Duke Bushido

Thank, Hugh. Been a while since I read through 4, and it'll be a while yet before I can do so again. Was that spelled out, or was it suggested through example? I really don't remember it being spelled out, but like I said: it's been a while. I know it wasn't in 1 or 2, though I've never read 3, in spite of owning two print copies. There sort of was. 1 and 2 specified no points for any Disads after 6 in a given type. The rules suggested / specified (yeah; they were a little wishy-washy) characters be built on 250 total points. So there was an effective cap in effect, and of course, the GM can set whatever limits he wants for his game.

Yep. You just need gloves and a potato masher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU6houH0j-s

Thanks, Chris. Who else? (Never having played a genuine 4e game, I can't say that I wouldn't do it. All I can say is that with our 2e mix, it happens once in a while, but not very often)

Okay, that's done with, and this thread is already staggering my current faculties. I want to tackle this while I'm still _relatively_ cogent. Pretty much, yes: we have an interpret on multipower that, as Hugh suggested with rounding to get freebies, we took from our first game experiences. I guess it wasn't this thread, but just in the past couple days I pointed out that multipower is pretty is, well, mostly perfect for replicating someone who's power is a single element thing, manifested in multiple ways. I used the example, I think, of a psi-based character who was able to produce only X amount of mental power at one time, and therefore had to reallocate constantly between her needs. Starburst, from the first and second edition (and possibly third; I don't know) was the only example of multipower in the 1e rules, and we took that as an example of a typical multipower. Combine the fact that multipower itself, at that time, was listed not as a framework, but as an actual Power, it was a lead pipe cinch that the idea was (again, as we took it. Apparently we were supposed to pick up the mandate for rounding to get a free point here and there, yet ignore the only example of Multipower, while feeling free to use it as a method to make things cheaper just because you weren't likely to use them both at once anyway. Strange nitpick, but here we are) that "Multipower" was one single power with multiple aspects, just like the psi character I mentioned earlier. As another example of that, let's say that Latex Lad, the Prince of Pliability, has _one_ essential power: he's really, really stretchy. Pop in a few Characteristics to represent how this has made him much more durable than the average bear (you know: made him "super" ). Let's give him the powers of Superleap, Entangle, Extra Limb, Force Wall, Gliding ,Stretching, a PD-based Energy Blast (literally spring-loaded fist), and a second PD-based energy blast with an AOE: another fist launch, but this time it's a really, really big first. Now there is a vague idea that he can only stretch "so much" without hurting himself. Well that makes Multipower a great choice: it is, from the only known example (at that time) precisely the Power (again, at that time) to demonstrate this very condition. The character puts his powers in a Multipower with variable slots, we run through two sessions and the GM says "Hey, Lucas, after the game session, let's come up with a short list of maybe ten or twelve "pre-shifted" allocations until we all get a little better at doing this on the fly" (true story, if you were wondering) and everything is hunky-dory. We play a few more sessions and soon Lucas and the GM both are shifting on the fly, and aren't using the-- well that's gone on too far. Sorry about that. At any rate, that was (and still sort of is) the primary use of Multipower-- again, _as we understood it_. (For the record, shifting around a rather nebulous Power like Gliding is kind of a pain in the butt, what with your top speed going up and down and up and down, yet having to drop 1" to maintain it regardless of what it actually is. Unless 6 has somehow changed that, mind you. Rather than being Batman, you end up more like a bit of paper trapped in a wind vortex in an alley behind the mall.) But you also asked "when do you reach for a Multipower. In truth, in supers, pretty damned rarely. Not because there is a lot of math I can avoid by saying "No;" not because they are particularly difficult to use. Simply because I learned Multipower to mean something a bit different than, apparently, main-stream-- no; perhaps not. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that I learned multi-power before there was a Harbinger of Bullets, using an example that suggested it was an ideal way to deal with -- -well, I don't know exactly what single word would accurately pigeonhole the concept above, but that. That's the thing. In heroic, fairly regularly. There was no (that I had access to or had even heard of, anyway) published material showing that "this is okay, too." However, we took it as a logical extrapolation from the "single power with multiple expressions" idea that ultra slots were a pretty good way to model certain kinds of equipment. Arrows are a good example: razor tips, target tips, shock tips, stick of dynamite-- whatever; you could only use one at a time anyway. Same with cannons (balls, chain, grapeshot, etc) and other weapons, they were also handy for "secret spy equipment" that, for reasons of limited power capacity or the requirement for some sort of re-configuration, whatever, could only be used in one mode at a time. Another true story: Jim's game room had been plagued for years with two flickering lamps. It was a single-car carport (not garage) conversion (so it was extremely tight, nine of us crowded around that big table in there), and there was no telling what was going on inside the walls or even the ceiling, as the original carport, judging front he brick portions of the outer walls, had been mostly open, and in this area, at that time, meant it likely never had electricity at all. After about a year of gaming at his place, I offered to diagnose and potentially repair the problem. The next time our days off overlapped, I came by with my multi-meter. Jim had never used one, and was curious as to what I was doing (probing for continuity (mostly resistance in particular), voltage, and amperage drops. I explained to him what the settings were for and how they were used. He laughed it off as a being "like a multipower full of N-Ray visions (1e had no "Detect" as such, but we had created a cobble using N-ray vision as the base: rather than "seeing through," you could "see specifically" . Of course, that changed when he and I both bought Fantasy HERO some years later)" and as he said it, it kind of struck both of us: multipower can model gadgets, too! (for what it's worth, the short was caused by an over-tightened wire nut that had split and been taped over. As the wires in the junction heated and expanded, the connection became loose, and the wire feeding that wall wasn't properly twisted into the bundle to begin with. Always, always, _always_ use the correctly-sized wire nut, people: that could have easily been a house fire) So we use it for gadgets that have specific settings for specific functions, and prefer it for those that take a bit more reconfiguring that just twisting a dial: things like having to swap antennae or relocate the device, whatever. short version (yeah, way too late ): we use a traditional multi for one power with multiple aspects to simulate a limit to the amount of power that can be manipulated at once, and we use Ultras for certain weapon and gadget concepts, but we don't use them in supers anywhere near as much as we use them otherwise. We once did use them in Supers as ultras to represent, like Latex Lad's two different "springy fist" attacks with different power advantages: one slot with advantage; one slot without. Sometimes (rarely) a third slot with a different advantage. That died off shortly into 2e, not because of any rules changes, but because we noticed that we using it primarily to create two Ultra slots for the same power, and that was that. So we created instead an Advantage Adder (yes; an Adder Specifically for an Advantage): "Selectable: +1/4. It Allowed a Character to toggle any Selectable Advantage on or off as he saw fit. Multipowers in Supers almost completely disappeared after that. Again, all of this-- a couple of years of play time-- were based on the one example in the book from which we originally learned to play (the thing I am being told made points-effectiveness so brutally obvious, yet somehow didn't make the intent of multipower anywhere near as obvious). Going forward, like most anyone else, I expect, I taught what learned. If you just want straight-out points efficiency, dump everything you've got into a Pool. It's the multipower of everything, at below Elemental Control prices. I bring them up to demonstrate that _this_ is when we usually see Multis in our supers games: the player wants a pool initially, and we talk about it long and hard. I don't disallow Pools, but I make them Holy by regulating the Hell out of them. In most of the cases we encounter in our Supers game, considering the regulating I do to Pools, the multi becomes the more appealing choice. Sometimes it doesn't: skills is such a case, as are most _small_ pools. There is absolutely no doubt about that, NB: this thread demonstrates that. For some, certain shortcuts are acceptable, for others, all shortcuts are acceptable, for others no shortcuts are acceptable, and for still others, a perceived mandate to use shortcuts makes building to concept impossible. It certainly can. But it requires a lot of things for that to happen: A GM who hasn't given a hint about what he's looking for, a GM who hasn't reviewed the character with an eye toward the other PCs, the NPCs, or sneaky things he has in store, and an entire table of people who somehow did get all that info and built accordingly. There are exceptions to this: NB's Shotgun got GM approval (I assume) and didn't work out well as a straight-up combatant, but evidently still became a reasonable combatant by working with the team, and he says that the GM made adjustments to correct what was, in my own opinion, squarely on him to begin with. Bingo! It's just getting really difficult to discuss groups like mine without being told precisely how wrongly-standardized we are in the eyes of the more vocal people that aren't running my games. And that, my friend, is how it's done! That's more or less the way we've taken it to mean, based on the first and only example we saw for a couple of years. I say "more or less" because we felt that the extension of "one primary power with different expressions" would include the same essential power with different special effects: A jet of fire is, essentially, a scaled-down cone of fire, which is simply a long-term constantly-refreshed fireball. Did that make sense? Anyway, same power with different expressions, like Latex Lad or the psi example I gave earlier. I don't. I