MitchellS

Re: Double The Hero Excitement!

Re: Comic Book powers that don't work as well in gaming True, but you and I are not Nexus, who feels the powers he listed are problematic and require fiat in superhero games. The fact that you and I feel differently about it then he does doesn't change the fact of how he feels about it. So while he might feel it's a fiat issue for Hero you and I can see it as nothing more then a design challenge [and for some games, like M&M, it's as common as water and not even a design challenge].

Re: Comic Book powers that don't work as well in gaming

Re: Comic Book powers that don't work as well in gaming My point above was that the commonality or problems caused by certain powers [as in the original list Nexus provided] are really based on the game system you're playing and your gaming experience with various systems. The problems aren't universal to all game systems [each game system will have its own problems]. For example, if you've only ever played Champions in your life then the concept of an auto-hit power can seem quite alien to you because Hero doesn't really have one [and only added AE Accurate with 5e]. M&M has well over a dozen auto-hit powers and auto-hitting is nothing more then an advantage you can add to any power. If you've always gamed with auto-hit then you don't really see it as a problem with people having it. If you've never gamed with auto-hit it can seem quite daunting to you when someone wants it. It's more about individual gaming experiences then saying X is a problem in superhero games.

Re: Comic Book powers that don't work as well in gaming I personally haven't had any problems with any of the powers you've listed above. Basically every example power you listed is a power in M&M that anyone could buy so they are seen much more often in my M&M games then they probably are in a standard Champs game. The real issue to me is the interaction between the players and gm. Some gms really hate to lose, and some players really hate to lose, so you end up with gms who craft detailed enoounters to defeat the players and players who are always looking for the easy win. I try to stress genre over just winning and losing. The superhero genre's one of the few where you constantly have the same reoccuring foes so the definitive win or loss isn't as important as the story itself, IMO. Generally the interesting foes are going to find ways to work around your 'ultimate' power so while your time stop might work once or twice eventually your rogue's gallery is going to find a way around it. That's what makes fights against all the absolute heroes interesting.

Re: Conversion of M&M Archetypes as HDC files

Re: Conversion of M&M Archetypes as HDC files My game system preferences have no bearing on how each system's rules work. As I showed above, speed has no bearing on time penalties. I was working with in the Hero rules. I thought the stated purpose of the templates were to try and convert M&M players to Champions. As an M&M player going from flying 500 mph to flying 60 mph will take some getting used to, but's probably livable. Going from being able to do mundane things superquick [10x faster then everyone else] to doing them normally is probably livable too. Going from being able to bounce tank shells to, at times, taking stun damage from 2d6 rka bullets will be much harder to swallow. Going from being able to crush tanks and military submarines into a ball in a single round to not being able to crush a chevy caprice into a ball in 1 phase is a big change that many non-picky people might sqawk at. That's a valid argument. Of course I had no intention of using it. I was just curious how it was being used. If I feel like putting the time into it I might offer up some 350 pt examples of my own.

Re: Conversion of M&M Archetypes as HDC files Saying a character should have a higher characteristic solely for potential time penalty rolls seems stupid to me. Ideally quickness in M&M should be simulated with penalty skill levels for time related actions. It shouldn't be simulated with more dex and speed as listed above because those things have no bearing on the time the GM will assign for those actions. If it takes 5 min to defuse a bomb it doesn't matter if the 6 speed or the 4 speed character is doing it. What matters is which one has the higher roll and which one can take the bigger time penalty. I don't feel the archetype example I've seen above accurately represents the M&M character it states it is emulating. The Hero character above is just a brick named "paragon" but has little resemblance to the M&M archetype of the same name, IMO.

Re: Conversion of M&M Archetypes as HDC files Combat and movement was not what I was referring to. In M&M the paragon could clean his house 10x faster then an average person or hero. He could type his story times times faster then the average person or hero. He could disassemble a car 10x faster then the average person or hero, etc. A character's speed has no bearing on how long it takes to do a timed job.

Re: Conversion of M&M Archetypes as HDC files If all you are wanting are base archetypes then Champions already provides them [as well as a random character generator]. If you're trying to bring M&M players to Champs then the archetypes should, at least, be similar in design rather just in spirit, IMO. Otherwise the M&M player's going to ask why his M&M character can fly 500 mph as a full move while his Champs character's flying 60 mph, why the Champs character doesn't have harden defenses, why the Champs character can't do things 10x quicker then a normal person, etc. Themes are fine. I was just under the impression that the files were more about converting M&M to Hero then just converting themes.

Re: Free Super Stuff

Re: Conversion of M&M Archetypes as HDC files

Re: Free Super Stuff There's some fun stuff in there. I'd guess the Hero Hooks would be the most useful and least mechanical of all of the pdfs there for Hero players [it's not linked to any one game system]. I think at least 1, maybe 2, of the adventures there were done by Sketchpad so you can probably find the Hero version of them by searching this forum.

Re: Conversion of M&M Archetypes as HDC files

Re: Conversion of M&M Archetypes as HDC files Most of what you'd call roleplaying disadvantages are called complications in M&M. This covers hunted, psych lims, dnpcs, etc. Complications earn you the hero points used during play. M&M also has a drawback system for the disads which have a game mechanics use such as vulnerabilities, susceptibilities, accidental change, etc. Those two things make up what a Hero player would call disads.

