I recently leaned toward 5thR was I can actually get dead tree books. 
 
For the secondaries, they are fantastic in eliminating what we called the "6 Million Dollar Man" syndrome.  The figured's gave you a general baseline to reflect the minimum structure to support the attribute.  It may not have been perfect, but it far better IMO than the big nadda of 6th. 
 
It is like the stun multiple for KA's, we had misread (or something) and we ran it as 1d6-1 giving you a 0-5 multiplier.  Which fell perfectly into a cinematic simulation of something that has been known in reality.  Body was the physical damage and Stun was the shock/stun damage.  We had been trained that immediately after a high stress/adrenaline pumped event that threatened injury you should check each other for injury.  Because it is not only possible, but will happen that a person has been stabbed, shot or has a piece of rebar sticking in them and they do not notice and never felt it.  Zero stun.  Bam!!  It has also happened where a person takes a relatively minor hit and gets knocked out or dazed.  x5 Stun.  Bam!!!
 
When I got introduced to Champions in 82, it was the only system that actually modeled that little speck of reality into its cinematic action. 
Not to mention how the integral inclusion of Knockback into the combat was pure awesome.  Whenever I read a new Supers/Anime/Pulp'ish Action RPG one of the first things I look for is how they handle Knockback.....
 
Ramble over.......
 

Don't sweat it; Amigo. 
 
I have 12 siblings, put myself through years of school working with the public, and work 70+ hours every week (I am on break right now, as a matter of fact).  The upshot of all that is that I don't have any feelings left!    go ahead; cuss me like a dog!  If I like you, I like you.  An honest opinion isn't going to change that.  ;). I'm just not that fickle. 
 
 
 
We don't disagree as terribly much as you might think.  My contention isn't so much that new powers are _bad_; it is a matter of how necessary they are as their own thing if they can be relatively simply created with advantages and limitations on existing powers.  With that said, I _love_ new modifiers!  I find modifiers to be the best tool in any version of HERO, and the modifiers are _the_ key to the flexibility that makes HERO truly generic and truly universal.  Your other option is to create a unique entry for every single power. 
 
That is at the heart of my quibble with Instant Change as a build of T-form, but I have to get back to work in a moment--and really have no interest in getting into that discussion here anyway. 
 
 
 
 
I've heard a lot of people say "Avengers plus Spiderman," actually.  I can't say for certain if it's true, as I don't (to this day) know enough about the source material other than Spiderman (who doesn't know about Spiderman, really?  :D) and that the idea that the Hulk and a bow-and-arrow guy are somehow on equal level with each other. 
 
Brief aside: in a discussion with Hugh et others, comments were made about the way I scale things in my games to allow disparate power levels in characters be on the same team and still have something to do.  For those who might still wonder where I got the idea, it's from the idea of the Hulk and a freaking _GOD_ standing shoulder to shoulder with an archer and a ninja....
 
Totally unequal in ability, no matter _how_ you balance the character sheets, but it's in the source material.  I like that the movie writers couldn't really wrap their heads around it either and had lots of side-quests for the archer and the ninja. 
 
Moving along; break's almost over. 
 
 
 
Ah yeah!   Thanks for that one! 
 
I had forgotten about that one; that is one of the few where we chunked our home brew and adopted it readily.  It was just faster and easier in game play. 
 
Also-
 
And this one I am almost proud of! - 
 
_I_ can name a character from the comics who has that!   I think.  Tell me if Sébastien Shaw is right.   It's been a long time, but another player back when I had my own GM who was wanting to emulate energy absorption claimed he was making a character inspired by Sébastien Shaw, who I _think_ was one of the X-Men....? 
 
Anyway: there's my surprise for the day! 
 
Me, too: anyone with the ability to copy powers.  I used to constantly boan that HERO still, several editions later, emulates this poorly.  "Power Pool" is the answer I am usually given, and yes: to a point, Power Pool works, so long as your pool is beg enough that everything you want to copy fits in it. 
 
Then you stop play, write up powers, do some math-  still, I will grant that in all cases, a way can be found to make it work, so let me rephrase that as "to this day, HERO _animates_ it poorly. 
 
