massey

That's pretty darn high. The highest point characters I ever created were far, far lower than that. I think I've got a 3800 point Silver Age Superman build somewhere. The thing to keep in mind is that damage is supposed to be exponential. A 13D6 attack is "twice as powerful" as a 12D6 attack. It doesn't play that way in game, but as far as descriptively, that's how it's supposed to work. 5th edition Galactic Champions recommended 700 point characters to represent the very high end. I've found that 1000 to 1500 points lets you build characters like Batman, Thor, Green Lantern, etc, without having to cut any corners. Just buy them flat out.

That's why he got the Medal of Honor. Really good rolls.

Don't worry. The rest of us know all about tiresome arguments with people.

I'm not accusing you of being a Killer GM. I'm saying some people are giving you Killer GM advice. I don't have a problem with using murderous supervillains in a Champions game. I don't have a problem with letting the murderous supervillains get a nuclear weapon. I don't have a problem with expecting superheroes to not kill the murderous supervillains who have nuclear weapons. What I have a problem with is trying to use the legal system to hammer superheroes who use lethal force in those scenarios. Superman doesn't kill because of his personal moral code. Other heroes follow his example. But the law doesn't require it. If Dr. Genocide is about to unleash his Atomic Zombie Plague Gas on the city, and Captain Overkill flies in and hits the 5 PD mastermind with a 9D6 HKA Scrotum Crusher attack, do you think he's going to be facing charges? Hell no. They'll give him a medal. It bothers me (in comics and in games) when government officials who have repeatedly proven themselves completely powerless and incompetent to stop villains suddenly become hyper-competent and are equipped with the latest in super-gadgets when it comes time to screw over a player character. The same guys who can't catch the Riddler ("my special power is that I leave clues!") are now willing to expend endless resources to prosecute the guy who saved the city 100 times, because he killed the guy who tried to blow it up 100 times.

Clearly there's some confusion about campaign tone though. The players appear to be of the belief that the fall will be painful, not fatal. Whether its an accurate assessment of the situation or not, the players have a somewhat reasonable basis for thinking that. They aren't casually disregarding human life, they simply believe that the villain is threatening serious injury (that the heroes can almost instantly repair) rather than death. As a general note, when you put players in one of those "hero's choice" moral quandaries (that GMs seem to love for some reason), you're running the risk that they make a decision you don't like. Players aren't psychic, and they don't know what the GM wants. So they're torn between what they think the most effective option is, what they think their character would do, and what they think the GM is looking for. The bad guy has a hostage, what do we do? Unless everybody is on the exact same page, those sorts of encounters can end really badly. I have had GMs who think you're supposed to shoot the bad guy in a hostage situation. They'd get mad if you backed off and tried another approach. "You're just going to walk away and leave the vampire holding the hostage off the roof? What kind of hero are you?" I once played in a game that had a really cool premise -- at 11:30 pm (or whenever) on one particular night, whatever people were watching on TV suddenly popped out of the screen. The players took on the roles of heroic characters, and we had to make our way through the chaos that ensued (things are great if somebody is watching Superman, not so great if they're watching Godzilla). I was playing the Hugh Jackman Wolverine (I think X-Men 2 had just come out). So I turn the corner and see one of the Harry Potter kids (still young kids then) get cut up by Leatherface or Jason Voorhees or the Terminator or somebody like that. I run over and slash the guy with my claws and put him down for the count. So far, so good. Actions are in character and are appropriate to the tone of the game. Then we run into the problem, a pretty big problem actually. Me: So how is the kid? GM: Oh he's been sliced up really bad by the bad guy. He's lying in a huge pool of blood, his breathing is very shallow and rapid. He's almost dead. Me: (thinking to myself) Okay, this kid is screwed. He'll be dead in seconds. I have no healing powers. Obviously the GM wants me to play father figure to the two remaining kids. Me: (to kids) Alright kids, you're gonna have to toughen up now. I'm sorry about your friend. Come on, I'll try and find a safe place to take the two of you. Me: (to GM) I take the two remaining kids and we're going to get out of town. I close the other kid's eyes before we go, maybe cover him up with a towel or something. GM: What? Me: Yeah, I take the other two kids and leave. GM: (as kids) But what about Ron? Me: (thinking kid is already dead) There's nothing we can do for him now. You've gotta just make your peace with it. Let's go before more of those monsters come back. GM: (as kids) But what about Ron? Me: I can't do anything for him. Let's go. GM: (as kids) But what about Ron? Me: (to GM) Okay, I guess I'm gonna just have to grab these two kids and carry them off. Or maybe I'll just leave them here to mourn their friend. Do you want me to take these kids with me or not? GM: You're not gonna do anything about the kid who is hurt? Me: Oh is he still alive? I thought he was already dead. GM: No he's not dead. He's really badly hurt though. And he's in extreme pain. It looks really really bad. Me: ...What? GM: Yeah, it looks really grim. If you just leave him here, he'll die slowly and painfully. Me: Are you saying what I think you're saying? GM: (nods) Me: Okay. Kids, turn away, you're not gonna want to see this. Alright little buddy, just close your eyes. When you open them you'll be with Santa Claus. Snikt. GM: (turning pale) Gasp! Me: What, wasn't I supposed to put the kid out of his misery? He was dead anyway, right? GM: What??? No, you're supposed to take the kid to the hospital!!! The GM thought I wasn't playing Wolverine right. The problem came in poor communication about what the situation was. The GM thought there was one clear path forward that my character should take. I thought there was a different clear path forward my character should take. Just because you think there's a right answer to the situation, that doesn't mean everybody is on the same page.

