Pendaran

Re: Schmucks? they really haven't at all, I'm not sure where you're getting that from. The most they've interacted is when he'll stretch his arm to get some lab equipment he doesn't want to move to reach. Things like on the spot cobbling together a weapon to amplify Black Bolt's powers from tech lying around him had nothing to do with elasticity tricks

Re: Schmucks? I'm wondering how being derided as extremists, having been told my opinions are those of a small obsessed few that should be snubbed, and the listening to said opinions would be bad publishing policy for a company is not particularly supposed to be taken as insulting.

Re: Schmucks? so, your basic answer is everyone who posts on this message board represents the sum totality of all who play these games and opinions thuswise? I don't think even the people on the white wolf forums try to cop that kind of attitude. It's an internet message board, whatever this place gets, it's a fraction representing people who have time to regularly post on an internet message board. That is representative of all of nothing. That's why I certainly don't try to do anything as grandiose as claim that those who hold opinions different from mine are part of a small obsessed few. I mean how the hell would I know that?

Re: Schmucks? And assuming a group that manages to meet weekly, like, honestly, lots of table top groups I know manage to do, that's 120 xp or so a year, so, assuming the system can actually work to sustain a campaign for, let's say, two years, that's right up to 240 points past the point where it is being said the game should operate. By a group meeting all of weekly and bothering to use the guidelines of a book Whamme himself says should be usable "out of the box". edit: and I'm still waiting, where is this survey of all Hero games owners that demonstrates how Whamme can ramble about who's opinions are of a small "obsessed" few and who's aren't?

Re: Schmucks? the various members of the Fantastic Four are also fairly well rounded people with a wide variety of skills, a powerful base, common set of gadgets between them.. Reed's gadget pool alone would have to be entirely weighty just for the stuff he'll MacGuyver on up during adventures now and then. Then there's his powers. Then there's the base and the vehicles and the rest.

Re: Schmucks? disregarding for a moment whether or not you've done some mass survey of all hero games customers and fans to be able to keep going on and on about how you know how those with views that are not your own represent a small handful of fans and that you represent the majority... The standard xp award as recommend hovers between 2-3 points per session. "Usually, a one session adventure is worth about 2 Experience points", with per session awards ontop of that for roleplaying well, being challenged, solving mysteries, and etc. And conisdering you're the one saying that going over 350 point=bad, when going over said points is one of the very things the book outright says you can do with it out of the box when it lists point values for different types of campaigns, some of which, yes, go over 350 points, that's not quite you saying the book is usable "out of the box" is it? That's you saying "the book is fun, out of the box, so long as you never do this, this, this, or this, despite the book saying that you can." And again, Vibora Bay, presumably Hero was being insane there and catering to the whims of a handful of easily ignorable fans, yes?

Re: Schmucks? Judging by the responses, no, apparently there isn't one, if your 350 point team isn't the reason the sun rises and sets, you're having the wrong bad fun, or not scaling your world to "realistic" levels. Or contributing to "point bloat". Or, I believe the phrase went something like... are part of a small handful of fans who's demands should be ignored because they'll otherwise fill the setting with "Elmonsters", and will make DOJ make publishing decisions that will be bad for the company. I suppose in a few years when HERO goes defunct we can point to Vibora Bay as the setting where it all done went wrong.

Re: Schmucks? *shakes head* That's just silly. The.. um.. jock strap thing. That. 350 point characters are just fine for something like the 80s Teen Titans, or the New Warriors, or X-Force, or the 60s X-Men when they were still all Charles' students, or certain street level kinds of things, or people like Hawkeye and so forth. Entirely viable and fun to play such kinds of supers on that kind of operating level. edit: I'm playing one in a city defender team style campaign right now, enjoying it just fine. edit edit: And yes, before someone asks, there are npcs more powerful than us by several leagues floating around in the background somewhere being the reason why Takofanes and co haven't romped all over Earth. It doesn't really matter because they and we operate on a level that doesn't really have anything to do with each other, we not being a team of global superheroes.

Re: Schmucks? I suppose it's worth mentioning, as per Vibora Bay, do you feel that DOJ are well on their way to ruining themselves then? Having npcs with point totals going well into the "what's bad for DOJ" range.