I would love to see a nice simple" clone power" Power.. 
 
 
Apparently by setting aside some points and paying +1/4.   Closer to +1-1/4 at my table.  Your mileage may vary. 
 
 
My apologies, Chris; I wanted to address more, but I've got about 2 minutes left on break, so quick hits:
 
 
Never used disquise unless you wanted to doppelganger someone / thing. 
 
The core rules allow you to define everything about yourself for free;
 
I am an alien.  I am a dwarf.  I am ten feet tall.  I have wings.  I am shaped like a doughnut (yes: I know the word "toroid;"; it doesn't amuse me as much.) I am made of living stone.  No problem.  All acceptable: all free.  Why?  Because they are, after a fashion, the special effects of whi/what you are.  You don't have to have powers or disadvantages to just "have wings" or be "made of organic steel." 
 
So what's the difference between being a person and being a dog?  In game terms, the powers and disadvantages you select are the only differences.
 
Tou want to play a character who is amorphous?  Fine. Nothing in the rules mandates I bonus or penalize you for that. (that's a thing that some GMs seem to have a hard time getting wrapped around; remember the one-armed adventurer thread? ). You want to be a character who is polymorphous?  Go for it. 
 
If you want those shapes to provide powers, buy the powers and changing into a dolphin is the special effect.
 
Now if you specify that the powers are only available in X shape, we have to get specific because you are imposing a limitation on your power. How long does it take to change shape? Is it difficult?  How long can you maintain a shape? Things like that help us to derive the value of "only in X ID." 
 
But let's move on: the old discussion when  5e was new taught us all that the intricate details of the various camps around Shape Shift.  It's one of those things that some of us "just did" because a player wanted to do it before there were formal rules.   Once there were formal rules, we didn't like them, so we don't use them. Every edition of the book tells us that's perfectly legal. 
 
 
Custom. Limitation.  The first player who did it (me, actually: I wanted to build a flare gun) got approved for "not mental" because the GM was in a hurry to get the game underway. 
 
We later revised it, using the 2e "basws on ECV" advantage as a guide.  GM decided that "based on Per" followed a sort of suit and ruled that a - 0 limitation (as there are pros as well as cons to having your illusion be visible to all) called "Projected Image" would result in a publicly-visible image.
 
Later another player wanted to use -  sorry out of time:  shorter veraion: someone else had the idea to make noise Illusions instead of sound illusions: a one-way sort of telepathy used to drive people crazy. 
 
Suddenly we had Televisions! 
 
Gotta run
 
Oh:
 
Yes. 
 
Exactly that. Apologies to both of you that it wasn't as obvious as I thought it would be. 
 

Just for the record, I would totally be on board with a 6e quickstart, or a 6e patterned on the 4e BBB, or a 6e boxed set a la 2e / early 3e.
 
I like 4e (and, to a slightly lesser extent, 2e and 3e) because those editions are all over my post-AD&D years.
 
A 5e presented more like the BBB or the HERO System Rulesbook would have been most welcome. It just came at a time in my life when a giant tome simply was not practical and therefore not welcome. 5eR even moreso.
 
6e? I can get behind all the rules changes if presented differently....except the decoupling of secondary characteristics. I know the logic of it, and I tried....I really did. It just turns out that it's one of those things I can't get past. Call it nostalgia, call it old dogs/new tricks....for whatever reason, it just isn't something I can embrace.
 
Despite that, I would fully support a new, beginner-friendly core book or even starter set...were it to be on offer. Because further splintering HERO just doesn't seem helpful at this point. The issues just aren't that big, in the end.

This is a rare case of disagreement with my good friend @Duke Bushido (and I honestly consider him a friend, and I hope this disagreement is calm, measured, and respectful!).   
 