I guess I'm gonna have to be the a-hole here (it's okay, I'm used to it :)). I don't really see that the players have done anything wrong. I immediately thought of the Batman scene that I think is posted above (link isn't working for me). He throws the guy off the roof because Bat-Bale figured up how many dice the guy could take without going negative Body. Great scene in a great movie. I don't think you can really get mad at players when they're basically following the same sort of rules as one of the most popular superhero movies of all time. Now, that's not to say that this kind of behavior is appropriate for every game, or that you have to smile and pretend you're having fun when they do something like this. But I don't see any problem with it in a generic Champions game. A few more general comments about things I've seen in this thread. I don't understand where this idea of prosecuting heroes and sending them to Stronghold comes from, but a lot of you seem to love it. In every situation (except one -- the guy who killed the "I hate America" guy and the photographer), it appears undeserved. You're basically talking about a person who kills a terrorist while they are committing a terrorist act, and then the DA wants to send the hero to jail. Ridiculous. I think I'd walk away from a gaming group after something like that. I guess I forgot the part at the beginning of Die Hard 2 where John McClane breaks out of prison for killing the bad guys in the first movie. Your villains seized a base with a nuclear reactor??? They're lucky only one of them died. Why would the public turn against the guy who killed a creepy mind controller who was holding a research station (and its nuke) hostage? Superheroes follow a strict moral code, not because the law requires them to, but because they go above and beyond what the law requires. When Superguy finally gives in and he kills MurderClown (who has a body count of 1000+), everybody cheers for him. The cops don't try to send him to prison. But Superguy is such a good person that he feels guilty about it and has to go through a character redemption arc to deal with it. But if your players don't want to play those kinds of characters, I wouldn't try to make them. Again, maybe you guys are just wanting different things from the game. At that point I'd say just end the campaign. But there's an awfully strong dose of Killer GM in this thread.

As I recall, Steve Rogers was stuck as a lowly private the whole war. He was kind of a Beetle Bailey figure. When he’d go off on a mission as Captain America, he was inevitably leaving behind his duties as Private Steve Rogers. The sergeant (or whoever) would find him asleep in his bunk (after a long hard mission as Cap), and Steve would get stuck peeling potatoes. For some reason, Army Command didn’t feel like telling the local guys who Steve really was. The whole thing was played for laughs. While the Golden Age was more serious than the Silver Age, angst wasn’t really a thing they did. To get the tone right, characters’ secret IDs should either be lovable bumblers, or somebody too important to be allowed to enlist. People would either say “Clark Kent? That sad sack? Ha! The Army wouldn’t take him!” Or “Bruce Wayne, the richest man in Gotham? His company makes planes for the war effort!”

A lot of the original WWII characters had important careers back home. There's no shortage of District Attorneys, police detectives, and engineers who put on costumes and punched crime in the face. I'm not an expert on what the grounds were to not be drafted, but I got the impression that a lot of these guys were older (mid-30s or later). Edit: And "millionaire playboy" was a pretty common secret ID too. Presumably those guys have some pull if they don't want to be drafted.

And those weapons have strength minimums. In a heroic game, Bob with a 13 Str picks up a greataxe. Let's say it's a 2D6 HKA and has a Str minimum of 10. Bob can't do any extra damage with it, he's just getting the 2D6 from the weapon. Now Bob picks up my summoned greataxe. It's a D6+1 HKA with no Str minimum. Bob can now add his Str to it and when he swings, he does... 2D6 HKA. It's functionally the same and it saves our wizard friend some points.

