Jhamin

For what it is worth (and we are drifting really off topic here ), I really enjoyed Arcane Adversaries.  There was a lot of good stuff in there & several of the villains got a lot of use in my games.
- Brother Bone launched an inquisition against the totally-not-Monaco fictional nation one of my PCs hailed from.  Brother Bone had a few points when he talked about the hedonism it had fallen into.
- The Devils Advocates almost stole the "curse" of Lycanthropy from a PC when he returned from his confrontation with Brother Bone.
- Hell Rider was an ongoing antagonist seeking vengeance against a large corporation that a PC was intertwined with.  He deserved vengeance, but the PC couldn't let him take it out on everyone as he was doing.
       * Once the original Hell Rider's vengeance was satisfied, the mysterious stranger passed the powers to a campaign NPC that felt the PCs has wronged his father (who was secretly a villain they rightly defeated)
- Mother Gothel is one of my favorites.  So much that she has escaped Hero system and now shows up along with her frenemy the merciless agent of order Mrs Meigs in any campaign I run that acknowledges such things.  Players smile and groan when she appears with her warm tea and Meig's Compass Men.

EDIT: As it has been pointed out that Brother Bone came from an earlier book by Dean Shomshak & didn't actually appear in Arcane Adversaries, I'll leave my praise as it's all for the same man but add:
- Black Fang.  As has been mentioned a long running PC in my games was a playboy prince whose family was "Cursed" with lycanthropy.  Black Fang was a "dark mirror" antagonist, showing *why* people were afraid of werewolves and was a constant threat to the PC's good reputation

A few years ago I played in a few sessions of a kind of "Justice League Dark" storyline with official Champions supernatural characters. I was Robert Caliburn, another player took Doctor Teneber, while the remaining players built PCs around other NPCs alluded to in The Mystic World but not game-statted: Dr. Ibrahim Khalseran, the ghost of Lieut. Mark Gentry, and the vampire Charles Torres. They were gathered at the instigation of the Drifter.
 
BTW by the end of that story Teneber had found a new body for Gentry to inhabit.

That's very cool.  The PC in question has him as a contact, but only on an 8- so he frequently ends up deciding he has more important things to do than deal with her high school drama.  (Which, to be fair, a lot of it is).  He did come in handy when a weird interaction between Blue Wizard's arcane training, Archive's ability to randomly soak up knowledge, and a Halloween scary story contest summoned The Monster while shifting the dorms into a shadow realm.

As the GM, I've been playing him as sort of a Doctor Strange character but willing to exorcise the living if he feels that someone recently dead deserves their body more.  Other mystics find his philosophy repugnant, but he still wants to keep Tyranon or DEMON or the Devils Advocates from taking over the world & finds it disappointing that heroes like Dr. Ka and the Drifter have such limited imaginations.

The PC is basically "mostly dead".  The "rightful" soul for this body was a young psychopath.  Probably not ever really super-villainous or even violent but destined for a life of petty, casual harm to those around her.  The Sorta-Good Doctor swapped that soul for another.  The new soul has no memory of who she was.  The body was from a powerful and well-connected family, and was very attractive, and can pass for older than it is (the PC even spent points on a fake ID), but wasn't super powered.  After the Soul-Transfer the body is "mostly dead" and has a suite of solomon-grundy style "zombie" type powers (strength, damage resistance, ect).  That isn't what was supposed to happen and Teneber knows he didn't make mistakes in the rituals.  He suspects some outside force interfering but is keeping it from the PC until he has too.  He doubts telling her will matter for her life and doesn't want to over-complicate her adaptation to her new body.  He is pleased with how the new soul is using it's new life and considers the whole thing an interesting "complication" of his procedure.

Hey, someone used Dr. Teneber in their campaign! Happy author woohoo!
 
The Doctor of the Dead isn't just a villain I created for Arcane Adversaries. He's my PC from a "dark supernatural" campaign inspired by the "Midnight Sons" line of titles Marvel did for a while. Doc turned out to be far and away the "darkest" PC. Okay, he ended up crashing the campaign, but I had a lot of fun with him.
 