mean, I do for Westerns and Fantasy and other "semi-historical" settings, but I can't do it in supers and keep a straight face. Sorry. Well if I'm wrong for not instinctively realizing that the name of the game was points-effectiveness, then this can't be much more right. Sorry, Shrike, but it's this whole "right way to do something means changes have to be made" without any sort of hard justification of what the right way is that's driving me nuts. We can look at examples if we want, but even they aren't all done to a similar level of "mandatory points effectiveness," and the only thing i've ever seen in print was back in the BBB, where it was explicitly stated that if there are two ways to do something, the more expensive is the right way. I don't play true 4e (but I'd really like to try it, at least for one campaign), but that is the _only_ hard rules comment on "points-effectiveness" I've ever seen in print, and kicks a lot of this argument about a mandate to buy up one stat because it's cheaper than buying up three others right in the teeth. Now I will be completely fair: after the printing of Dark Champions (which I still don't yet own in paper, but have the PDF from BOH), I will totally believe that there was a hard recant on that rule. I would like to see it, though. See? This why we can't discuss this without a couple of years of conversation on fundamental understandings of the game! I will not kid you: earlier today, when I began replying, I thought I had mis-read that because of my insomnia-induced stupor. This is, without a doubt, the first time I have seen the suggestion of the idea that we _must_ spend all of our points. I can't give you any hard numbers as too many years have gone by, but the vast majority of my characters over the years have never even met the "limit" on Disadvantages, simply because they didn't have to: I had the concept modeled as far as I wanted to go for the "starting level" of this character, and maybe tweaked per GM request a bit more, but did not commonly hit the points limit for starting the campaign. Given the intro page to the book I learned from and the intro article from the book I use the most both specify "it's okay not to be able to start where you want; it's okay to grow your character to where you want to go using XP," I took that to heart, and again: it's what I learned, and so it's what I teach. I find an acceptable starting level, then enjoy the growing the character into concept, or watching that concept change as a result of the story, just as much as any other part of the game. Perhaps, going forward, I should max my Disads, spend everything, pick smaller concepts that I can complete entirely in the first go, and buy a damned Tamagotchi. Or maybe a Fitbit. Then the dumb animal I'm trying to keep alive is _me_. On the plus side, I finally get what you were talking about a couple of weeks ago during the COM flare-up when you mentioned it being a "point sink." You came up with a Disadvantage to get points you didn't need and spent them on something you didn't want? That's --- well, I really do like you, and I _love_ discussing things with you in most cases, and accordingly, I try to make that respect come across when I post to your conversations. Given my current condition, I can only hope that these things are coming across (I keep forgetting to Smilie) as I intend them to, and to help ensure that no negative comes out on this comment, I will simply state it thusly: That is so foreign to my take and technique of character design-- the mandate to take it all and spend it all, every time-- that I am really going to have to think on it a bit (when I'm more clear-headed) before I can form a reasonably-objective opinion on it. Just for curiosity, if no one else minds: Who else builds characters that way? Serious question, folks; no sarcasm or disdain or anything negative. Just looking for a quick tally. Thanks to any who reply, as always. Agreed, and the only rules changes I have ever wanted mandated (beyond dropping the price of Skill Levels) is to see that addressed. Not necessarily moderated or regulated, but addressed: there are enough folks out there that treat RAW as Holy that anything they perceive as a variation is wrong, period. (not most of you folks here: I think I've seen house rules from just about every one of you; clearly you have no major issues with making the changes you think need to be made. Just want to be clear there). I would really like to see power level and varying methodologies addressed a bit more concretely than "if this adventure is too hard for your group, then reduce X's power level and trade these two villains for this weaker one; if you're group would treat this adventure like a cakewalk, add Mechanonand the Seven Lords of Hell." Agreed; they are not mutually exclusive. We understand points efficiency. we take advantage of it when it does not significantly violate the core concept of the character. What bugs me is the claim that it is not possible to stay on concept _because_ of Efficiency, or that doing so _in spite_ of Efficiency are somehow wrong-headed. Moreover, the driving idea-- that the goal should ultimately _be_ Efficiency-- I can't disagree enough. The goal is to have a good time with friends, in whatever manner suits you and your friends. Sounds like a cop-out, but it's the truth. It's a _game_. We don't play it because we are evil and must be punished with math. Because I truly believe that this _is_ the goal, I can't stand being told that, working completely within the rules, I or my people are "doing it wrong" because we are not doing it the way that someone else-- who is _also_ completely within the rules-- is doing it. It's rather like saying "the speed limit is 60. That means you must go 60." I'm pretty sure doing 58 still gets you there, and it's well-within the rules. Doing 55 will still get you there, and save you some gas, Bonus: you're still within the rules. But if I want to go ahead and do 60, and lose a little extra gas, so what? Crusader's DEX was 25. We had no real hard understanding of what was "Super" and what was "impossible" for a normal human under 1e. Hell, we _still_ don't, and entire library of books later. As you yourself pointed out in a recent thread, the latest rules totally permit even Characters operating under NCM to just pay a little extra and still be normal humans with really high stats. You can be a perfectly normal human with a 60 STR if you want to shell out the points for it (I wouldn't, but you could). back in the pre-4 days, we (our table, I mean; I have no way of knowing what you folks did) really had no idea what was "human range." (as an aside: I like your "3-18" comparison; that was inspired) All we had a rough idea that we based on a comparison to a real-world record and the only truly-measurable characteristic in the game. The rest was an abstracted assumption we drew from the fact that a blank sheet had straight 10s in the other Primaries, too. We put a nice doily on it and patted it flat because, as you recall from most games of that era, it didn't really matter because there probably wasn't any great deal of thought put into it since it was only so you could compare one guy against another in a slightly-more-tangible way. Green Dragon's DEX was 30. Also in there from the beginning was that Martial Arts was an abstract damage multiplier, the buying of which unlocked five pre-ordained maneuvers. So from this shows us the way the authors and game designers would construct a "martial Artist," with no need for additional books, rules, etc, all of which combined represent a large investment of time, drag combat down even slower by adding new elements to cypher on, all for a net gain of... 4 dice or so? The chart was printed right on the sheet, without any fill-in-the-blank or "change this" options; there is little _doubt_ that this was the clearly designed "Martial Arts" they envisioned at that time. You'd get laughed away from most anyone's table trying that today. After all, there's a book. Buy that, because unless you're using this totally optional rule set, you're doing it wrong. You want points effectiveness? Buy Martial Arts the way if was from the very beginning: pay your STR; roll double-damage for kicks, or x1.5 for punches / strikes. separate topic: over-priced, since we all know that +STR, only for adding Damage, is more points effective. Then you just make a Martial Arts Skill, if you want to look all showy or represent your martial arts knowledge. If that chart is not sufficiently complex, buy a few Skill Levels to represent unique--- oh; sorry. That's the way _we_ do it. Of course, we do it based off of those original examples. At any rate, "Martial Arts" becomes as simple as "name your maneuver" or how many skill level and how many dice are you going to add?" and grants essentially infinite cool new moves. Like any other brawler, actually. You just declare it as martial arts. I mean, the look of your moves is pretty much special effects, is it not? Also from those early books: In 2e, Green Dragon retained his 30 DEX, but he also added two Skill levels with martial arts. Crusader retained his 25 DEX, but he, too, added two Skill Levels with martial arts. Pretty sure both those editions were by the exact same team (except maybe the layout guy). Does this mean that they are demonstrating that trained humans are static and can only be advanced with Skill Levels? Rhetorical. I have to at least try to go to bed again; I have work in the morning, and I can hear beard growing.... Actually, we did. Well, I didn't; Jim did (I wasn't the GM at that time). I can't remember the name of the character, but it was so clearly a spiderman rip-off / homage that it should have just said Spiderman, right down to the danger sense. Jim shot it down. He let him have STR, Leaping, and Clinging under "Spider Powers." Swinging and Entangle he allowed a multipower for, but not in the EC. His rebuttal was "Spiders make webs, but they don't shoot them. You want to stick your butt to a wall and repel down suspended by your own biological products, I'll allow it." Danger Sense was bought as a separate power. I don't know why--- holy crap; I think i just got it. I think I know why people complain about EC abuse in spite of the GM being able to say no. It's the published characters, isn't it? They don't have GMs; they are just thrown together to fill books. Are there boatloads of published characters with abusive ECs? Again, serious question: most of what I have in published support books at this point are 4e genre books and the Almanacs, with a smattering of 5e setting books (and Lucha HERO, of course ). I have read a couple of Enemies books over the years, but do not own any (other than the PDFs from the BOH, but I've been too busy to really look at them). European Enemies stands out in my mind as a low-water mark for a product of dubious need to begin with, but I couldn't tell you what characters were in it or what their constructs were. And of course: if so; why do we care? It doesn't mean you have to allow it in your games.