I don't mind having new Powers when the situation seems to call for it.  Looking back through the first-gen Champions corebooks, it's easy to go down the Powers and Skills lists and see which comic book supers Peterson, MacDonald, et al, were thinking of when they included them.  Clinging, Entangle, Swinging.  Missile Deflection, Armor, high Strength, Mind Control.  Enhanced Senses, HKA, Regeneration.  Growth and Shrinking.  Stretching.  Invisibility and Force Wall.  Desolidification and Gliding.  Acrobatics, high DEX, Passive Sonar, and Physical Limitation: Blindness.  
 
High Strength, Armor, Flight, X-Ray Vision, Instant Change.  
 
I mean, I wasn't there, so I can't say that's how they went through and decided which Powers to include, but... it sure seems that way to me.   
 
Champions II had some new Powers:  Energy Absorption, Gadget Points, Light Illusions, Presence Defense, Reflection.  It's less easy to point to particular characters and see where they came from, unless (like I was) you were obsessed with the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and the DC Who's Who.  But, I can look at that list and see a character that was -- maybe? -- overlooked in the core rules.  
 
Martial Arts, Stealth, Detective Work, and...?   
 
Hey GM, how do I do this thing where a certain caped crusader (it's in lower case so I don't have to include the TM's, R's, Pat. Pendings, and so on) always seems to have the right nighttime-animal-named-but-not-themed gadget for the situation?  
 
There were a couple of other new entity types and other things you could buy, included in the Champions II supplement: bases, vehicles, computers, AIs, and the Mastermind Option.  
 
So... I mean, you can do shapeshifting with a high Disguise -- but the corebooks had Climbing and Clinging both, and Stealth and Invisibility, and Security Systems and Tunneling...
(Incidentally, how would you have done visible-light holographic images using just the first-gen corebooks without the supplements?  And Duke, I honestly also am not sure what you meant by unassigned Multipower -- it sounds like a Multipower with unspent points so that you can define slots in play?)  
 
(It's also fairly evident that Champions III, and to an extent Champions II as well, were developed at the same time Fantasy Hero was.  Looking through the FH 1e corebook, it's easy to point to source material and see what they were thinking of when they included the spell effects they did, and how those then went on to be included in the supplements.  Dispel (Neutralization in C III), Healing, Images (Light Illusions in C II), Suppress (Neutralization), Shapeshift (Multiform/Shapeshift in C III), Transform (Transformation Attack in C III), planar travel (the +1/2 Interdimensional advantage on Teleportation in C II).  Those were pretty obvious folds back into Champions.  Aid became its own thing in FH because it seemed that the obvious way to do it in Champions -- Characteristics bought Usable On Others -- wouldn't work in FH, because they didn't seem to want Characteristics as a spell effect, and it wasn't folded back into Champions via III.)

I'd rather just add a new Power and call it good (I liked Change Environment in particular, but also Dispel/Suppress, Healing, Multiform, Shapeshift, Transform, the Resurrection and Regrow Limbs adders for Healing and Regeneration), than to try to fiddle a Power into something that doesn't quite do it (the 5e Regeneration as Healing build, or Instant Change as Transform build).  I'm less happy with the X-into-Y decisions that were made with the edition changes:   Healing into Aid, Regeneration into Healing, Instant Change into Transform, Transfer into Aid+Drain, Suppress into Drain.  (If I were going to mess with Suppress I'd have kept it its own Power and folded Dispel into it; Dispel is more or less an instant, all-or-nothing Suppress.)
 
I even like new entity types -- Bases, Computer/AI, Followers/Agents, Vehicles, Spirits.  I'd like have seen Robots (C II p. 30) make it into 4th as well -- not (necessarily) a mech or a vehicle, but a non-sentient construct (STR, DEX, BODY, INT, DEF, SPD, maybe PRE).  I was less happy with the second-gen "vehicles are almost characters" idea -- I liked that, for instance, in Champions II you could buy vehicle gadgets -- ejection seats, fire extinguishers, electronic countermeasures, radio control -- with the same "pay a few points and call it good" notion, without having to overbuild a Power to do it.  (Our long-unseen board colleague James "GamingPhil" / "Gaming Philosopher" Jandebeur had an amazing piece called Incomplete Rules, saved on the Wayback Machine here, which would have obviated the need for most of the new entity types!  I've long thought that should have been an official part of the game in some capacity.)