Dean Shomshak

If it helps, here are some of the nontraditional students in my Ravenswood game:

Senior Year:
Thad Jones (Tower) - Brick.  Big & Harry, oversized hands & feet.  Never shows up cleanly on photography equipment.  Raised by foster family & Isn't sure where his powers come from but finds himself most comfortable when alone in the woods in the Pacific Northwest. His laid-back charisma make him an excellent RA for the boys dorm.
Christian Anderson (Tide) - Water themed powers (mom was a powered armor Naval Hero, Dad was an Elemental) and is able to shift into a watery form.  Knows alot about the Superhero world from years as Mom's DNPC, but hopes to just focus on his music after graduation.
Alissa James (Crawler) - Has some kind of insect powers but has never bothered to identify /which/ insect she might be emulating.  More interested in psychology.

Junior Year:
The Blue Wizard (Ahmed Ghulam) - Has been learning magic most of his life from a spirit advisor only he can see.  Very studios, a bit repressed, has strong opinions about the Simirillion
Bustarius (Cyprian Krax) - Lemurian Weapon's master who is trying to live in the wider world at the urging of his Uncle, an escapee from Lemurian Society.  Keeps failing Superhuman Ethics because he can't wrap his head around the a non martial philosophy of life.  Weirdly best friends with Tower,
Rodinia Ambrose (Concord) - Empath and star singer in the Choir
 
Sophomore Year:
The entire incoming Sophomore year except for Fortress chose to drop out of Ravenswood and join a rival school that may or may not be a front for something nefarious.  Just about everyone is torn up about this but no coercion can be proven.  My PCs are new Sophomore transfer students
Carol Millner (Fortress) - Stubborn.  Scads of special defenses and has the ablity to "root" herself.  When rooted can ignore ridiculous amounts of damage as long as she doesn't take a step.  No offenses whatsoever.
(PC) Edith King-Johnson (Reflex) - Studious Geek with Photographic Reflexes (think taskmaster, but 15 and more interested in Parkour)
(PC) Harper Cubbington (Jane Doe) - Anmesiac soul placed into an undead body by Dr. Teneber.  Dealing with the fact that her body was formerly a mean girl queen bee at the rival school & her old crew are not sure how to handle her "new" more compassionate, moral life.
(PC) Justin Cline (Junior) - A semi-organic bioroid "son" of Mechanon and the Engineer born after a battle in one of Mechanon's bases caused some weirdness in on of the manufacturing lines.  Works hard to keep of his parent's radars.

Freshman Year:
Gabe Williams (Archive) - Memory beyond photographic.  Can remember things written in a book he fell asleep on but usually doesn't understand it.  Usually feels a bit overwhelmed
Arianna Bellington (Fury) - Happy, Friendly cheerleader with an irritatingly sunny disposition.  If pushed she transforms into a 12 foot furry beast with razor spurs.  Not doing well at Enhanced Gym because she finds it difficult to find the beast as she really isn't that angsty.
Jacob Singh (Athoeter) - Constantly afraid of accidentally using his power to disintegrate almost anything in a column in front of him
Wilma Nessen (Sine) - Mousy, quiet girl with loud ear-shattering screams
 
 
Special Mentions:
Kyle Ward (Nocturne II) - A traditional student sent to Ravenswood by her mother to *try* to keep her out of trouble.  He older brother is the sidekick to the Black Mask and they are both the children of a previous Black Mask.  She is well aware of the secret parts of Ravenswood but thinks that she has fooled Headmistress Timmons into thinking she is an ordinary student.  She thinks she is Bruce Wayne stuck in high school by a mother that doesn't respect her, but in actuality needs to learn some hard lessons about experience vs confidence, apparently from someone other than her family.

Kalla Howery - Perfectly normal, under-confident girl.  Has become friends with the PCs but doesn't know about their abilities.  In several future timelines she becomes a time-enhanced solder opposing the villainy of either Junior or Jane Doe.  This has resulted in several competing adult versions of her coming back to try to influence the present.  Neither Junior or Jane Doe can imagine doing any of the things she accuses them of, but the secrets they are keeping from her 15 year old self make them worry about how she will react if she finds out about them or her future selves.