Well sleep isn't going to happen.... To explain: not often, but occasionally, I suffer from bouts of insomnia. It's usually when I try to cram too much into my day by creeping back the time I go to bed to get in more work. Do it often enough, and bam-- can't go to sleep. For those of you who do _not_ suffer from insomnia, I would like to note that this is _not_ the same as "being awake." It's more like "zombie-with-a-pulse," and neither the brain nor the body works particularly well until you get can back into a rhythm. For those who are not familiar with older works, this a list of all the DEX scores from the first edition book to which Hugh is referring (without names or anything else, because I don't know the finite limits of "Fair use," so why take a chance?) : 25 [notation next to it: "Very high DEX, gives a good CV"] 18 [notation next to it: "a medium DEX"] 20 [notation next to it: "A good DEX, Starburst is quick."] 15 18 26 30 21 20 23 23 21 14 That's all of them. As Hugh notes, 23 seems about "typical" for a super. Just to have some fun with it: 274/13 = 21.0769, giving an average DEX across the book of 29, making Hugh's estimate kindly generous. Noting that the 15 and the 14 score belong to sample "agents," we can remove them and refigure, getting : 245/11 = 22.27r for an average "super DEX" of 22. Again, Hugh's estimate is kindly generous, but extremely accurate for "eyeball work." (For those who are just curious, that's also a mean of 21). And that's pretty much what we took away from it, years ago: a Super would likely have a DEX around 23, so say typically between 20 and 25. Perhaps the strongest influence on us were the explanatory notations (remember this was when we were attempting to learn the game from the ground-up: we took such "suggestions" as being of extreme importance to our understanding) beside the first three examples of characters being built. The note that 25 was "very high" and that 20 was "good" and that 18, at "average," was acceptable was far more important to us at the time than figuring out how to, if you'll pardon the expression, "game the system." There's more of that in the fog of my head right now, but I can't get it out, so let me move forward. I appreciate that you remember that about me, Sir, but there is a very small error, likely because of my preference for 2e. I started with first edition, under my first Champions / HERO GM. I fell in love, but was never able to find another copy at our local game.... "Store" seems like such a strong word for what we had: There was a very nice elderly lady who rented a tiny storefront next to the only grocery store in town (at that time). She sold sewing, knitting, and crochet supplies and her little sign out front called her shop "The Craft Corner." She had a grandson who had discovered gaming in college, and talked her into letting him put five small shelves in the corner of her store, the topmost of which was packed full of D&D stuff. The next two he kept stocked with a truly random assortment of games and supplemental material (presumably determined by what he could afford to purchase), one with maps, fantasy, mech, and space ship minis, and one with dice, gaming magazines (Dragon, of course, White Dwarf, and one that I remember being dedicated to Sci-Fi, but I can't remember what it was) and a few other random things, including his receipt book so that his grandmother could collect sales in his absence. He worked there on weekends and on breaks from school. This was part "I love gaming and want to share it with the world" and part "a few dollars to help me get through school." When he finished his education, he moved, and the gaming shelves disappeared, forcing us to trek --- ah, it doesn't matter now. At any rate, he never got another first edition Champions. He _did_ get a second edition, and that is the first set that I owned personally. I loaned it to my GM after I devoured it, and he agreed that we should switch as soon as he could find a copy (which he did, by staking out the Craft Corner until he could catch the "game guy" in the building and paying up-front to get him to order one). In the words of the late Paul Harvey Aurandt: "and now you know.... the rest of the story...." (for what it's worth, thanks to the recent Bundle of Holding and someone named " Jason Frediani," I now at least have a readable scan of the book I fell in love with. ) Getting back on track: Cons from the 1e book: 20 [a good CON] 30 [A high CON] 20 15 * 28 25 15 25 20 40 23 20 13 * * denotes that the character is listed as an agent. Hugh, I,m going to have to cut this short; I've got to get a quick shower to get more alert, then be somewhere in under an hour. If I'm still awake, I'll try to get back to it. If not, I don't know when I will. There is one thing I want to answer, at least briefly, before going, though: Because we wondered that on _Day 1_ of reading the rules, and it was pretty easy to devise method to determine it: We looked at the STR Chart. The GM's kid brother was huge in the Guiness book of world records. Every year they'd get those little Scholastic Book Club flyers in school, and every year, regardless of what else he got, he got a GBWR. In 1981, the world record for dead lift (just get it off the floor and hold it there a couple of seconds) was set by a man named Bill something-- I know his nickname was "Kaz" and he was from Wisconsin, but I can't remember his last name. Kazmien, maybe? Memory's pretty bad when I'm in this shape; full apologies. At any rate, we figured "World record" and "maximum possible for a real human" would be pretty close. It was right around (just over, just under) the 400 kg listed (after we looked up the weight of a kilogram in the dictionary because the record was listed in pounds. To make sure we understand each other, we went with 2.2 lbs/kg) As a blank character sheet was presented as "the basic character," we assumed 10 to be "normal human guy" and 20 to be "best there is outside of comic books". As Con, Dex, etc are a bit more esoteric, and we had no reason to assume that the designer's hadn't scaled the Primaries similarly, we took it as given that this was normal straight down the board. On the other hand, where did this idea come from in general? I'm pretty certain I'd heard it from other groups before there was a BBB laying it straight out. I don't know if it was in other HERO games prior to BBB, but even then: someone had the idea, and I'm pretty sure he wasn't particularly insightful or gifted. I think it's one of those fairly obvious things that is evident to a lot of folks. It would have to be, because there's nothing particularly special about my own abilities in that regard. Anyway, gotta run. Have fun! Duke