Well let's pick apart your example. First, it doesn't have to be a base of 2D6 HKA. You didn't include a Str minimum, so let's presume his magically summoned swords don't have one. I think Str minimum for a purchased power is unseemly anyway, because you've either got enough Str to ignore it (so it's not a limitation) or you're wasting points. You could easily have a longsword or something that was 1D6+1 HKA with no Str min, and your average fighter type can get it up to 3D6-1. Pretty powerful for a Fantasy Hero character. Second, you don't have to buy it Zero End. That's what many players on the board do, but it's certainly not required. He'll use up more Endurance, but in 6th particularly that's no big deal. Finally with UBO, as I said earlier, it depends if he wants to hand them out or not. If he's just summoning his own weapons and isn't intending on handing them out (so that team-mates using his weapons is only incidental) then he doesn't have to worry about paying for the ability. So I'm seeing lots of ways for him to do it cheaper than what you've proposed. I mean, I wouldn't build it your way, so I think he certainly doesn't have to.

Book-wise, it doesn't have to be anything. He can build it however he wants.

The only answer there is the Beastmaster, from Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time. Technically a 1991 movie, but I think it has the soul of an 80s film.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea that governments really don't know what to do with supers. A lot of people may not even believe that super-powered folks are real. This problem could be exacerbated by some of the "masked men" who run around fighting crime without powers. When guys like the Red Bee and Air Wave are out there in costume, how is an Army general supposed to distinguish them from Superman and the Flash? Obviously two of them have powers and two of them don't, but wild exaggerated reports probably exist about a lot of these characters. I think it would be very "Golden Age" (and maybe a bit Silver) to have a government official go out to meet some of these heroes to see what they can do. And you start off with a couple of costumed bozos who are reasonably athletic and can take a punch, but they're just 150 point guys in spandex with no real superpowers. Then you go to a few illusionist types (Dr Mysterio the Great!) who are impressive at first, but then there's a gust of wind or something that blows the smoke away and the general sees through their trick. By the time you get to Superman and the other guys who have real powers, the general thinks the whole thing is a scam and he's made up his mind. Everything Superman does, he thinks is fake (lifting fake weights, getting shot with fake bullets, etc). And if Supes does something that can't be explained (like flying), the general just happens to bend over and tie his shoes or something at that moment. He ends up leaving before the event is finished and sends his report to Washington saying these guys are a bunch of phoneys. That's how they'd do it in an old comic book, though you could certainly do it in a less coincidental and more realistic way. Even if you don't want to use that kind of cheesy comic-book scenario, I think it's quite reasonable to say that people in the government just haven't wrapped their minds around the concept of superheroes. You might as well ask the CEO of Sears in 1994 what the company's internet strategy is going to be. Something that's obvious to us in hindsight might not be obvious at all to the people of the day. Now in real life, there was a "What If?" style story back in like 1940 where Superman captured Hitler and Stalin in a few panels. So even then the readers knew that he could end the war in an afternoon if the writers would let him. But I think the reaction of people in the "real world" (where the comics don't exist and you just hear about the characters in news reports). Reading "Superman stops bank robbers!" or "Superman rescues trapped miners!" doesn't really give you an understanding of how Oh My God powerful he really is. I think late in the war, when Germany is doing better than they did in real life (due to spies, War Wheels, and other wonder weapons), that's when FDR puts his foot down and says "send in the superheroes".

I thought they only made one Highlander movie. I'm pretty sure of it, actually. This sounds like it would be a pretty fun game. I think anybody who loves 80s action movies would get a kick out of it. Still, I can't see this ending any way other than "Find John Matrix and convince him to do one last mission".

Oh, and my #1 rule when building powers is that something that makes your power worse should never make it more expensive. If it does, you're doing it wrong. Continuing charges and things like that are generally priced for "fire and forget" attacks, like a fireball that keeps burning after you hit your target with it. They aren't priced for creating a weapon that you still have to swing every round. There should always be a direct relationship between how powerful something is, and how much it costs.