If it helps, here are some of the nontraditional students in my Ravenswood game:

Senior Year:
Thad Jones (Tower) - Brick.  Big & Harry, oversized hands & feet.  Never shows up cleanly on photography equipment.  Raised by foster family & Isn't sure where his powers come from but finds himself most comfortable when alone in the woods in the Pacific Northwest. His laid-back charisma make him an excellent RA for the boys dorm.
Christian Anderson (Tide) - Water themed powers (mom was a powered armor Naval Hero, Dad was an Elemental) and is able to shift into a watery form.  Knows alot about the Superhero world from years as Mom's DNPC, but hopes to just focus on his music after graduation.
Alissa James (Crawler) - Has some kind of insect powers but has never bothered to identify /which/ insect she might be emulating.  More interested in psychology.

Junior Year:
The Blue Wizard (Ahmed Ghulam) - Has been learning magic most of his life from a spirit advisor only he can see.  Very studios, a bit repressed, has strong opinions about the Simirillion
Bustarius (Cyprian Krax) - Lemurian Weapon's master who is trying to live in the wider world at the urging of his Uncle, an escapee from Lemurian Society.  Keeps failing Superhuman Ethics because he can't wrap his head around the a non martial philosophy of life.  Weirdly best friends with Tower,
Rodinia Ambrose (Concord) - Empath and star singer in the Choir
 
Sophomore Year:
The entire incoming Sophomore year except for Fortress chose to drop out of Ravenswood and join a rival school that may or may not be a front for something nefarious.  Just about everyone is torn up about this but no coercion can be proven.  My PCs are new Sophomore transfer students
Carol Millner (Fortress) - Stubborn.  Scads of special defenses and has the ablity to "root" herself.  When rooted can ignore ridiculous amounts of damage as long as she doesn't take a step.  No offenses whatsoever.
(PC) Edith King-Johnson (Reflex) - Studious Geek with Photographic Reflexes (think taskmaster, but 15 and more interested in Parkour)
(PC) Harper Cubbington (Jane Doe) - Anmesiac soul placed into an undead body by Dr. Teneber.  Dealing with the fact that her body was formerly a mean girl queen bee at the rival school & her old crew are not sure how to handle her "new" more compassionate, moral life.
(PC) Justin Cline (Junior) - A semi-organic bioroid "son" of Mechanon and the Engineer born after a battle in one of Mechanon's bases caused some weirdness in on of the manufacturing lines.  Works hard to keep of his parent's radars.

Freshman Year:
Gabe Williams (Archive) - Memory beyond photographic.  Can remember things written in a book he fell asleep on but usually doesn't understand it.  Usually feels a bit overwhelmed
Arianna Bellington (Fury) - Happy, Friendly cheerleader with an irritatingly sunny disposition.  If pushed she transforms into a 12 foot furry beast with razor spurs.  Not doing well at Enhanced Gym because she finds it difficult to find the beast as she really isn't that angsty.
Jacob Singh (Athoeter) - Constantly afraid of accidentally using his power to disintegrate almost anything in a column in front of him
Wilma Nessen (Sine) - Mousy, quiet girl with loud ear-shattering screams
 
 
Special Mentions:
Kyle Ward (Nocturne II) - A traditional student sent to Ravenswood by her mother to *try* to keep her out of trouble.  He older brother is the sidekick to the Black Mask and they are both the children of a previous Black Mask.  She is well aware of the secret parts of Ravenswood but thinks that she has fooled Headmistress Timmons into thinking she is an ordinary student.  She thinks she is Bruce Wayne stuck in high school by a mother that doesn't respect her, but in actuality needs to learn some hard lessons about experience vs confidence, apparently from someone other than her family.

Kalla Howery - Perfectly normal, under-confident girl.  Has become friends with the PCs but doesn't know about their abilities.  In several future timelines she becomes a time-enhanced solder opposing the villainy of either Junior or Jane Doe.  This has resulted in several competing adult versions of her coming back to try to influence the present.  Neither Junior or Jane Doe can imagine doing any of the things she accuses them of, but the secrets they are keeping from her 15 year old self make them worry about how she will react if she finds out about them or her future selves.