Re: Schmucks? let me clarify, you just said that views opposed to yours are held by only a handful of people, and if adhered to would do something as ruinous to the game as fill it with Elminster clones. Explain how this is neither insulting, nor denigrates the view opposed to your own. And how stating the above works at all with taking you seriously when you yet say you find the viewpoint valid. edit: you go so far as to mention that whatever their issue might be, they and it should simply be ignored to solve all problems.

Re: Schmucks? I'm sorry, didn't you just go on at length how you found other views valid and were only being insulting to try and show people how bad it is?

Re: Schmucks? A full list then: Here's Tarot: Chariot Speedster, Long-Range Teleporter, Energy Blaster, Teleportation Gate Tricks 739 Death Pending Pending The Devil Metamorph, Demonic Form, Brick, Strength 75, Energy Blaster, Fire, Brutal 584 The Emperor Mystic, Powerful, Secretive, Manipulative, Ambitious 1093 The Empress Mystic, Conniving Meddler, Illusions and Trickery 680 The Fool Gadgeteer, Tarot, Resentful, Creative Thinker 515 The Hanged Man Martial Artist, Immortal, Indestructible, Jaded 768 Heirophant Mentalist, Knowledge and Memory, Power Pool 447 The Hermit Pending Pending Judgement Mentalist, Clairvoyant, Sociopath, Cruel 548 Justice Brick, Strength 65, Arrogant, Sense of Superiority, Hard to Hurt 655 The Lovers Energy Blaster, Cosmic Energy, Combined Form 646 Luna Pending Pending The Magician Mystic, Illusionist, Ambitious, Flashy, Arrogant, Power Pool 604 Priestess Pending Pending Star Energy Blaster, Heat, Fire, Light, Gravity, Stellar Powers 662 Strength Brick, 120 Strength, "Strongest Man in the World" 748 The Sun Energy Blaster, Heat and Light, Loyal, Dependable 642 Temperence Martial Artist, Than Vo Dao, Assassin, Lethal, Master of Hand-to-Hand Combat 636 Tower Pending Pending Wheel of Fortune Pending Pending The World Energy Blaster, Geokinetic, Massively Powerful, Ruthless 966 Here's the monkey team: Brass Monkey Powered Armor, Strength 80, Energy Blaster, Power Pool 539 Bushbaby Pending Pending Cyberangutan Pending Pending Doctor Simian Gadgeteer, Metagenius, Chimpanzee, Ape Supremacist 1315 Howler Energy Blaster, Sonics, Chimpanzee, Ape Supremacist 437 Kong Brick, Strength 100, Growth Brick, Gorilla, Ape Supremacist 482 Monkeyshines Energy Blaster, Light, Gorilla, Ape Supremacist 595 Spider Speedster, Chimpanzee, "Fastest Ape Alive", Ape Supremacist some notable individuals: Omega Brick, 90 Strength, Energy Blaster, Anti-Metahuman Killer Robot 1254 Paragon Metamorph, Power Mimic, Megalomaniac, Killer 923 The Blood Red King Alpha-Alpha, Incarnation of Evil, Lethal 1369 My point would be, the point totals skew as wildly as the CU villains, and yet there's a lack of you talking as denigratingly as you have been about it by comparison. Especially for a place you're that heavily involved in, it comes off as hypocritical.

Re: Schmucks? and the team with the 1300 point leader where no team member drops below 430 points? and the several other 1200+ megas besides the two you listed? and, nearly all of Tarot skewing well above 500+?

Re: Schmucks? the Purple Man scene basically involved Doom lowering every defense he'd built to the guy's powers and going flat out "hit me with your best shot". He laughed it off on pure will alone. Doom's indomitable willpower is a big part of who and what he is. He's the guy that endured having enough focus while being vivisected by the Beyonder to power drain him.

Re: Schmucks? much like enduring the Overmind's attempt to overload his mind, that wasn't a breakout, that was the "the attack failed to do much of anything to him". And in the Purple Man's case, he had taken control of everything on the planet, including all the superheroes on earth, people like Cap and Thor and all the rest.