Transform / suppress Transform. But as Greywind as pointed out, that's really more of a plot thing. However, it's going to require a lot of agreement from the players to "not be in control of my character's decisions and actions," which I have always found to be something of a hard sell. Duke

Thanks, Shrike. And thank you, too, NB. The whole thing here---- AhrghhH! I don't have a word for it. Let's call it "Scale," big 'S', for the purpose of this one post. If someone has a better word, we'll use that. in this case, Scale shall mean that difference between the extremes of two different groups: the difference between two highest points of points-effectiveness and the difference between the two lowest points of points-effectiveness. You mention you're ineffective character, Shotgun. He was built to the concept you held, but was powerless against the enemies and other PCs, who were more points-effective. (I am making the assumption that you were all built on more-or-less the same totals). The typical suggestions for such situations is "you should make your character more points-effective." We have had discussions in the past of players classified as Munchkins: players who manage to twist and wring points-effectiveness into shocking levels (or at least, who _try_ to do this) and create characters who look like seizure-prone amputee berserker gods next do more traditional points-effective characters (owing, of course, to the combination of their AP and their massive Disadvantage / Complication totals). The typical suggestions in this case are either "veto the character" or "banish the player" or "work with the player more closely and help him see how the rest of the group plays the game and builds their characters. If he still wants to play, let him try again." None of these things, in either situation, are bad advice. (Well, I'm not keen on "banish the player," but there are cases where one guy just isn't going to work out. ) In the two situations, though, the advice is opposite. The difference seems to be triggered by the Scale involved: not as points-effective as a perceived "right way" to build a character? Become more so. Points-effective beyond a perceived "right-way" to build a character? Crank him back a bit. In the examples I gave, there is of course another rationale for the advice: each example is different from the rest of the group. "Get in line" is equally-valid justification for this same advice, perhaps moreso, given that the rest of the group has a definite range or style of play and one player has hit an extreme. The stories of "I played with this one group, and they were all power-gaming monsters!" that garner clucks of sympathy and support and shared memories of similar situations--- These are the exact same stories, from the other guy's point of view, yet they collect entirely opposite reactions! Very strange. The (much more rare) stories of "I guess we were supposed to make Care Bears or something" and "they didn't even spend half the points we were allowed" have similar results. Also very strange. Why is the advice not "get in line?" It is often "find a different group," but generally following that is "because these people are [ some form of 'wrong.']" These things bug me. It seems the advice given in every situation depends entirely on who the stranger is. If we know the guy with the extreme character, then the group is wrong. If we know a guy from the group, then the extremist is wrong. Unless, of course, the extreme is on the bottom end because it's not points-effective, in which case he is _always_ wrong. So (forgive the stream-of-unconsciousness; I've been awake since Thursday morning, and I am going to post this and then attempt to rectify that situation) we have advice in the rules on Scale for "normal", "Heroic," Superheroic" levels of powers, but they are given only as ranges: These are the number of Gimmie Points and the number of Disadvantage Points upon which a character at this level will be built. This is the Characteristic Range for characters at this level. That's it. That's all there is. There is nothing as far as a right way to use them, or advice for how "points-effective" a character can, should, or _must_ be, and certainly nothing on how "un-those things" he should be. "Published characters!" is the usual solution, and that's kind of where it all goes to Hell. The economy is different for everyone. Not everyone can buy all that extraneous stuff. Further, not everyone wants it. Most importantly, though: I _know_ there are people on this board who remember the massive outcry against the Harbinger when he was published. I am willing to be there are people on this board who were _part_ of that "what kind of screaming psycho would torture the rules in this way?!" outcry as well. But when the majority of the characters published after that all have similar build schemes--- suddenly, I am to do that same thing. That is normal. That is right. Well I had games in progress. I'm sure most of you did, too. We finished those games. When we started new ones, we had two sets of memories: how much fun we had been having for years doing it the way we always have, and how absolutely disgusted we were when we first saw that atrocity (which nowadays you can't criticize, because someone will chime in with "oh, he wasn't that bad. I mean, he's in keeping with [some much more recently-published example] or [same church; different pew]." So this once game-breaking character is okay because we broke all the other characters the same way? Did we change the game so that characters like him can't break it? Did we break the game so that this sort of character is semi-mandatory? They are certainly easier to build than ever before, and I am wronger than ever for not caring to play that way. The answer is "I don't know." At least, my answer is. And it follows up with "there are some changes I like, but there are damned few of them" and some other things that are more esoteric and can't really be put into words. So if I were to request a change that I felt would make a seventh edition "perfect," it would be a heck of a lot more discussion of the validity of differing Scale within Power Levels. Not so much advice, necessarily, but a flat-out statement (because apparently nowadays we need that) that _not_ wanting to violate concept to take advantage of math is _not_ wrong. Maybe if it gets made a printed rule, it will be given the same high-regard that the much-treasured and never-actually-printed "only points-effective characters are well-built characters" receives. I'm going to bed. This was probably cathartic, but I won't know until I re-read it much, much later. Duke

