massey

It might be helpful if some villains had a more defined role, as far as how they operated. These would just be examples of course, for illustrative purposes. Characters would not have to fall wholly into one category, it's really just a suggestion for how GMs might want to use them --Thieves are there to steal stuff. Their superpowers are focused on getting away. They can't stand up to the heroes in combat, so the challenge is in preventing them from escaping. Teleport, Desolidification, and Invisibility are common powers. Example: GRAB. --Planners use traps, gadgets, and minions to oppose the hero. The challenge lies in getting to the villain, not in beating him up. Followers, Bases, and Gadget Pools are common. Example: Arcade (X-Men) and many Bat-villains. --A Nemesis is designed to fight one particular hero. He's an even match for his chosen foe, whether it's because his powers are exactly the same, exactly the opposite, or maybe even just a philosophical opposition. Against other heroes, he may be completely out of his element (alternatively, an unprepared hero may find himself completely outclassed by what he assumed would be a "weak" opponent). Example: Joker, Metallo, Lex Luthor, Red Skull. --A Rogue's Galley Member is not quite a Nemesis. These guys are built to fight an individual hero, give him a tough fight, and lose. In many ways, they're the ideal Champions villain (and what I think the OP is talking about in this thread). Example: many Spidey-villains. --Villain Teams are designed to match up to the heroes as a group. Individually they can have strengths and weaknesses, but ultimately they are supposed to take on a number of heroes at once. Example: Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Wrecking Crew, Injustice League, Eurostar, Ultimates. --Master Villains are designed to take on a group of heroes, and potentially win. They will have serious stat-inflation, often with a 7 or 8 Speed, Damage Reduction, and 80+ Stun. But they normally enter battle by themselves, as the final opponent for the heroes. They didn't become master villains by losing, so they'll often bug out as soon as the fight starts to turn against them (say, when they get to half Stun, or if their latest giant gadget is destroyed). Example: Dr Doom, Magneto, Thanos.

One of the 4th edition books had "all or nothing" as a -2 limitation.

Most of the villains in Champions are not built to fight starting characters. People gain XP, and a lot of them dump their points into combat levels pretty quickly. One thing that Champions is lacking is a solid power scale. How powerful is powerful? How good is a 10 OCV, really? Because benchmarks that are established in the genre book aren't followed by most published characters. And then you've got the occasional extreme outlier that really skews things. Gravitar was mentioned earlier. Remember that she's basically a Magneto analog, designed to take on entire teams and win. So she's powerful enough to smash the Brick, and accurate enough to hit the Speedster. Some of her numbers are really high, but I don't think she's really supposed to miss at all. I've always thought that Champions could use some established superheroes in the Batman/Superman category. Show them as starting PCs at the normal beginning point value, and then have an "iconic" character sheet where they've got their full power. Build the villains with that in mind.

Well, my point was whether we should simulate what we see in the comics with something on the character sheet, not necessarily whether those things are good or not. One of the tropes is the mastermind villain who can't stand up to hero in a fair fight. Another is the one-trick pony... who can't stand up to the hero in a fair fight. What's the best way to represent characters like that? I actually prefer the old 4th edition writeup for Rainbow Archer. She's a non-powered human who just happens to have a 35 Dex. This means she's almost always going first. In a simulationist sense, this could represent someone in comics who is almost always the surprise attacker. Given that she's got 15 PD, a 15 Con, and x2 Stun from physical attacks, I think that's exactly what she's supposed to be. She's a one-trick pony who is really dangerous if she's in her element (i.e., going first), and her build is set up to do that. But outside of that situation, she falls apart.

Looks interesting. Love the dialog callbacks to a certain well known genre film.

Sure, but depending on the genre, maybe that's not what they're supposed to do. Anyway, the example power was only to illustrate the kinds of things I was talking about -- stuff that villains do regularly to oppose heroes, but that Champions historically hasn't included on the character sheet.