Everybody has their own opinions, and most of them are probably going to disagree with me, but I'll chime in anyway. And I'll walk you through my chain of logic so you can see why I think the way I do. First, you've got the base power. This sounds like a simple Hand Killing Attack. Now an HKA can be defined as anything you want (subject to GM approval). Razor sharp claws, big ass sword, mystical death touch, even a lightsaber. At its basic level, HKA is a power that does killing damage in hand to hand combat (no range), and it is visible when you use it. You could easily define it as a weapon that appears in your hand when you want to attack with it, and then disappears when you are finished. It could also be Wolverine's claws, or an acid touch, or a fire punch. The description of it being a sword (or other weapon) doesn't require you to do anything special. Just buy HKA. Now, we'll look at the little details. We've got the basic power down, so these details are only as important as you want to make them. If you want to use the power in a different way, you may want to look at putting an Advantage or a Limitation on the base power. So think about how you normally function when you use this spell, all the kinds of things that you're going to expect to be able to do with it. Then we'll see if any Advantages or Limitations sound like they fit. Remember (and this is where I differ from some Hero players), you don't have to take an Advantage or Limitation from something that might theoretically come up every once in a while, they are only for things that you expect to do in your normal course of business. So, you create weapons out of thin air. Are these primarily for your own use, or do you hand them out to people? A lot of posters have brought up the Usable By Others Advantage, and that's what they're talking about. Generally a power is only usable by the person who bought it. Cyclops can't use Wolverine's claws (not without picking him up and waving his arms around, Weekend at Bernie's style). Now weapons that have the Focus Limitation can often be picked up by someone else and used. Focus means that the power is in the object (there are a few exceptions, like Dumbo's feather, where picking it up doesn't give you the power). So if I pick up somebody else's gun, I can normally use it. What you've got to decide is what the intent of your spell will be. If you want to be Captain Weapons Locker, where you cast the spell over and over again and hand a bunch of weapons to your buddies, then you need to buy Usable By Others on the power. That's something that you're going to be doing a lot. But if that's not your intention, and other people only use your weapons incidentally (like if you get disarmed and someone else picks it up), you don't need to worry about it. It's an extra expense for something you don't intend to do. Now let's look at the Focus limitation. I'm not sure that Focus is appropriate in this situation. A Focus saves you points because the power can be taken away from you. You have to ask yourself, is there a way for this power to be taken away? You said you can be disarmed, but the spell ends after 1 minute. Can you cast the spell again to get the weapon back? If somebody grabs your sword, can you mutter a magic word and suddenly another one appears in your hand? If you do, what happens to the one the bad guy grabbed? Does it stick around for the full minute or does it vanish into thin air? From what I can gather, what I think you're trying to build, I'd probably go with something like this: 1 1/2D6 Hand Killing Attack (change the number of dice to suit your game), 3D6 HKA with Strength added Limited power: requires incantations and gestures and a 1/2 phase action to summon weapon, weapon vanishes after 1 minute (-1/2) Physical manifestation: can be disarmed, weapon can be used by someone who picks it up (-1/4) 25 active points, 14 real points And there you go. The power requires you to take a 1/2 phase action to summon it. It's not an attack action, so you could summon the weapon and then attack in the same phase (but you couldn't move). I used a custom limitation to represent this, which falls under the "Limited Power" limitation. You actually have to do something to make your weapon appear, it's obvious, and you can be stopped if somebody gags you or restrains your hands. The weapon also has a physical manifestation, which means you can be disarmed, the weapon can be broken, and if you drop it somebody can grab it and use it against you. Now, logically with the description of how this power works, you should be able to hand out weapons like candy, and supply your whole team with them. But since you didn't buy Usable By Others, just don't do that. It should be okay if one person on your team picks up the sword you dropped, and you may even be okay with summoning another for yourself and continuing to fight. But if it happens, it should be something that takes place like once in the campaign, and not something you try to do every combat. You know that you didn't by UBO, so don't try to get it for free. It's okay to get a minor bonus from the description of your power in certain circumstances, but don't lean on them again and again.

Oh, good idea. Hitler was apparently horrified by the use of poison gas in WWI, so he didn’t use it (against soldiers, that is). Maybe in this timeline there were a handful of superhumans in the First World War, and so everybody decides to hold them back in this one.

I don't play 6th edition either. All of my comments were 5th edition compatible.