Re: Schmucks? ... one time events have included... let's see.. draining the Silver Surfer of his power, taking repeated hits from various high end cosmic boojums, catching Captain America's shield mid throw, having strong enough will to simply let the Purple Man, who was controlling at that point /the entire planet/ to have a free shot at taking control of his mind, and said attempt failing.. That's routinely Doom. That's what he does. That's his thing. I'm getting really sick of this "everything can be done with the power skill" thing. Something that a character does routinely, or that is a big impressive moment of the story of a comic, or a level they routinely operate on as contrasted with a level that they usually don't... I mean, I may be wacky, but I'd like to be able to see that expressed in some way other than "roll the power skill no matter what it is, or just have the GM fudge it". Unless I'm playing HeroQuest, because that's exactly how it works there.

Re: Schmucks? I'm counting multiple villains above 1200 points, villain teams none of whom drop below 430 points and have members that ramp as high as 900+, and other such things, so I'm basically wondering why in comparison the CU is "point bloated".

Re: Schmucks? to quickly say now to an answer that would be "well just scale them back", quite honestly, a lot of comic book megavillains would require an insane number of points to approximate. Which thus leads to requiring fairly buff heroes to realistically oppose them. Which, you know, is how the comics indeed work, where the megavillains tend to find regular opposition from the higher end types. said another way, from the way the marvel supers rpg Doom is being described.. that's not so much the guy who's armour has taken shots from Thanos and who's mind has resisted the Overmind.

Re: Schmucks? so do you think the GGU is point bloated, yes or no?

Re: Schmucks? so, Whamme, are you one of the people that have anything to do with the GGU PBEM world or those involved with creating and running it? This is a two part question depending on the answer to that one. edit: Well, might as well note it now. Basically, have you seen the point totals of some of the villains of that whole continuity? Have ya told Worldmaker they're pointlessly "bloated" just to be better than the PCs yet? Does it occur to you that maybe there are so many villains of so many different point values (from Bulldozer to Firewing) so as to provide examples of villains to be usable and challenging for /different levels of play/, after all, while you seem to be opposed to the notion, the book itself assumes different levels of play exist, and that just the concept of xp alone are going to take you to them.