One thing I go back and forth on is how much I should stat out a villain's story abilities. For instance, Batman is chasing the Joker through an abandoned toy factory. Being faster than Mr. J, the Caped Crusader is gaining on him. Then from the shadows, a booby trap goes off. Razor sharp playing cards fire out of the walls, requiring Batman to leap out of the way and dive behind a piece of machinery. One quick explosive batarang later, and the trap is wrecked. Batman then hears the sound of riotous laughter coming from above. The Joker is sprinting across a catwalk 50 feet above the factory floor, heading for an open door that leads elsewhere. As Batman prepares to throw a grappling hook, five goons step out of the shadows, carrying wrenches and clubs. The Dark Knight sighs and turns to face this new threat. He'll have to catch up to the Joker later. So, what happened here in game mechanics? How did the Joker even get up there? How is he able to move so much faster when nobody is looking at him? There are lots of ways to do this in the game. Some of them (but these aren't the only options) would include 1) The D&D technique. You could plan out the encounter ahead of time, drawing a map of the factory like it was a fantasy dungeon. Here's the ladder that the Joker will use to get to the catwalk. Here's where the trap is set. Here is where the goons will hide. Then you just hope that the plan works and the Joker makes it to those locations before Batman catches up to him. You might charge Joker points for having followers and a base, and if so, this is what he gets. 2) The hand-wave solution. You want Joker to get away for now, so he's got whatever he needs to make that happen. No character sheet modifications necessary. 3) The genre build. You actually build it with powers. Joker has a VPP, and maybe a Multipower for "villain tricks" as well. In the VPP he's got a Triggered 3D6 RKA, Indirect, Autofire x5, Area Effect Line attack, representing his trap. In his villain tricks Multipower he also has Summon: Goons with 1 charge, so he can have backup appear whenever he needs them. Then he's got a 20" Teleport that only works when the heroes all spend their phases fighting somebody else. Traditionally Champions supplements haven't used a lot of the Genre Build technique. But part of me likes the idea that this is how characters like the Condiment King can show up to challenge Batman for a (very short) time. You get some loser (at best a competent normal) who puts on a costume, and they end up being a 250 point or 300 point villain, only because they've got some things that will go their way. Example powers: "Look at that monitor, Batman. You'll see the damsel in distress is trapped in a room that is filling up with water. You can catch me or save her, you choice." --18D6 Mind Control, 1 charge, one command only -- stop what you're doing and save the girl. (Too often, players will say things like "I can beat this guy in one phase. I've got several minutes before she drowns." This puts a game mechanic to the hero's choice dilemma.) "It looks like the guard assigned to his cell was on his payroll. 'Officer Johnson' wasn't even his real name, just a fake identity. Somebody hacked into the computer and changed the duty assignments." --20" Teleport, megascale, 1 charge, only to escape from prison/jail, doesn't work once the hero knows to look for it. Stuff like that.

And then there's the problem that some GMs think that they're award winning mystery writers, and they aren't. I don't have that problem with my current group, but I can't tell you how many GMs I've played with who either completely leave out important clues, or include so much information that whatever is important gets drowned out, or make mistakes about basic background facts and so lead the players to draw the wrong conclusions.

Sure, but we're talking about how they should be built.

Over the last several years, I've built up a pretty sizable collection of Marvel and DC character writeups. I've tried to scale most of them appropriately with each other, and I've read through an immense amount of primary source material. Then I try to convert them into usable game stats. I'm a bit of a completionist, so if Batman turns out to be 900 points, that's okay. A lot of villains turn out to be way cheaper than the heroes, because they only challenge the hero on one level. Killer Croc is physically very dangerous, as long as Batman doesn't have his utility belt handy. But Croc's crimes are easy to solve, he doesn't challenge Bruce at all mentally. Penguin is very intelligent, and he has a gadget pool of different umbrella weapons that allow him to be versatile. He will also have minions and traps that he uses to wear down the Dark Knight. But once Batman gets his hands on him, it's over. Villains are often specialized -- a lot of them have one great move that makes them very effective against an unprepared hero. I think I built Count Vertigo as having a 12D6 NND Area Effect Cone Flash attack versus all sense groups, and then a bunch of Lightning Reflexes. The idea was that if he catches you with his effect, you're too disoriented to really take an action. You don't know up from down and can't really take any actions. This sort of power is way outside the lines of what a normal hero would use, it basically hoses anybody who is hit with it (potentially entire teams). And Count Vertigo likes to attack from surprise. But if that move fails for whatever reason, he doesn't have anything to fall back on. He'll be stunned by an average attack, and it's not like he's an awesome hand to hand combatant. Villains can be one trick ponies, heroes shouldn't be.