Yes. That is precisely what I am saying. in regards to published characters: Outside of the Champions rule book (2e), I had _no_ published anything for many years. I had access to 1e, as it's what my first Champions GM used, and what I first learned to play. I have posted this repeatedly, but will, for the sake of this discussion, re-post it here: I never cared for pre-printed adventures. There is a laundry list of reasons, but let's go with the single biggest one: they are tied to the main published setting, which poses two almost-immediate problems: either they are static forever, without regard for what your PCs have done to effect change in the universe or 2) they change in ways that make absolutely no sense in regard to the direction your game went. Considering also at the time that most of us were in or just finishing college, money wasn't the sort of thing we were intimately familiar with, so any excuse not to have to hunt up some was valid. Thus, no: we had _no_ published material. Shortly before BBB hit the stands, I picked up a discounted copy of Champs II and a used copy of Champs III. I read into them just enough to discover that there were _not_ actually newer versions of the game, so I immediately logged them as "supplemental stuff tied to a game universe I don't need or care about,"relegated them to a bookshelf, where they would remain for well over a decade. They would not get read cover-to-cover until the internet became a thing and, when I finally got curious enough to pop in one of those AOL disks (after buying a modem) that paved the streets at that time. BBB came out. I bought it and the brown paper cover "HERO System," assuming it to be something different from Champions. Read it. Saw some of the character samples and thought "these people are smoking crack!", particularly in light of the section in there discussing the "types of players" and how obviously these were being designed by whatever it was they were calling the munchkin (I don't remember anymore). As you well know, as I only very recently posted it, I rather liked 4e. The campaign stuff was useless to me, but the rest of it I rather liked. Never moved into it because my players at the time weren't interested, realistically we had a few house rules in play here and there that already did what most of the stuff I was interested in did. Players weren't interested in learning anything new, so we cribbed a few things here and there and my wonderful 4e, to my dismay, became a coloring book for player's children, and a few players. I gave the brown soft cover away up realizing that it was the same as BBB, but will less stuff. Most importantly, it didn't say Champions. So at that point, I had Champions 2e, Champs 2 and 3, still unfinished, and BBB, ready twice, popped my eyes at how radically different the characters were from what we had been playing. I had the owner of my favorite game shop tell me that there was going to be a Western "game" using Champions rules. I got really pumped. I had let the other genre books slide (not really understanding that they were more than just "theme" books: there were some interesting rules ideas, adventure ideas, etc--- but I didn't know all that. I just thought "eh" and let them pass. By that point, I owned Star HERO (the original), Champions 2e (though I was on like my second replacement for that), Champs II and III, still never finished, and the original Fantasy HERO, which I had read once to convince myself I wouldn't like it. I didn't manage to convince myself of that, and was a bit surprised. I waffled over picking up a new game, since Champions had been my de-facto running gear for every genre for many, many years at that point. It just didn't seem necessary. I waffled over it for a couple of months, but on launch day, I picked it up: to this day, it remains the _only_ "reference book" I have ever bought new, and I kicked my butt all up and down the street at the "waste" of money that could have been better-spent on groceries. But I _loved_ that book. That book became soft, fat, ratty, and filthy with use. It became our new backbone for non-supers games. Yes; it was just Champions, which we were doing anyway, but there was so much "normal guy" stuff in there that it just about _lived_ on the table. But I digress, which I really was trying to make a point of not doing. One day it hit me that the internet might have one of those "chat room things" where other gamers hung out. I might be able to meet other hero gamers (they had gotten thin in my area at that time, and I had been getting my fix at a D&D table rented at the game store. All the other tables were filled with Magic: the Marketing games. I learned that I don't care for CCGs by trying to learn a little bit. The game store owner, of course, loved them: they were paying his rent. At any rate, I had heard all the dangers or the internet, and how many freaks and weirdoes were out there. Well surely that included _my_ kind of freaks and weirdoes, and against my budget, my "good judgement" based on popular opinion of the day, and the protestations of my wife about how we would catch a computer virus that burn the house down, I popped in one of those AOL disks and started looking for other players. Two weeks later I found contact information for four of them. The only thing eventful to come from that was that I "met" Derrick Hiemforth (apologies for any misspellings there) right after hatching a plan to collect favorite house rules from other players, bundle them, and exchange them. You see, I _really_ had no idea how the internet worked. I thought that was something that would be useful! Derrick, ascertaining that I was completely out of touch with the internet, mentioned to me there was no reason for this project to continue, as there were a million sites where people put up and shared their house rules already, and he pointed me to the Circle of Heroes and the old Red October board. And all this time, every published book I had owned could be counted on one hand, and two of them I had never finished reading. There began to circulate news that a guy who had written stuff for HERO "way back when" had bought the copyright and was looking to put forth a new edition. That news led me to this board-- well, a much older version of it, but this board, nonetheless. I discovered eBay while looking around for book finders, which were still a thing then, but well on their way out. I had learned of all kinds of books like Western HERO from the internet, and I wanted to read them all! (unfortunately, i had started with the best one, so it was a bit of a disappointment when I finally did manage to secure Cyber HERO and Horror HERO. (I ended up getting them from a book finder service; i got burned the very first time I tried eBay, which did little to change my mind about the horrors of the internet. I trusted no one without a physical address and a phone number. Still have problems with that, but I'm getting better). In the meanwhile, I had located more HERO players, and lost interest in the internet: I had done what I needed to do with it, after all. They were playing Fantasy, using this gorgeous book called "Fantasy HERO," but it looked _nothing_ like mine. They had that one, too, mind you, but they also a book very much like Western HERO, only for Fantasy. They also had Fantasy HERO Companion II, which I _did_ read, simply because Western HERO had been great, and Fantasy HERO had a lot of interesting "new" stuff in it. FHC II was, in my opinion at the time, useless. No more than the GM looked at it, I don't think he had a great opinion of it, either. I don't know what to call the first Fantasy HERO-- I am told it was 3e rules, but that was the only rules book they had on the table. I didn't care, because it was pretty much the system I loved. After playing with them for about a year, I ended up back in the GM seat and ran fantasy for a bit before tempting them with other genres. This was where my Western occult game went down. It started out as Western, but it was clear that the players were missing the magic and mystery they got from fantasy, so I worked it in, with a few angles and twists not common to Fantasy. It was almost Voodoo. They loved it, and that game went on for nearly four years. This was the point at which I decided I really wanted to pen a supplement to Western HERO, and bought a couple of sourcebooks from the clearance rack at the game store to use as guides for how to format, how to layout, and most importantly for me: how to _edit_ so that the extraneous did not fill the body of the work. One of the books in the bin was "Old West," and I took that as a shoe-in, since it would likely have a reference list to get me started on my own research. I read Old West (GURPS 3e) and decided I couldn't do better than that if I _prayed_ for talent. I kept that book. Still have it. Recently picked up a second copy for PDF-ing purposes. During that time, some interesting things happened: Near the end of that game, 5e came out. At the mid-point of that game, the father of my first Champions GM had died. Between these two events, his mother had a fatal stroke. He came back to Georgia to settle family affairs, and I helped him clean out the house and donate what was worthy of donation and to discard what wasn't. There were two bedrooms _filled_ with his old comic book collection. He took it to the local comic store and simply gave it to them. He took his gaming stuff (which was _far_ more substantial a collection than I had remembered) to the game store a few towns away (our favorite one) and simply gave them all of that. He gave me his HERO-related stuff. I protested that he should keep it, and he simply said "Duke, I haven't looked at it in twenty years. My kids are into video games and dont care about gaming and my brother thinks he outgrew it. And mostly, I don't want a damned thing from out of that house. I just couldn't look at it." There was.... well, I hate to say it, but there was pretty much _everything_ from first edition all the way through third, except for the first edition box set of rules, which he had taken to Nevada with him when he finally found a post-college job. I looked through it. I kept the two versions of 3e, because they were Champions. There was the glue bound book and there were the contents of the boxed set (no box, no dice, but yet another map). I never read them, either. Partly because I didn't like the covers (nothing against the art itself: I make no secret that I really enjoy William's particular style), but there was something in the composition of that picture that was off-putting. That freaky add on the back cover just made it worse. I thumbed through them, saw the layout, and for some reason thought "Oh; it's a re-packaged Champions III. I don't need that." (the bound "campaign book" struck me as evidence that I had been right, and Champions II and II were simply more published adventures and the rules on how to make cars, which we didn't need, either). I mean never read them. As in to this moment: 2:41 AM eastern, February 17, 2019, I have never read them. Closest I've been to reading them is thumbing through them. I have laid the map out with the three other maps from my various 2e sets bought over the years to create a large map, but that's not really reading the books, is it? I bought 5e and Sidekick (liked Sidekick better) and based on the recommendations of many people on the internet had my 5e bullet-stopper spiral bound. I have regretted very few things more than I regretted that. I've promised myself not to do that to anything, ever again. I would _like_ to replace it with another bound copy, but it's a really low priority. As I was saying, I was going through Jim's old books and noticed that everything that wasn't the 3e rules books were either Villains books or published adventures. I had no want of any of them, and never bothered reading them. I spent the next few months giving them away to players or trading them for other 4e genre books. I bought Tuala Morn because I liked the lettering on the cover. Fortunately, I enjoyed the contents. That was the first 5e book I bought outside the rule book. I began to wonder if it was possible for me to scan my 2e book, which was succumbing to abuse the way the first two had. I didn't want to pull it apart in case the project failed, so I offered up Champs III for the experiment. Besides, it could stand some repair: years and years of being slid off the shelf by the gaming table to be used as a coaster were taking their toll on the cover. I won't say that the project was a staggering success, but it was successful enough for me to keep going. I also have three "brand new" Champions III books with wrongly-repair cover art and spots of noise here and there (there are three because of some confusion on the part of the printer). They are also printed on the wrong paper: they're on glossy magazine-type paper. I began a serious campaign to collect up the 4e books. I _like_ 4e. My old GM set the precedent for me, and I didn't even realize it: he never used those books he had, but he collected them for some personal reason anyway. I don't know why, exactly, unless it was the same issue I had been expecting: after a few games, your setting and the published setting don't mesh anymore. And why use someone else's villains when making them was so much fun? Recently-- very recently, in fact: mid-July of last year, I found myself with a slightly expanded budget (at the cost of considerably less free time). That is when I sat down in earnest to collect (and in the case of what my GM had given me, "re-collect") the books I don't have. Even then, it's not so i can read them. It's simply so I can make sure that they are somehow preserved for everyone, for any future HERO fans who might just want "catch 'em all." Did I have to tell you _all_ this? No. But I tell it to you and to anyone else who might still be paying attention so that you will know where I have been coming from on all those occasions I stated clearly that i never picked up published material, always viewing it as "too little, too late" or "out of touch with my own games." And mostly, so will know where I am coming from when I state, yet again, and with complete honesty: NO! No, I did _NOT_ see those examples of bizarrely-inflated characteristics. _NO_; I did not have access to published material in any useful form. _YES_, it is entirely possible to play, enjoy, and downright _love_ the game without having to buy every single scrap of paper related to it. _NO_, those published characters clearly aren't necessary. _NO_, you don't even need "examples" of how to build a character to get a game going, just rules on how to do it. _NO_, there is absolutely no need to use the work of a complete stranger as some kind of benchmark for your builds. _YES_, even officially-liscenced, written-by-brand-name-guy-X, published-by-the-guys-who-made-the-rules supplemental material _is_ _supplemental_, and totally unnecessary in every way, shape and form to the playing of them game-- and I don't even know what else. Those are the high spots: No; never saw that crap. No; never needed that crap. No; never wanted that crap, until very recently, and even then only as a source for creating a digital archive of those things for which there are not already available PDFs. The only things I want are 4 and 5e genre books (because, while I didn't like Dark Champions, I _do_ like Steve's setting books. The man has wicked crazy research skills) and any stand-alone games from 5 and 6. I think I have all three from 6 (there are only 3, right?) and Basic, which I got because-- hey, one thin book. Last week I got my revised Sidekick- because, again: one thin book with all the rules you need. And it looks nice next to my Sidekick. 1) _YES_, every time I sit down to play. 2) You have my sympathy. Again, YES! Buying up figureds because it was appropriate to what was in the player's mind when he made the character, or my mind when I made the NPC. Did you even read any of the conversations I thought we'd had in the past on this and similar subjects? Or have I just been having extensive non-versations with myself while answering your questions? We have had this _exact_ bit of information exchanged between us, and on more than one occasion. You know what's funny? You do things like your teachers. I was taught "get an idea, then make the sheet match that idea!" It was fresh and it was _so_ exciting, particularly coming from my previous gaming experience, _all_ of which was "roll these dice and that's your guy." Worse, Traveller (which I still love, for the record): Uhm.... my guy died. I haven't even played him yet. Why can he die before he gets played?! "Well, that's to add a gamble to keep you from going to crazy trying to gain another couple of skills or mustering out bennies. Makes you not want to be as old when you start adventuring, too! It's a _great_ idea!" But he's dead! I've been working on him for twenty minutes, and now I have to start over because the rules include spontaneous abortion?! What the Hell, Man?! So I played the game the way I was taught. And when I taught other people how to play, guess how I taught them? The way I was taught. Guess how they play? And it's not a unique thing: I've joined into groups as a player that play very much the same way: concept-first. And conversations like this lead me to wonder just how much their creativity or desired conceptions were hampered by the extra money they could afford to spend. As to the points-efficiency of published characters: I don't doubt it. Of late, I have seen it, now that, at 58, I can _finally_ afford to pick up some of that stuff from the past. Partly due to a slight rise in budget, and mostly due to a considerable drop in cover price. But it's just like this board: The people that are that deeply involved in a hobby are going to exchange lots of information, and eventually get really damned judgmental about what's the "right" way to have fun. There are people that will simply kowtow and start doing things your way. But there are a few people who will tell you that I've got plenty of milk, and don't need you pissing in my corn flakes; thanks all the same.