Re: Schmucks? And right there it is again with the condescending insults. It's entirely praiseworthy to relentlessly mangle both 350 points and various presented stats to get something to feel like its archetype in the comics, but the exact moment you go the other way, you're being "flawed", you're "taking 'Kewl' over 'cool'", you're contributing to "point bloat" that apparently "plagues" the books. Ok, so you guys hate the xp system, you guys hate the villain stats that can blow through 350 point heroes, you guys hate that the developers flat out call 350 points starting level, and the world as presented, well damn if that don't need changing too. So I'm going to ask it again... what are you getting out of this system? Why do you use it? Why do you buy the books? Why do you spend the money? Why do you not use Hero Quest, it will do exactly the same things you are talking about as being laudable (little advancement, getting everything possible out of a few stats and the like) without nearly as much number crunching. Let me break it down like this... I HAVEN'T been playing Champions for years and years and years, I haven't watched the hero system evolve over editions, I haven't played at 250 or whichever. I came into this game, this year, being sold on it as a superhero rpg that comes the best out of all of them out there to letting you feel like, you know, roleplaying in a comic book universe. I dropped down a chunk of money on it. When I say, "what would you tell a player coming into this game cold.." I'm in part talking about myself. And the answers I get to the questions I've asked would uniformly lead me to say that in general, if this was how Champions worked, I would give it a miss. More explicitly, had I come to this board first to look for opinions, I would not have bothered with this game whatsoever. You guys get borderline hateful to the notion that everything can't be done in 350 points, no matter what you have to discard or ignore or whichever. Look at your language. "Flawed", the snarky use of "Kewl", telling people they must love mary sue NPCs like Elminster. I just bought this damn game, I don't want to have to houserule it eight million different ways from sunday, mangle what the developers present as fast and easy character creation, take a sledgehammer to comic book portrayals and convetions, just to not be branded as violating some sacred notion of the hero system. I would like to be able to use the game I dropped a rather large sum of money on as is. As a comics fan, I want to be able to buy the rpg, and use it to feel like I'm playing a character in a comic book universe, with all the resultant capability and feel. If I already have to sledgehammer those universes to make them fit the game, and accept mentalities where I have to dismiss half the stuff that goes on in said continuities, well, not quite the robust superhero rpg I was promised, was I? As a player, bluntly, having to ridiculously min max what is explicitly in system stated to be a starting character puts ME out of my comfort zone. It feels like I'm having to cheat and twink out my starting character as much as possible. I'd rather feel like I just used the system to more naturally reflect something than having instead had to hack and squeeze every last bit out of it that I could. /That's/ power gaming to me, not the other way around. To me it is the very height of inelegant to have to sit down with a system and hack away at it until it "works". I happen to like that one can use the book guidelines and actually have them mean what they say, it reflects thought being put into the system they put together, how advancement would work, and how robust the system is. If you guys think Hero is so weak as a system that going above 350 makes things awkward and untenable, and requires what for a new player would be intense min maxing and number crunching, why do you use this system? Do you forbid your players to ever earn experience? Do you hand it out as slowly as possible? Do every single one of you just play PBEMs? I've created 350 point chars, nodded and said to myself "that's about where a comic book character I'd consider 'starting' would be". I've created 800 point characters and said "yeah, that feels iconic". I created a character somewhere inbetween those levels, just to get feels for what they could do with the system itself, without ripping it apart. "Few concepts require more than 350 points".. yeah.. you can certainly create guys with names like "Batman", "Superman" and the like, or create "homages" to them. Those homages won't feel anything remotely like the things they do in the comics without the aforementioned total manging, but ok, sure, if a pale shadow of what is being approximated is hunky dory. Here's what boggles me especially, ok, so someone's Superman homage can do as much as 3 other PCs on that team can. Maybe that means that's not in fact a team for a Superman homage to be on? Maybe it just means that? What's so bad to say "at the power level of this team and what they'll be doing in campaign, someone coming right out of the gate like Superman would really not have a place here, you know, like how in the comics Thor isn't a member of the New Warriors." Why is it better to just tell the player that they're intent and design is laughably flawed in the most condescending way possible? I mean, to sum up, here were my questions as a