Re: Max Human attributes in Street level vs full Superheroic scales You figured out a lot considering every build the game gave you contradicted everything you believed. How did you ever manage to stick with a game that [at least until Dark Champs came out 12 years later] never gave you a single character build example that agreed with your ideologies?

Re: Max Human attributes in Street level vs full Superheroic scales

Re: Max Human attributes in Street level vs full Superheroic scales

Re: Max Human attributes in Street level vs full Superheroic scales while I agree with what you are saying here, in all fairness, a lot of people come to Champs from different genres. The person who was introduced to Hero with Fantasy Hero or Star Hero [even 4e Dark Champions] has a different perspective on characteristics then someone who started with Champions and then moved to the other genres. I can understand someone saying that their 14 dex, 3 speed fighter does fine in Fantasy Hero so they don't understand why they need a 26 dex and 6 speed martial artist in Champs. To them a skilled human is a skilled human no matter which genre. In this instance, when they're talking about stat inflation, I don't really think they're taking about the differences between Champs 1e and Champs 5e but rather the differences between genre definitions [to my eyes there has been general stat deflation in Champs between 1e and 5e, not inflation].

Re: Max Human attributes in Street level vs full Superheroic scales Thanks for the rep. The problem is that the game doesn't generally allow you to play 2 different character sheets. Some campaigns might allow you to have a Nighthawk of the Champions character sheet and a Nighthawk of the streets of Millennium City character sheet but, in general, most Champions characters are going to be for team play and built that way. That means when you want to solo them their foes need to be built to fight the team-play character. In those instances people can't think of 20 as being Olympic just because the book said so. The scale needs to be adjusted so that 30 becomes Olympic. For some strange reason the normal human benchmarks are the one thing people never want to change in a game where they'll change everything else. The normal human benchmarks are no more carved in stone then anything else in the game, IMO.

Re: Max Human attributes in Street level vs full Superheroic scales As always needs to be pointed out in threads like this [and this is a subject which comes up a lot] NCM isn't a cap or ceiling. It's a threshold. You aren't limited to 20 in an NCM game. Exceeding 20 just costs you more points. Too many people think the 20 is a maximum amount allowed. It'd be very possible to have a 30 dex and 7 speed Batman in an NCM game. It'd mean nothing more then saying Bats paid 60 points more for the last 10 dex and 20 more points for the last 2 speed to get to that point [the threshold is saying few exceed, but few is not none and characters who make it into the comics and become popular are clearly part of the exceptional few. No one generally wants to read about the exploits of the average superhero]. In Champions origins don't limit a character, and they shouldn't. Batman shouldn't have to pay more for his 30 dex then Captain America does just because Bat's origin is that he is a trained human and Cap's is that he's a chemically augmented trained human. How the characters get to the plateau isn't as important as the fact that they're there. The points allowed are the balance mechanism not the origin. It's also important to keep in mind that comic book characters have two personas. They have their solo persona and they have their team-up persona. The Batman who fights Joker, Penguin, and the Riddler is not the same Batman who fights Darseid, Starro, and Ultra-Humanite with the JLA. This really carries over to every character. Even Supes uses the entire JLA to fight people who would take on solo in his own book as well. Whether there's a powering up for a team book [like Batman] or powering down [like Superman] they need to be considered as different from each other. When you're building characters for the game you need to think about which persona you're trying to emulate. You can't build the solo Batman and expect him to play well in the JLA game and you can't play the JLA Batman in a solo Gotham City game. Either campaign requires you to make system changes for it to work. When the JLA Batman is doing solo stuff in the game his Joker isn't a 12 dex 3 speed foe. He's more like 20 dex and 5 speed. Likewise, the thugs JLA Bats is fighting aren't 10 dex and 2 speed but 15 dex and 3 or 4 speed. This doesn't mean that every thug and petty villain in Gotham is near-Olympic in ability. It just means the system of scale needs to be adjusted so that team-up heroes can have a challenge in solo events. In Champions normal people aren't built weak because their origin is that they're normal humans. They're built weak so that the PCs can shine compared to them. That's an important distinction, IMO.

Re: Would this be simpler? I personally think it's just easier to restructure the price of the powers and the various advantages and limitations. Instead of making them cost multipliers make them adders and hide the math: Half-End can cost 10 points and Zero-End can cost 20, etc. Yes, it'll change the cost structure of the game but it's an easy thing to adjust starting point totals to adjust for that, IMO.

Re: Hero threads on rpg.net In general I agree with you 100%. I think part of the problem with many Hero players is that they've gotten thin-skinned over the years. Just because some jerk states some hyperbole about the math doesn't mean that a Hero fan needs to jump up and down and tell him he's stupid for not being able to do it. Most perceived insults would completely disappear if gone unanswered. Hero's going to sink or swim on it's own merits once the person buys it and decides for themselves if it has too much math, etc. Hero doesn't need staunch defenders who only make all Hero System fans look like fanatics to the outside community. Be fanatic here. Out there act poised. I think that would give Hero a better image to the outsiders.

Re: Hero threads on rpg.net

Re: Hero threads on rpg.net Well Goradin stated that it only requires an 8th grade education, and then Phil came back with 5th grade and not paying attention in math class. What they're really implying is that if people don't want to do 8th or 5th grade math they're either lazy or uneducated. An insult's still an insult even when it's not directly stated.