Thank you, E. Though in all fairness, I do a lot of that myself: it's nice to know just how fast HyperLad can run, flat out. It's fun to know just how much telescopic vision does RobotiKong need to see the baseball that Hercules just knocked out of the park.... And of course, those things actually come up in play (in a manner of speaking). Players want to know just what that means in terms they are more instinctively familiar with. The rest of it, though-- the micro-minutiae of "cost effectiveness" and "ideal construction"-- they really don't give a rip about. And I have to level with you, I didn't really think I was completely typical with my experience with only one min-maxing terror--- Quick Aside: Hugh, I forgot to answer your question above. First, your question was caused only be an error of omission on my part: I posted that same story years ago on a thread about nightmare character submissions, and for some reason, just felt like it was so recent that everyone would remember it. Senility: the downside of getting old. But hey, I get to make new friends every day! Your question is completely fair, as I did not go into enough detail to explain the min-max horror that was being presented: There was an EC for "being hard to hurt," and EC of "death dealing" and a third one I don't even remember. In each one, he had managed to munchkinize so creatively that he more than doubled every campaign cap in effect for new characters, (fresh campaign; they were all "newbies on the scene"), and only needed _two_ Disadvantages to go with his hundred-point "gimmies." And that was his Reputation as "crap your pants crazy" and his Reputation as "scarier than God with PMS." No skills. No knowledges. No nothing. Just three ECs of questionable validity (since he couldn't begin to give me a common special effect that fit in with his proposed conception at the outset), and of course THREE ECs!!!. Yes: the next step is "certainly there is a valid concept that justifies this" (we've been down this road before), and this time I will concede with "I am sure there is." But I'm going to follow it up with there is a reason there must be a GM, and that reason is that decisions counter to the RAW must be made to ensure that everyone gets equal pleasure from the game. Remember that the goal of compromise is everyone is perfectly happy, and the reality is everyone is equally pissed. Then we build from there. And of course, it doesn't matter if there is a valid concept for that or not, as the GM, I can say the single most likely character in any universe: A guy with a gun, is unacceptable for the game at hand, and that's final. I am sorry i failed to answer your question earlier. Back to you, E: I didn't figure I was the norm, simply going by the standard assumption on this board that "everyone is going to do X because it's "smarter" or "normal" or whatever. So having met only one guy who played that way, I figured maybe I was just a freak with a talent for finding other freaks. But I also didn't expect to find out that it's not unusual. You've only found four in thirty years yourself. I think it might be time to step back from the endless re-evaluation of "what needs to be reworked" and take a harder look at the validity of the arguments supporting _why_ it needs to be reworked.