Part of the problem is that the majority of Champions games are not solo hero adventures, while the majority of comic books are. The Joker is less powerful than Batman. As long as the Joker sticks to his areas of strength, he can be a reasonable opponent for the Bat. He avoids direct combat unless he has some kind of advantage to even the scales, so he'll always have a secret weapon, or a trap, or some hostages or something to distract Batman. The conflict usually ends when Batman gets past all the obstacles and is able to confront Joker directly. When it gets to "punching in the face" time, Batman wins. However, Joker doesn't really scale well when you've got the other members of the Justice League there. Or other heroes at all, really. The more heroes involved, the higher the likelihood that somebody is going to engage him in combat before he's ready. Or avoid his obstacles. Imagine if Batman was teamed up with Nightcrawler of the X-Men. Bamf! Punch! Fight over.

I prefer to stay within my own lair, rarely leaving or interacting with the outside world, endlessly indulging my own obsessions. I also hate it when intruders disturb my seclusion. I am clearly a Lich.

We're basically starting a new campaign, so nobody is attached to anything yet.

We generally play 5th edition Champions on Saturday night at the GM's house. Our Saturday night group has 4 people, so an extra player would be nice. I can't be there every week (I've had some "getting married" obligations the last few months) but the other players are consistent. The rest of the guys also play Pathfinder on Sundays, and I think they have an extra player or two for that, but I can't be there for those games. Usually we play 350 point characters, with 12 or 13D6 attacks being pretty standard. Fairly tough characters are the norm. Generally heroic tone, standard comic book "heroes don't murder people" and things like that.

I think that's just a Distinctive Features.

Summon Giant Eagles is also one of those campaign breakers. Gandalf's player tried to use it, and the GM flipped the table over and started ranting about how much time he'd spent prepping the game. "I even wrote a damn language for the elves!" he said. Finally he was like "you can't do that!" "I can too! I paid the points for it!" "No you can't! Because.... because... because the Nazgul have these like, big ass flying dinosaur things!" Then the GM reminded Gandalf that he hadn't chipped in for pizza for the last couple months, and Gandalf decided they'd just walk to Mordor.

Yeah, this is the same justification I have for why superheroes don't just end World War II. The idea of people with powers is so new, that nobody quite gets what they're really capable of. Also, Superman can't see his own character sheet. It's always gotta be a little spooky the first time you get hit with a bigger bomb.

We've had a guy play a Martian Manhunter ripoff in a game before without it being a problem. Of course, there were also Kryptonians in that game, so it was pretty high powered. When you're looking at balancing a game, you've got several things to consider. 1) Is it thematically appropriate? No matter the power level, it's probably not cool to bring in a knock off from your favorite anime, Super Fluffy Bunny Power Team Go! when everyone else is making characters for Call of Cthulhu. 2) Is it outside of accepted campaign norms? There's nothing particularly wrong with having a 9 OCV. But if the group average OCV/DCV is a 4, then it could easily cause problems. 3) Do any of the powers provide shortcuts that the GM did not anticipate? "Detect Bad Guy" could be fine in some games, but unbalancing in others. There's nothing wrong with the Martian Manhunter, and nothing wrong with playing him. There are plenty of characters with a broad set of different powers. But it's worth pointing out that it may not work for some GMs, some campaigns, and some storylines. The Lord of the Rings doesn't work as an adventure if you've got a long range teleport. A Multipower potentially lets you have several of these abilities, the better to find the thing the GM didn't anticipate.

There is a third type of Multipower that I've seen, and that's the Martian Manhunter "grab bag of awesome abilities" method. He's got Invisibility, Desolidification, a 20/20 Force Field, Teleportation, Retrocognition, and as many other "ruin the GM's scenario" type powers as he can cram in. The problem here isn't with the Multipower though. It's with the specific powers and how they interact with the game. Something like Desolid or Invisibility can be extremely powerful, or sometimes not that important at all depending on how the campaign is set up. Just like Telepathy can be either totally useless or a complete campaign wrecker, depending on what the GM lets you pull from Lowly Agent's mind. A whodunit mystery will probably be pretty boring unless the GM remembered the Telepathy and accounted for it. Cramming lots of those powers into one character increases the chances that the GM isn't prepared for one of them. But again, that's a problem with how they interact with the campaign, not a problem with the construct itself.