Slots that are empty but paid for.  Honestly, at this point it can mean anything you want it to; our original idea was to put controlling parameters on it to prevent everyone from simply dumping everything into a pool and declaring they were building  baby Superman. 
 
When Champs 2 brought the official version, even while it went on to describe control costs and such, boiled down to "dump ever how many points you want and pay a +1/4 Advantage." 
 
Ignoring the homebrewws version (a variation of which we still use), "dump some points and pay +1/4; talk with your GM about using a skill roll to reconfigure mid-game" is remarkably easy create with the original 2e rules. 
 
Duke 
 
Who cannot be held responsible for any individual's beliefs. 
 
 

This is a rare case of disagreement with my good friend @Duke Bushido (and I honestly consider him a friend, and I hope this disagreement is calm, measured, and respectful!).   
 
I don't mind having new Powers when the situation seems to call for it.  Looking back through the first-gen Champions corebooks, it's easy to go down the Powers and Skills lists and see which comic book supers Peterson, MacDonald, et al, were thinking of when they included them.  Clinging, Entangle, Swinging.  Missile Deflection, Armor, high Strength, Mind Control.  Enhanced Senses, HKA, Regeneration.  Growth and Shrinking.  Stretching.  Invisibility and Force Wall.  Desolidification and Gliding.  Acrobatics, high DEX, Passive Sonar, and Physical Limitation: Blindness.  
 
High Strength, Armor, Flight, X-Ray Vision, Instant Change.  
 
I mean, I wasn't there, so I can't say that's how they went through and decided which Powers to include, but... it sure seems that way to me.   
 
Champions II had some new Powers:  Energy Absorption, Gadget Points, Light Illusions, Presence Defense, Reflection.  It's less easy to point to particular characters and see where they came from, unless (like I was) you were obsessed with the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and the DC Who's Who.  But, I can look at that list and see a character that was -- maybe? -- overlooked in the core rules.  
 
Martial Arts, Stealth, Detective Work, and...?   
 
Hey GM, how do I do this thing where a certain caped crusader (it's in lower case so I don't have to include the TM's, R's, Pat. Pendings, and so on) always seems to have the right nighttime-animal-named-but-not-themed gadget for the situation?  
 
There were a couple of other new entity types and other things you could buy, included in the Champions II supplement: bases, vehicles, computers, AIs, and the Mastermind Option.  
 
So... I mean, you can do shapeshifting with a high Disguise -- but the corebooks had Climbing and Clinging both, and Stealth and Invisibility, and Security Systems and Tunneling...
(Incidentally, how would you have done visible-light holographic images using just the first-gen corebooks without the supplements?  And Duke, I honestly also am not sure what you meant by unassigned Multipower -- it sounds like a Multipower with unspent points so that you can define slots in play?)  
 
(It's also fairly evident that Champions III, and to an extent Champions II as well, were developed at the same time Fantasy Hero was.  Looking through the FH 1e corebook, it's easy to point to source material and see what they were thinking of when they included the spell effects they did, and how those then went on to be included in the supplements.  Dispel (Neutralization in C III), Healing, Images (Light Illusions in C II), Suppress (Neutralization), Shapeshift (Multiform/Shapeshift in C III), Transform (Transformation Attack in C III), planar travel (the +1/2 Interdimensional advantage on Teleportation in C II).  Those were pretty obvious folds back into Champions.  Aid became its own thing in FH because it seemed that the obvious way to do it in Champions -- Characteristics bought Usable On Others -- wouldn't work in FH, because they didn't seem to want Characteristics as a spell effect, and it wasn't folded back into Champions via III.)

I'd rather just add a new Power and call it good (I liked Change Environment in particular, but also Dispel/Suppress, Healing, Multiform, Shapeshift, Transform, the Resurrection and Regrow Limbs adders for Healing and Regeneration), than to try to fiddle a Power into something that doesn't quite do it (the 5e Regeneration as Healing build, or Instant Change as Transform build).  I'm less happy with the X-into-Y decisions that were made with the edition changes:   Healing into Aid, Regeneration into Healing, Instant Change into Transform, Transfer into Aid+Drain, Suppress into Drain.  (If I were going to mess with Suppress I'd have kept it its own Power and folded Dispel into it; Dispel is more or less an instant, all-or-nothing Suppress.)
 