new player, and here are the answers this messge board (mostly the Champions and Dark Champions) has given me across multiple threads and responses on this issue that I've read over: "So will this system run the gamut of superhero comics?" "Why yes, if you out of the gate strictly depower everything from given versions, and are willing to relentlessly min max so as to never go above a certain level of points, because it's /bad/ to do so, and accept that even then, there are certain things you still won't be able to do at all without massive fiating, but if you want to do them, you're a twink who obsesses over every little detail that don't matter anyway and are the reason why npcs like Elminster exist, you ruiner of rpgs as an industry you." "Ah... ha... well, how about the Champions Universe, that any good as a setting? To game in and the like, maybe to use to help run a game for someone without a lot of time to world design." "Why no, the Champs universe is terribly flawed and point bloated, and needs heavy stat and conceptual editing to make sure the pcs are revolved around all the time and are the center of the entire universe." "But comic book universes have hundreds of supers at wildly varying power levels anyway, surely you could just focus on the one suitable level in a game and not the other until you've built up to it." "No, that's wrong, and contributes to point bloat and makes the pcs feel useless." "Ah, well, how about xp? Will there being a sense of being able to grow and change over time? You know, like how the 80s Titans grew into the heroes they are today, or comparing the core five X-men to when they were teenage students to now, or even just things like a hero going on a hero's journey and becoming vastly more skilled and competent with their powers, doing new things they hadn't done before and just generally pushing themselves to be better." "If you can't express all of that through roleplaying, you're some kind of twink, XP happens rarely, and going over 350 points is bad." and then there was.. "Wow, I just read the essential Iron Fist, that guy was damn impressive. Seems like to play someone like him you'd need this, this, this, this and etc.." "Haahahaha! why no you fool! First off, half of that stuff that impressed you so much and had great writing and art behind it, bunk. Pure bunk and main character syndrome. Expecting to be able to do that isn't realistic at all! Why can't you stop obsessing on detail and be realistic! Especially about comics! Why if we just handwave away most of that stuff, use this homebrew system here and downplay the rest, it's just fine! Wow, even /less/ then 350 points! I've topped myself!" "... and if I wanted to play Iron Fist doing all the things that were neat and fun about his comic book? Without homebrew systems and the like?" "If you can't accept the lesser versions thereof, you're a detail obsessed powergamer." Or then there was.. "Look, if I'm playing Mr Terrific, I want to feel like I'm playing the supergenius who's skilled at every human endeavour under the sun, if I want to play Thor I want to feel like a majestic warrior god bestriding the Earth, storms forming in his step, if I want to play Batman, I want to feel like the millionaire playboy Dark Knight with his cool toys and intense training, if I want to play Green Lantern, I want to feel like a galactic powerhouse keeping law and order across an entire star system, if I want to play Nightwing I want to feel like the daring acrobat tackling street crime with nothing but my skill and will and bravery. Shouldn't it be a vastly different playing experience and level playing each of these guys? Shouldn't they just look different?" "No! in fact they can all be done in /250/ points and put side by side! And if you don't think that makes sense, you are again getting obsessed with point bloat and everything that's bad about comics that we should dismiss anyway! I don't want to fully approximate comics anyway! You shouldn't be trying to do that with this game! Comics suck nowadays anyway!" And it's that last notion that gets me, that people approach this game with the view that the comics are made to fit it, and not the other way around. It's a comic book superhero rpg. I come to it /from comics/. If I can't easily use it to fit whatever comic book experience I'm trying to get out of gaming with it, why am I bothering with it? What is the point of it being a comic book rpg? At least Godlike went out of the way to say "this is not a comic book rpg". Champions goes out of the way to say that it is. Why does that mean the comics come second, or if they come first, come with massive qualifiers? By comparison, there's something like SAS, when when I looked at it, they fully indeed go into what different levels of superheroing both exist and would look like in that world, point values for each, exemplars for each, ways for each to matter in their own way, full discussions of "at this general point level of superhero gaming, the sort of things that happen are..". Why is that inferior to the "nothing over 350 points" mantra particularly? It was at least a nice change from "if you need more than point value x to feel like you're playing at a particular thematic level, you are contributing to the ruination of this game." I have to wonder if any thought at all goes into how stuff like that sounds to people coming into this game new.