I haven't found Multipowers to be too cost effective. Generally I tend to use them for one of two things. 1) A different "flavor" of power that isn't any more or less effective (like different types of arrows), and 2) uncommon powers that are used in special circumstances. One of the things almost every one of my characters has is a Movement Multipower. My trained martial artist characters end up with something like this: 11 point Multipower 1u -- +5" of Running 1u -- 11" of Swinging (defined as conveniently placed light poles, signs, etc, basically super-parkour) 1u -- +5" Swimming 1u -- +7" Superleap I'm a bit OCD and so I like my "primary" movement characteristics to be all the same. I'll have 11" of Running, Swinging, and Superleap. They're all odd numbers so they round up for the half-move. Now it's pretty point efficient, but obviously not quite as efficient as just buying one form of movement and using only that. For most cases, pure Running or pure Superleap will be more efficient. And Flight or Teleport will be more effective if you pay a slight cost premium. But I think that shows that the Multipower is fairly well balanced. More useful that the most efficient build, but not as powerful as the more expensive option. You're only going to be using one movement mode each phase, so why should you pay full price for each one? While this is a low cost example, it's not that different from the standard 60 Active Point Multipower with 4 different attacks in it. All of the attacks are roughly "equally good", and you're paying a premium for versatility. Then you've got the Utility Belt model. These are situational powers that don't really define your character, and you won't be using them often, but they are nice to have. Darkness with continuing charges for a "smoke bomb". Flash pellets. Batarangs. Entangles. These abilities are usually relatively low in Active Points and are situational. They might be extremely useful in one specific scenario, but your character isn't built around maximizing their effect.

Speed is the most powerful characteristic in the game. That's why it's also the most expensive. Anything that allows you to function as if your Speed were higher is (potentially) incredibly powerful. The Talents that allow for additional attacks have a set cost of 10 points apiece. This becomes more and more powerful the higher your Speed, as it lets you "double up" your attacks on more phases. Multiple Power Attack has been implied in Hero since at least 4th edition (no need to revisit The Great Linked Debate). But it was always an inefficient choice -- two 10D6 Energy Blasts are inferior to one 20D6 Energy Blast. That was the case until 5th edition, where you could buy an additional focus for +5 points. 10D6 Energy Blast OAF (25 points) + second focus (5 points) gives you two 10D6 attacks for the cost of one 12D6 attack (assuming it would also be an OAF). That's a significant increase in power. Perhaps you haven't seen characters that can really take advantage of these maneuvers. It was all we saw.

Skill level costs deserve more analysis than I can give them right now. It also directly ties into the costs of characteristics, which I've avoided up to this point. I'll agree that 8 point levels were too expensive. I disagree that they got better in 6th. And again there's a big problem that 2 point levels now apply to every kind of maneuver you can do with a weapon. Now that's entirely correct, and is the whole reason for the heroic level discussion. Heroic games have too many unknowns. Definitely intuiting how they priced it. One of the first things I did when I was a happy little powergamer was slap Increased End on a power and then buy up an End Reserve to pay for it. And lo and behold, it tracks very closely with the cost of Charges. You don't really gain much at all. That's not accidental. And I'm saying the authors got it right when they got to 4th edition. I also consider "build it in different ways, each with a similar cost" to be a mark of great game design. And that's why I've spent half the damn thread talking about the cost relationship between End Reserve and Charges. I don't care about earlier editions. For me, this thread is all about 6th ed vs 4th ed.

You'll want to do your math again. The character doesn't have a 20 Rec. The character would have +20 Rec. Your example had a character with a 12 Rec, who was dropped to -19 Stun. On post-12, you get a recovery and go up to -7. Then at the end of your next segment (let's say segment 3) you get another recovery and you wake up at the end with 5 Stun. My character would also have a 12 Rec, and he's also dropped to -19 Stun. But on post-12, he's got an additional 20 Recovery. He gets 32 back, and at the beginning of Segment 3 he's awake at 13 Stun. Then he has a full Segment 3 to work with, which may involve taking a recovery, bringing him up to 25 total. The same number of recoveries are being taken, and the character gets 20 more. So if one person is at 5 Stun, the other would be at 25.

Not really. But it should be.

Good enough for me. Shows which way his thoughts were going. And I think it's very different from the reasoning in 4th and before. Yeah, those problems exist in any game. But that's something to be addressed at the individual GM level, not at the publication level. You don't change point costs for the genres that only use half the book.