I even like new entity types -- Bases, Computer/AI, Followers/Agents, Vehicles, Spirits.  I'd like have seen Robots (C II p. 30) make it into 4th as well -- not (necessarily) a mech or a vehicle, but a non-sentient construct (STR, DEX, BODY, INT, DEF, SPD, maybe PRE).  I was less happy with the second-gen "vehicles are almost characters" idea -- I liked that, for instance, in Champions II you could buy vehicle gadgets -- ejection seats, fire extinguishers, electronic countermeasures, radio control -- with the same "pay a few points and call it good" notion, without having to overbuild a Power to do it.  (Our long-unseen board colleague James "GamingPhil" / "Gaming Philosopher" Jandebeur had an amazing piece called Incomplete Rules, saved on the Wayback Machine here, which would have obviated the need for most of the new entity types!  I've long thought that should have been an official part of the game in some capacity.)

Don't worry. 
You were obviously referring to the superior one true Hero.
Not the fake stuff those other people are trying to play.

 
 

Friend I pulled out my copy of Hero Basic. It’s design philosophy was that it  has 6th rules and boiled down to the *ahem* Basics of play and if you wanted to upgrade to the full rule set you could easily because then it would be an extension of the Basic Rules. The opportunity is there. 
 
You know what happened to Hero? We have too many people saying that if you aren’t playing Hero their way (Either by edition or specific rule choice) then you really aren’t playing Hero.

I think it peaked there.
And really,  the one thing that fourth edition Champions gave me that I felt was needed wasn't a power or a framework or an advantage or a limitation. 
 
It was the campaign sheet to issue out power restrictions and requirements and forbidden combinations before my players designed characters so that I wouldn't need to reject as many power gamer monstrosities or broken basket cases.
 
If an anniversary edition is made please include disadvantages on the campaign sheet.
 
I never want to see a neophyte draw up a character who is a nurse which goes berserk at the sight of blood again...
 

Thanks! 
 
(though Power Skill is another thing that we did fine without by finding alternate ways "to do the thing".) 
 
 
I confess: two people I thoroughly enjoy hearing from are Lore Master Liaden and Chris "System Historian" Goodwin. 
 
 
 

And I didn't realize it even existed until I read that post.  Thank you; is it still available; and does anyone have a link? 
 
It is the complete expression of the game as it has existed at the time of _any_ publication, with the single exception that it takes a wonky build to replicate Damage Reduction (ie, custom limitations, as suggested and praised in all editions of the rules books and heavily spat upon by those looking to write code I stayed of playing a game).  Damage Negation takes a wonky build as well,  but can still be done in 2e- not well, mind you, as it's the only thing ever added that I can't find a build that doesn't require at least a tiny bit of handwaving, but I feel that I will get there, and that there are likely other old edition players outside the board who probably already have; I am creative, but I don't pretend to be "especially" creative. 
 
 
 
 
Dude, I'm going to go ahead and admit, straight-up and publicly, that I find a general trend of not usually agreeing with you (but not _dismissive_ of you in any way: I am not a youthful internet politico who has an inborn ability to pretend all other points of view are inherently wrong or don't exist), but that parenthetical comment you made?  It's like you are reading my mind! 
 
Honesty, I have questioned the need for pretty much every new power since (and starting with) Gadget Pool in.... Was it Champs III?.... 
 
I did not question the validity of the _idea behind them_, mind you: I just sat down to see if it could be done in 2e.  In every case but Damage Negation, it can.  Further, very few need custom limitations to do it.   And as I noted, even damage negation _can_ be done, if you're willing to do a tiny bit of handwa--  you know, it's not even handwaving: it's the same sort of metagaming that is the "mechanic" of Damage Negation to begin with.  If you can accept that, then 2e remains as complete as anything that's been rolled out today.  1e probably does as well, but it was so.... Disjointed...  Particularly in Frameworks. 
 