I think there's a certain playstyle that old school Champions assumed you would use, and ECs fit pretty well into that.  The Human Torch would often have his fire extinguished during a battle, and when that happened he was basically out of the fight.  He probably had an Elemental Control with a "not in vacuum/water" limitation on it, and a Vulnerability to wind/vacuum/water" attacks.  So Dr Doom can whip up a 6D6 Ranged Drain with his gadget pool, defined as a "wind cannon" and knock out most of Johnny's powers with one shot.  But Doom would then write Johnny off as inconsequential and turn his attention to other characters.  He wouldn't fire up his RKA and blow a hole in Johnny's torso.
 
The game kind of assumed that players and GMs both understood this.  In old school comics, characters might have their powers deactivated fairly frequently, but they didn't get murdered when it happened.  In game, it's a good excuse to take a character off the board when a player has to leave early, or you need to move on to the next plot point.  Something happens and Batman wakes up without his utility belt, Superman finds he's in a room with red sun radiation emitters, the Human Torch got hit with a vacuum blaster and he's still recovering.  But then the characters escape and their powers come back.  It's not a "game over" scenario.
 
In my experience, there's another factor as well when it comes to ECs.  Unlike normal limitations, Elemental Controls push characters to have similarly priced powers, which alters the optimum build (sometimes in positive ways).  For instance, an energy projector character might normally want 13" of Flight, an 18/18 Force Field, and a 12D6 Energy Blast.  For the sake of argument, let's just pretend that those are the most efficient purchases for the character.  That's a 26 point power, a 36 point power, and a 60 point power.  Now he can save points by purchasing a 13 point EC (saving a total of 26 points on the 3 powers).  But the structure of ECs means it may be in his best interest to bump up his Flight to 18", so he can have an 18 point EC (in fact if those are the only 3 powers, it's definitely in his best interest, because the cost remains the exact same).  If you really look at trying to maximize your points, you're going to wind up with a different construct than you would otherwise.  An EC character is not going to look like a brick, and is not going to look like a multipower character.

This sounds like the old 70's Marvel Comics villain "Swarm", only he had his old skeleton inside his bee-swarm body, and wore a cape for some reason.

As I recall he had
- Damage reduction to reflect that punches and bullets didn't do much to him.
- Damage Shield to reflect all the stings you would get if you touched him (nnd, not vs rigid armor or poison immunity)
- Stretching to reflect him putting out pseudo-pods of bees out of his body to sting people with his damage shield
- Flight, because he was made of bees
- Variable Area of Effect NND (vs rigid armor or immunity to poison) blasts to reflect him sending clouds of bees after people.

In some versions he had giant bees he could command or had swarms of bees as followers
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Fritz_von_Meyer_(Earth-616)

Someone armored like Iron Man could have made short work of him, but he mostly fought Spiderman or The Champions of LA (a *very* minor superteam that included Hercules, Black Widow and HellRider (whose flames helped out quite a bit vs Swarm)

In honor of the day, it is also time to remember that every year Santa penetrates the defenses of Apokolips to deliver Darkseid a lump of coal.

Every year.  Darkseid has rivals, and has betters.
 
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_FVXCQBs2iUU/TNpu07Bj9zI/AAAAAAAAE_g/a8ePJt-LKXk/s1600/darkseid.jpg

I've done both but tend to prefer fictional takes on real cities.

My current Teen Champions game (and my more generic Champions games of the past) happens in Horizon City, which is neither Portland nor Seattle but may as well be.  I like being able to mooch off of the pop-culture "feel" of a city without having to actually deal with things like "Is the Big landmark on the waterfront or downtown?"  In Horizon it is wherever I need it to be the first time it shows up.  I was a big fan of San Angelo for this basic reason.  It is not an actual California city but has a lot of overlap with several.