As far as a reason why the war isn't just a battle between supers, I have a suggestion. Nobody really knows how powerful they are. Even an invulnerable brick isn't really keen on finding out how invulnerable he really is. After all, how do you test to see if tank shells bounce off your face? It's not something that the Allies are willing to risk. Even once the PCs are convinced they can do more, Allied command is resistant. They don't want their heroes running off and getting killed (and like all good patriots, the heroes will say anything to get to go to the front lines -- including lying about being invulnerable). So the answer is always "no", at least until you decide the war is looking grim enough. Combine that with keeping the power sets in check. Cross-country travel in minutes combined with super-strength, amazing senses, and invulnerability means that the war should be over tomorrow. Superman should have been able to hover over the Atlantic ocean and throw bombs at Hitler's house. Just make sure that the heroes don't have any of those war-ending power combinations. Finally, give Hitler some bodyguards. He's got a handful of supers who guard Germany, the (go go Google translate) Blitzengruppe. The Allies did send a few heroes to try and end the war (powerful ones too), and the Blitzengruppe sent back their heads. People don't know too much about them, or how powerful they are. They don't have to be stronger than the PCs, in fact they probably shouldn't be. But these are the very early days of super combat, and nobody really understands things like how powers interact with each other. A guy with 20 rPD is completely invincible, he can shrug off a bazooka. Who would think to see if he's resistant to energy damage as well? The Nazis got lucky with a couple of bad matchups, and now Allied command is terrified of them. Of course the heroes will be more well-rounded by the time they face the Blitzengruppe, and they'll win that fight.

When I print them out, I use the 3 column character sheet in Hero Designer. But when I write them out by hand I use my own method. I'm not sure if I picked it up anywhere or if it's just something I did on my own. It looks something like this (I'm sure I'm gonna mess up the formatting here): Stats first, with primary stats on the left and figured characteristics on the right. Defensive powers come next, followed by offensive powers and then movement. Next is skills, leading off with any combat levels. Finally you've got disadvantages at the end. If the character sheet is long enough to get to the bottom of the page, the disads go into the second column several lines down from the figured stats. This setup worked for me for years and years before I got a computer. Edit: Hey, the formatting worked out pretty well. I'm amazed. Now that I think about it, I think this is sort of how I hand-wrote my D&D character sheets, with stats on the left, saves on the right, and then AC and HP right underneath.

Well he doesn't need the Hand Attack slot at all, the Strength slot will work just fine. So even if you don't like the "only with standard maneuvers" limitation, that still gets rid of a 3 point slot. That puts his multipower at 36 points total instead of 31, and he can make his killing strike a fixed slot to bring it down to 34. And that's assuming he can't come up with a different -1/4 limitation that fits all the slots. I think a simple "doesn't stack with other maneuver bonuses" would work fine. So his extra Str doesn't work with a haymaker, his DCV doesn't work with a dodge, his OCV doesn't work the 'set' maneuver, etc. A limited number of martial art maneuvers can be very effective. Personally I like martial strike, martial block, and one of martial throw, martial grab, legsweep, or martial dodge. That's 11 points of maneuvers (12 if martial dodge is chosen) and it really increases your effectiveness in combat. But as you add more and more maneuvers, the cost effectiveness goes down the tubes. It quickly becomes more effective to just buy more OCV/DCV and more of your damaging attack. The sweet spot for martial arts is a pretty small window.

You guys are basically arguing over a single digit number of points. That's generally a waste of time, as there isn't a game system out there that can balance things with that degree of accuracy. Not do that and offer lots of different character build options. The primary factor affecting game balance is going to be what the GM allows in his game. In heroic games, single digit balancing issues could theoretically have an impact (if you only have 150 points, a 6 point difference is small but still there). But those games have less flexibility in allowed builds, and anyway available equipment is going to be a much bigger influencing factor. In superheroic games the differences are so small that it's not even really noticeable. I think there's a myth that Champions players want to believe in, that somewhere out there is the perfect balance point that can be achieved if only we make this little rule change. That myth is harmful because it makes players focus on very minor issues, and eventually that affects the next version of the rules.

I had to go to the book because I was just scratching my head about this. The paragraph you quoted is there, but I think they mean something else. It's poorly written, but if we go to the top of the paragraph: As I read it, the second paragraph of that sentence should begin with "If the character chooses to do this, then a 1-point Killing Attack..." It seems as though that paragraph is talking about applying STUN instead of BODY. So your 1-point RKA Penetrating counts as always rolling 1 BODY, to Penetrate through 1 STUN to the target, just like a 1D6 Normal Attack would. That's the way I'm going to interpret it anyway. It's a very strangely worded rule. Still no idea why a 1/2D6 attack is across the board worse, though.

If that’s the case, then it’s been changed in 6th.

Won’t work. First, you count the Body on the dice roll (0 is 0, 2-5 is 1, 6 is 2) to determine how much gets through. So your 1 pip attack Penetrates 0. Second, there’s no way you’ll hit with all those autofire attacks.