 
We agree here as well, but likely for different reasons.  Again, I am totally in favor of the new ideas behind the powers, and I keep a list tucked into my "GMs copy" of the 2e rulebook of all the new Advantages and Limitations that get published in each new rulebook (some have been struck through as thematic repeats: even the Advantages and Limitations can be little more than unnecessary subdivisions of previous entries on the list).  Unsurprisingly, some of these newer Ads and Lims make it _easier_ to use a 2e construct to replicate a "new and necessary Power.". They went ahead and made the new Power anyway.... 
 
 
As I said before, it's still complete, but I wanted to address that granularity:  the newer editions are no more granular; that would be a _good_ thing, I think, as it would make power scaling to the genre much easier and still allow characters to show the kinds of variation that makes them unique and interesting. 
 
What the new editions are is more.... Well, "binary" isn't quite what I'm looking for; for lack of a better word, I am going to say "stifling."  More and more, words like "must" and "cannot" creep into the rules.  Every single time you say "must" you are also saying "NO!" to all of a thousand other approaches.   Every time you say "can't," the same thing happens.  Everytime you say "should", you are casting all other alternatives in a negative "best to be avoided" light. 
 
 
Thats not a bad idea. 
 
 
 
 
Don't worry about the risk.  We played 1e that way, and played 2e that way for over a year before we noticed that we were doing it "wrong." 
 
See, our 1e GM had misunderstood something and then taught us that mistake.  When we upgraded to 2e (I bought it and brought it to the table the next day), Jim had skimmed through looking to see what was new, etc., and off we went!  He hadn't bothered rereading it in its entirety, so we were making the same "cross canceling" mistake.  It wasn't until I wanted to run a sci-fi game on the Champions engine that I read the book myself (while it was mine, it lived at Jim's house) that we caught the mistake. 
 
I am fairly certain, given that the majority of Americans aren't into recreational math any more than I am, that this idea was unknowingly the most "playtested" alternative in the history of the game!   :rolf:  
 
The upshot of this playtesting?  It hurts _nothing_.  Yes, I can hear the screams of "math!" and "balance!" and all that other crap, but as someone has already wisely noted: if everyone has equal access, it's balanced enough. 
 
Besides:  when one buys one of the new powers as-is in a later edition, he is usually getting quite a bargain, ad building it in an earlier edition where it did not exist is usually _much_ more costly.  If Damage Reduction costs 50 points and doing it in 2e costs 76 points, yet Energy Blast is the same price in _both_ editions, why the FU-- are we even _pretending_ there is balance?! 
 
It's "balanced enough," and the thinkers and mathamagicans of this board notwithstanding, that's good enough for the majority of players.  HERO is dying- or completely dead- because of an expensive habit of pandering to a much more vocal minority. 
 
I don't disagree that 4e was a leap in complexity, and that this complexity was a necessary evil side effect of attempting to pull every detail from every game using the Champions engine into a sort of One Ring to rule them all thing, but I'm going to back it up further:
 
I'm going to say the introduction of the gadget pool did it. 
 
Once you create a special new power that could have been created using already-existing rules, you've opened the floodgates to stop using the rules creatively and start hammering in blocks of pre-made "what I want.". Suddenly there are 2 ways to do it, and now the new player has to wonder why and which is right and when does he do which? 
 
Complexity. 
 
Sure: special rules for vehicles, special rules for special circumstances-- everything added up, and it did really explode in 4e; I agree there. 
 
 
 
I won't bore you with the details again here, but I thought I was, once.  I'm not, but I the years-long experience has left me math-phobic enough that I will not be solving equations for fun and profit any time soon.... 
 
 
 
You, Sir, may be an absolute genius.  I want to make time after the holidays ( because math lowers my general mood) to play with this at length.  If it holds up-- or even demonstrates itself as "close enough," I am going to steal this as a new teaching tool!   
Thank you! 
 