Hugh: With all sincerity and all respect, you know I _love_ discussing just about anything with you. But we are not going to be able too discuss this. Our experiences with the game have been too different. You can't accept, for whatever reason; presumably your own experience with the game, that there are a shocking number of us who play this game and don't give a rat's runny crap about "what the math says" in terms of X better than Y because two steps from now, and when you factor in-- and on and on. If I got my joy from that-- well, I got my first RPG (Traveller) at a book store. They had calculus text books, too. I didn't leave with one of those, though. I am not math ignorant. I don't even find math particularly difficult. But fun? As far as fun, I'd put it somewhere around having a colonoscopy done with a golf umbrella that had to be opened before extraction. I spend, like a lot of other people, the best part of my working day juggling numbers, running math, etc. And the reason I get _paid_ to do it is because it is not fun, which makes it hard to find volunteers. When I have a bit of time to relax, you can damned well bet "doing math" isn't on my list of things I might do. And I'm not alone in that. I'm not even a minority in that. According to stories you stumble across now and again on the news and on the net, I live in a country _dominated_ by a general dislike of recreational math (why do you think the most common complaint against HERO is "it's so.... Mathy..."?) Do I ignore the math? No. It has to be tracked so you can get your totals or what-have-you. It has to be figured so when a proposed Limitation or Advantage pops up you can get a good idea just how much discount or additional charge is being suggested; all that "let's get our concepts down on paper and start the game" stuff. Am I going to diddle around with it so I can see which power has the best chance of inflicting an extra pip of BODY every four uses? Frack no; I ain't. And there are those of you to whom that is part of the fun, or in some sense of "more fair" becomes important, and is broached with introductions that suggest your lack of understanding of how a large number of us play concept-first: things like "but you'll be hobbled against the other players" or "voluntarily being the least powerful at the table" or "outclassed by your teammates..." You don't seem to really appreciate that this is not happening because _none_ of us are interested in points effectiveness, splitting and round overs, squeezing out another pip every seventh shot, making sure we spend every single character point we are allotted, spiking up dead to the campaign limits, or any of that other "but the math is the best part!" stuff. None of us. Not one single player. You can't get your heads around that any more than we can understand why the hell you _would_ waste all your play time trying to figure it all out. In short: it's not you. It's not us, either. It's the simple fact that we are so far away from each other (semi-formal plural, of course, meaning the two "camps" of play style) that we can't understand each other enough to discuss what the rules "need" or the "proper use" of a mechanic or the "perfection" of a system or even the validity of a character construct in any meaningful way.

And I'm pretty sure that thirty-eight months of crying on the internet wouldn't have changed much.

Both of these are completely correct. If the car itself is sentient, go with Doc's suggestion. If the AI is portable and is just in the car right now, but can be taken out and put elsewhere (note that this is different from "copied"), then go with Joe's suggestion. By tradition in HERO, INT refers to "processing speed," whether it be a person, and alien, or a computer. It is not a measure of raw IQ or any other such thing. Thus, it's entirely possible to have a Nobel Laureate with a 5 INT: he is the "slow and steady" thinker, but he is _not_ stupid. It's possible to have an utter moron who processes things quickly: note that one of the functions of INT is (used to be? I can't remember) the PER roll. Again, this is by _tradition_. I personally find it _really hard_ to justify when, in the next breath, knowledges and intelligence-based skills like are based on the INT roll..... But apparently it wasn't broken enough to notice in 5e, and I simply haven't had time to refresh myself with 6 (my new copy of Basic is still shrink wrapped, two weeks or so after arriving), but since you can't kill people with it, it probably wasn't broken enough to fix there, either. (again, I really don't remember). By further long-standing tradition, "EGO" represents, among other things, strength of will. Willfulness implies self-direction, or at the very least, some sort of wanting, ergo: sentience. Hope that helps! Duke

Not a mechanical problem. "Concept" and "permissiveness" are always going to require interpretation and judgement. Mechanics can't do that for you. Even at that, it all boils down to faulty logic: EC= bad while "Pool" = totally valid. While there was a great discount for powers in an EC, you still had to, even at a discount, buy the things, and individually. The discount makes it wrong. Fine. I'll just buy _one_ big power, and turn it into any stinkin' power I want. Okay. That's acceptable. There's a flaw here, Sir. A big one. That flaw is "hey! This has a specific mechanic, so it's A-okay by default. Plus, they don't have to have the same SFX: it can be flight via rocket boots, and energy blast by manipulation of his bio-electic field, and armor via the skin of a werewolf. But it's okay, because there's a mechanic that specifically says it is. Since it completely cuts the GM and his feeble mind out of the process, it's more perfecter. I used to care, because I'm not about making stirring a pot for no reason, but I don't care anymore if anyone grasps this, but YES! Not only _have_ I seen it, I see it _a lot_. Partly because I haven't seen (in a supers game) a Killing Attack in _years_! I just recently concluded one game (I mentioned looking forward to it closing, as I really wanted more time for my scanning project), but I'm still involved in two others, and I flat do not _care_ if anyone else understands it or accepts it anymore, but point-blank: These take-advantage-the-rules pinch-penny loophole-raping buy-in-perfect-multiples-and-multipliers-to-skin-a-point players are creatures of *)_&**^&%%^ FICTION for my own experience the last couple of decades. I have run into _one_ serious rules-rapist, over thirty years ago, and it was such a phenomenal departure from the norm that I still remember him and call him by name even on this board (just in case you lurk here, Davien!). My groups aren't isolated. I've moved several times and pick up new groups. I travel considerable distances to play in other groups (I believe I've talked about that, too). Without any sort of exaggeration, I can easily say that since I really picked up the hobby I have been fortunate enough to play with over two hundred different people, at one time or another. I have met _ONE_ player who actually is the guy everyone is so damned terrified of that the rules have to be changed to eliminated the millions and millions of him that are so clearly crawling all through this hobby. Yet every week, someone on this board posts yet another reason the rules need further tweaking and further breaking down and further departure-- it's all become micro-micro-micro-micromanagement, and the only people I see posing an actual threat to breaking the game under any rules sets _are_ the people advocating for this stuff. Why? because apparently they are the only ones who are interested enough in or have the free time to study just how it can be done. Everyone else wants to build a character and have an adventure- -explore some jungle ruins, defend a frontier town, broker peace with another galaxy, end the vampire menace, or swoop in from the skies, bouncing bullets from their chests to save the helpless citizens from some sinister plot of Doctor Twisted. Granted, I totally understand that there is a group of people who get just as much fun by not actually playing the game, and just docking around with the rules (damn you, autocorrect!) looking for the Snipe of "perfect balance." The only place I find those people, though, is _here_. Online. (not like: Here, on this board-- though I'm sure there are probably one or two here, too. I mean "here" as in "when I go looking for people interested in the game as a hobby, I find those people online more than I _ever_ have in real life. Sorry for the long clarification: I want it to be clear that I'm not calling out anyone nor am I interested in picking a fight. I seriously don't care enough anymore.) I have to wonder what would have happened to the rules if Steve had decided to compose his sounding board group of people who actually played the game and were interested _only_ in how to make the final experience: actually _playing the game_... more rewarding. Thank you. Thank you for supporting my point from some weeks ago: There are those people who are simply unable to make a character without putting point maximizing as the priority. For Supers, I have _never_ had a Killing Attack. Not under _any_ edition, ever. My favorite archetype, in the early years, was the brick (not being a comic-book savvy young man, I found the brick to be the easiest to get behind. Fortunately, my play groups over the years would add to my comics knowledge and appreciation, but that would be years to come. Even then, I _still_ don't do Killing Attacks for Supers of _any_ type. I don't disallow them, mind you, but I don't do them myself for player characters.) And you have also supported-- not proven, mind you: you are only one person, and I'm not unscientific enough to accept that as a reasonable sample-- but you have supported my developing hypothesis that, even though I value conversations with you personally, Hugh, and many, many others on this board, it is simply _not possible_ to reconcile the extremes at which we play the game. I have to assume-- as it makes perfect sense: you've been playing a long time, after all-- that in your experience, the Welfare Man rules-rapist players are, if not _normal_, certainly very common. Within my experience, all but one single individual (the one who tried to hand me a character with "the Elemental Control of being hard to hurt"), has been concept-first from day one. We (not you and me, but "the types of players you are familiar with" and "they types of players I am familiar with" get very different rewards from the game, and thus have very different needs from the rules. Unfortunately for the people on my end of the spectrum, every step of the rules that takes it further and further from "do what you want" to "do it this way" makes it of less and less use, and therefore appeal, to this of us on this end. At this point, I don't truly believe that we can really hit a well-rounded middle ground simply because that's where we _started_, many editions ago, back when we had enough in common to understand each other. As it is, in the interest of _not_ wanting to start yet another conversation on the same topic ("points effectiveness, perfectness of rules, need for more mechanics"), and in the interest of preserving the civility of things thus far, and in large part out of my respect for you and others who feel as you do, I will take my "stupid," non-KA-using self out of this conversation. It's not like I've got a lot of interest invested in the last two editions where so many things were "fixed" anyway. Fine. I get it. I'm stupid. The people I have played with since adopting Champions / HERO are all stupid. Damn us for fools, we thought building the character we want would give us a sense of investment in the game and we built to make the concept in spite of the clearly inferior flaw of leaving points on the table or pouring them down a drain. We were stupid. Stupid or not, the point is that we _did_ it. And as many groups as I've drifted in and out of, I have seen many, many other people do it, too. Majority? Doubt it. One tiny, statistically-irrelevant fractional percentage of all the people who ever played? Doubt that, too, but it's possible. The only players in all of human history to do it? Oh man, do I doubt that! Enough to suggest that maybe people who really wanted to build to concept did it, without tweaks and twirps and a complete remodeling of the rules? Yes, I think so. But keep in mind that may not matter, because the math guys have formulaically proven our intellectual inferiority for being willing to do this, when it so clearly marks us as stupid. Clearly. Either the correct, split and shave every point way, or the stupid way. We've established that. I still do this. I think a lot of us do, really: it's a great balance between the inherent inequality of concepts. While we strive to give every player equal screen time, en masse, it's difficult to manage things so that every single character is just as important or just as vital to every part of the scene. So we include bits here and there. When the flying energy projectors are protecting the doomsday machine's power generators until it's fully charged, and there aren't enough of them on your side to keep them engaged, perhaps the Martial Artist can block and deflect attacks away from the telekineticist long enough for her to push her TK Smash high enough to damage the machine...... Beyond that, it tends to work well for players. In the early days, I thought everyone would want to be "_the_" something; I thought it might be vital to ensure a more solid team. I was wrong. There are those players who _don't_ want to be a specialist. They want to dabble in everything. Well when Greased Lightning has been incapacitated, sometimes it's nice to have a "pretty fast" guy to help take up the slack, and perhaps he can get creative with his other abilities to temporarily make up for what he lacks in speed next to ol' GL. That being said, I think it's more than reasonably character building, I think it's important for the group of players as a whole. There are two ways I allow Multipowers. I hit on both of them above, detailing one a bit; the other I don't think needs it. Anything beyond those two justifications is just the EC points-grab, all over again, only this time it's okay because there's a better mechanic. I am sure there is some sort of math that proves me wrong, completely and totally, but being stupid, I'm used to it.