Re: Schmucks? it doesn't make them schmucks really, it just makes them starting heroes, they're the ones running around fighting VIPER and DEMON cells, foiling bank robberies, defending cities from freaks and lunatics of the superpowered variety, sometimes stepping up a bit higher depending on the arc, doing all the sorts of things starting heroes might do. Expecting them to routinely do more than that is the thing that's silly as they're starting heroes. It's like saying the New Warriors should be able to defend the MU from all threats. The Champs U is a fully functioning supers universe with villains of wildly varying levels of power and capability, makes sense, that like any other comic book universe, there would be superheroes of similar highly varying levels of capability. That's just how comic book universes go. It doesn't invalidate one group of hero over another, as they do different things. It's like the reason I accepted as very sensible the one time as to why Spidey is not so much a regular Avenger (though they're gonna change that soon, sigh). Sure, he could be on the team, but then that's one less guy vitally needed for keeping the streets clean and keeping people like the Kingpin of crime at bay.

Re: Schmucks? one of the points would be I think that the npc heroteam and their exploits would be in the background because until they reach a certain point, a lot of the pc's adventures might be happening on a city or country based level. World saving stuff isn't their focus, and when it does become such, well, hey, to use an actual comic book continuity as an example, both the JSA and JLA exist in the same world and get regularly busy saving it from different things just fine without one overshadowing the other. And if this gets into a "my characters aren't important and don't matter unless they're routinely saving the world every other week." I guess I'll say again, you know how many comic book superheroes and teams truck in just city and nation level adventures? World saving being a rare thing for them? And in a comic book world there'd be plenty of teams like that and that it can be entirely fun and rewarding to play them without demanding the entire world be their bitch when such is unreasonable? To me, again, this game exists to approximate feeling like playing in a comic book supers universe, in which there would be multiple teams of supers of wildly varying degree of power, and if, in which, I'm, say one of the incarnations of the Teen Titans, I expect the JLA to be the ones weekly saving the entire planet while I'm stopping New York from being exploded. Or if I'm some member of the Bat-family, focusing on keeping the person on the street being able to live a life free from fear and opression by local street crime. Or etc. And on the every niggling thing comment... what, like Batman's gadgets, bases and wealth? Like Tom Strong's inventive genius and many notable henchmen and sidekicks, bases, gadgets, and wealth, besides his class 50 or so strength, crazy durability and other such things? Like Mr Terriffic's huge panoply of being a skilled expert and knowledgeable in nearly everything, while also being at somewhat above peak human physical condition, a supergenius, having various enhanced tech resources, and again.. bases, gadgets and wealth? Some things are details, and some things are "this is a routine part of the character". It's like Thor, and various god powers, at some point you just have to break down and go "It's Thor, this is what he does, this is what he should be able to do." Lots of characters have a pretty routine level of capacity you can pick out and observe them on, and that, in fact to actually be true to whatever their core theme is, that there are things they should just be capable of doing. Whether one expresses this by giving points to a bunch of things, or hacking into 350 and custom ruling, both are better than just handwaving away "oh, well, details". Though again, as I've said, such things matter to me, as I /do/ view a superhero rpg as existing to emulate the comics it takes the reason for it to exist from.

Re: Schmucks? what bothers me on these "I can shoehorn anything into 350 points, take gleeful pride in it, and go on and on about how I'm just fine capturing the 'core feel' of the character, and derogatorily talk about Kewl points or whatever that is" is... Champions, a superhero rpg designed to let one feel like one is playing in the comics, doing the things one sees in the comics being done, doing the things those characters do, having some sense of doing so. To be able to have a player come cold into the game, and use the system as given to feel like they're approximating their favourite trope/character of choice. Not to tell that player "well, if you horribly damn mangle everything, and drastically weaken the standard stats of everything around you, and custom rule, custom rule, custom rule, and dismiss at least 1/3rd of everything the hero does as 'well, they're just the main character in their title' or 'well, their power changes all the time with different writers, it's just this core notion I've decided on that matters', you can sure play whatever concept you like!" I've created 350-400 point chars, and not particularly twinked, or point hacked or whatever. There's just only a certain number of things they can do without, like for example that guy talking how he could do 300 point Iron Fist because he had a homebrew system that let him pull random powers out of his ass when needed, massively hacking apart things. Why is it that just using the system as given to create or approximate a character is somehow inferior to thoroughly min maxing and point hacking and custom building for every last dreg of power you can squeeze out of the system? What precisely as people like Worldmaker have liked to deride the notion of doing it the former way, makes one twinking and "kewl" and the other not? One way is just as desperately mangling a system for power as another. The Hero rules system itself calls 350 point characters, /starting characters/, the system intends thus, to me, to have such people be types around the beginning of their careers and not, say, experienced members of the JLA, or Avengers, or higher end veteran X-Men. I mean here's my question, why use Hero at all if all heroes should be able to be expressed by a flat set of stats that they never or just reaaalllly slowly advance from? Why not just use something like hero quest, that indeed completely simplifies everything to a few multipurpose sets of stats that don't change much overly overtime, and you just roll against your "fill in the blank power name" here to do whatever you can get away with justifying with it. As for 250 point Thor and Daredevil being equal? Man, that's not the comics. They /aren't/ equal, they don't have anything to do with each other and don't run in the same circles. The adventures someone expecting to play "Thor" and someone expecting to play "Daredevil" should rarely have anything to do with each other. It feels like the attitude here is "make the comics fit Champions" and not "make Champions fit the comics". Why is one approach better than the other particularly? In a game who's stated purpose is a superhero rpg, starting with a full comic book portrayal and making the system work for it and not the other way around is bad now? It's, again, why not use hero quest? Thor will just roll his Thunder God 8 stat, and Daredevil will roll his blind ninja 8 stat for whenever anything comes up.

Re: ... until it becomes... a Thing of Iron! well, and 20 Body or so. And the man's Ego, if you even consider just his origin and "I will myself to move past the pain" routines, should be fairly notable besides. Though hey, at least that makes the mental defense cheaper... Actually, I'd likely leave his strength at 20 and just give him some damage classes.