 
Ditto.   Honestly, those periods when I regularly visit the board are the periods when I start becoming more and more dickish about the math, which makes me question why I follow the number-crunching thread.  I mean: my players are all having a great time, whether we are doing it math-corexr or not.  Why do I give a rolly red rat scat if they can solve differential equations or even multiply fractions correctly? 
 
 
 
 
The two have a close relationship, and in spite of Occam' Razor, extreme simplicity will always be open to interpretation.  For example, I have found that the open simplicity of the older editions let's me handily replicate nearly everything from the later editions.  Mostly, I think, because the lack of verbosity means it says "no" a lot less. 
 
I understand the verbosity: as the author is not having an actual, interruptible conversations with each individual reader, he strives to cover every question which he himself can forsee.  The goal is, of course, clarity for a larger number of readers.  The drawback is that there is more to juggle in the mind- references, antecedents, etc, such that attempts to improve clarity often result in more confusion.  I can't remember which entry it was-  I referenced here in a conversation a few weeks back--but one of the powers in 6e includes a three-colum discussion, an entire column of which is the same two paragraphs repeated in slightly-different phrasing - three times_.. 

Eh... not really.  They did put together stripped versions of both 5th and 6th.  The Basic books. 
But they were just like CC and FHC, incomplete and designed as if they intended them to fail.
 
Think of it this way. 
 
Lets imagine you have a two game consoles.  
Console one sells games on a disc like the PS4 and XBox.  Buy a disc, load it and play.
Console two has decided that anyone willing to play a game someone else designed is daft.  So they sell the console, the source code and some resources and say "have fun". 
 
Which console sells and which one fails?  Easy to pick.
 
When Fantasy Hero Complete was put out it was also incomplete.  It is even more sad because they actually had partially built the other half in the Val of Stalla which was given out as downloadable content but never mentioned in the book itself.  If the material had been polished up and included in FHC plus the equivalent of a 1st level spell list so the people who wanted to play a mage had a starting point to reference, it might have taken off. 
 
The Basic books were not bad at all........as one part of a complete product.
 
But after 3rd edition, Hero never tried to make "playable" games except for Champions in 4th. 
 
Hero in 5th and 6th stopped being a game played for fun, and became a dry programming language for mathematicians.
 
In my opinion Hero has ceased to be a game, and has become a system reference document.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Given the work today .. I suspect we are getting very close.  I would say just around Christmas with worst case early Jan.
 
Load time is down to 1.4 seconds per Controller (from around 3 seconds).   Interface has changed slightly, but refactoring the code has tightened performance significantly.
 

 
With another 3-4 days work I could lower it down into around 1 - 1.1 seconds per controller I think.
The combat record now "detaches" from the controller when in use (which increases ongoing performance by reducing "onscreen" items. It can also be attached again (both options via the green top left button)
So time estimates currently running around 36 seconds to load 26 controllers. Compared to 90 or so seconds before.
This is all dependant on the computer being used and to some degree network/internet speed, which is why I am focusing on reducing it as much as is possible.
 

 
PM me @ScottishFox if you are interested in giving it a trial?
 
 

If you recall, though, it wasn't all.  The Champions 1st-3rd edition corebooks were incomplete, even for Champions.  The Champions II and Champions III supplements added stuff: vehicles, bases, computers/AI, danger rooms, agents; additional Combat Maneuvers, Skills, Powers, Disadvantages.  For instance: Images (Light Illusions), Absorption, Reflection, Transform, Suppress (Neutralization), Damage Reduction, Multiform, Shapeshift, Variable Power Pools; Accidental Change, Dependency; Dive For Cover, Pulling your Punch, Roll With Punch, Coordinating Attacks; all of those appeared in the supplements, and not in any of the 1st-3rd ed core rules.  The corebooks had 12 Skills; Champions II added a bunch in from Espionage!, but not all of them, and the other standalone games had their own lists.  The standalone games used Hit Locations, Impairing/Disabling, advanced Bleeding, advanced firearms rules and lists (the Champions corebooks had things like "Light Pistol: 1d6 RKA, 6 shots, OAF; Heavy Pistol: 2d6 RKA, 8 shots, OAF).  
 
4th edition was the first one that contained all of the rules.