Just wait, my friend! It gets better as you get older. One day, I'll be up there with Old Man, whizzing off the front porch in broad daylight....

In answer to your question, NB: right there. When we started judging the relative worth of a character by how well the designer of the character could min-max. That's when MP became nigh-mandatory Remember Elemental Control? It was banished for being "too good.". Which is wierd, because if you were so inclined, you could min-max the snot out of a character with that. I never wanted to, but I certainly know _how_, and easily could.

To be fair, you have to look at the meta data related to your sample. First and foremost, all respondents are on a fan board dedicated to HERO- a set of people more inclined by passion to stay with what's current. Further, there tends to be a disproportional number of fans on _any_ site for any hobby (barring perhaps historical preservation societies) who strive toward pushing that hobby to change and reform and continue to renew itself. Again: that's the case for most any hobby: how many fans do _not_ want a new Harry Potter book? HERO is no exception. As one example, look at the current hot thread where KS has dedicated himself to defending the new edition even to the point of arguing in opposite directions against opposite opinions. Nothing wrong with that; he is defending something he enjoys. Going beyond that, look at your sample size: the number of respondants. While I know you aren't looking for anything particularly scientific, it might be a bit premature to call a dozen or less samples from a skewed source "most." Not to say that most people _arent_ using 6e: for the good of the company, I hope a hundred thousand people start buying up the books myself, whether they use them or not. Just saying that "most" isn't really justifiable here. (there you go: that should bring you a much larger sample in no time. ;).) It's killing me to not know what that power is. (hint-Hint)

I don't think it's political to say one thing that I think would help a lot of folks: Since the dawn of elections, the supporters of the losing side have always felt exactly the same. Since the dawn of approval ratings, we have seen that supporters of the winning side suffer from a considerable amount of buyers remorse. To date, no one has died as a result of a lost election, and there have been no mass killings as a result of a victory. Personally, I think getting worked up over a temporary situation, or wasting massive chunks of an all-too-short lifespan to obsess over it is a huge waste of the most finite commodity any of us has. Losing or winning, either way: it did not kill you. It has always struck me as foolish to waste life trying to convince someone that it did. (I love being old: the unimportance of little things gets just a bit more obvious every year)

There was no option for "selectable" as an adder to power Advantages, so quite often, in the early days, if you wanted to be able to toggle a particular Advantage off and on, you wrote two versions of the power (or three, or four) and stuck them in an ultra and called it good. Then came "variable advantage," but even then, it wasn't the most cost-effective way to toggle on or off a single Advantage. We saw a huge drop in multipower use when we house ruled "selective" as an additional +1/4 for any advantage. Nowadays, we really only see them for characters with radically different power groups: movement and offense, for example. I think if we did away with elemental control, we'd see even more, as multipower would be the best choice (and in 6, is the only choice) to simulate a character who can manipulate a single ability in multiple ways: for example, a person who can do "just so much" with his telekinetic ability, and so he has to decide how much of this potential to use for flight, for his force field, and for his ranged PD attack. Next phase, he doesn't need to fly, so he allocates that potential elsewhere. We tend to use EC for that sort of thing, but a (non ultra) MP is a good second choice. That sort of thing. MP grew more and more popular starting with the more mathy of us: "free points," as it were: the same exact complaint so many had about EC. It doesn't. De-stress the need for points shaving, and create alternatives for the same effect.

Z: It's back again.

I don't doubt that it works, but it _is_ a cobble: Steve gave a very detailed breakdown of the build, as I recall. It just seems like Armor: Activation X or less would be more worthy of the term "luck."

If that works for you, then go for it. I can compile it into a list from there.

I can't say for 6, but when this Cobble first appeared in 5, wasn't it recommended specifically for characters with inadequate armor anyway? Sort of a luck substitute for "whew; just missed me!"?

I actually use something very similar to the portable shrine in my occult western. Sorry: _did_ use. It's been over for nearly four years now.

Don't think I've ever gone to the political thread. I see no reason to ruin otherwise perfectly rewarding friendships by revealing how stupid we all are.