My last World of Darkness game (Changeling 20th anniversary) was set in rural Nebraska.  I created a new county nestled between two real ones and stole the demographics and several historical tidbits of several nearby communities to populate it.

On the other hand there is a part of me that has always wanted to run an Urban Fantasy game set in Duluth MN.  Big enough to have most of the urban amenities but small enough that whatever the PCs are up to is probably a big deal. Lots of rust belt international heavy shipping mixed with beautiful countryside and a lively tourist trade.  Then there are the harsh MN winters and the deep, cold murky depths of Lake Superior.

At this point it would make sense that Black Mask XI (formerly Nocturne) has probably been on the job for 10-15 years and Jennifer Ward's Son is likely well into his training to be Black Mask XII.  He may even be a sidekick to Black Mask XI already.  I've been having a lot of fun with this in my Teen Champions game.

I admit that I started with Champions 4th, and that tends to color my view but I'm really starting to wonder if looking at what was normal in various editions is holding us back.

Champions 4th came out in 1989. 
Champions 5th came out in 2002 and is now old enough to vote.
 
I think it's fine to pick an edition and play within it's assumptions, but gaming tends to evolve over time.  5th edition D&D is a very different game than 2nd edition was and Champions 6th edition is not the same game as the one from 1982

Well, it's an old joke in the Hero System that baseball bat (+2d6 HA, OAF: Stick of Wood) costs 4 points, or you could be Immortal for 5.

I'd say that most of the "non combat" powers are already crazy cheap.  Batman dropped 10, maybe 15 points on wealth but it comes up all the time.  Being close personal friends with the Head of UNTIL costs like 10 points.

I personally think it's fine that Tony Stark is loaded & Peter Parker isn't.  Tony paid 10 points for the privileged and if Spiderman's player tried to get away with Social Complication: Almost Broke I'd allow it.  (Parker's bank account creates about as many problems for him as Doctor Octopus does)

For whatever it's worth, this bugged me enough when I started out that I actually deducted a flat 6 points of dex from every character that had a dex higher than 16.
-6 Dex and back in the older editions I docked them the two points of OCV/DCV that bought them.  Simple to do in your head and the PCs no longer needed to have superhuman Dexes to hang in a fight with Ogre.

This sounds like a Campaign Guidelines issue rather than a moral one.
 
One of the things you need to be mature about before playing HERO is the idea that you are there to have a good time and not there to "win".
 
Most RPGs have specific guidelines about what is and isn't OK and there is a low-level war between the designers trying to make content and the players who are trying to Power Build.  The GM has to enforce how wild things get.

With Hero, there is *NO* attempt to say its illegal to build this that or the other character.  The rules are a toolkit and The players & GM all agree what they want to do & they build characters that are fun for all.  If someone is trying to showboat, it is because they are trying to showboat, not because they are more or less enlightened.

If you don't like the ranges, change them.  It's HERO dammit!

At this point it would make sense that Black Mask XI (formerly Nocturne) has probably been on the job for 10-15 years and Jennifer Ward's Son is likely well into his training to be Black Mask XII.  He may even be a sidekick to Black Mask XI already.  I've been having a lot of fun with this in my Teen Champions game.

It's not.  The problem is there is a sculptor, working for Hero Forge, that has created the sculpts in a specific way to allow for scaling and posing, and the costume and prop elements that work within that same framework, that fit those  sculpted figures in such a way that they fit and work together. Each of those individual pieces of artwork have been created by the sculptor on the company dime for this service. Hero Forge (Shapeways) has created and owns those specific shapes. It basically becomes the "Fan art" problem, in that Batman is owned by ATT-Warner.  You cannot sell the likeness of Batman without a license from ATT-Warner. However, if you are at a convention, you can pay an artist to draw Batman for you, and that is a legal gray area that is often exploited at conventions. The customer is paying for a service, not the "product".
 
If you make your own figure from scratch or using high end 3D software (Z-Brush, Blender, or Maya) that is demonstrably different from the Hero Forge product (because the hero Forge product has a definite, chunky, identifiable art style) of a character, that character is yours, even if you mocked up one in Hero Forge to test the concept.

This sounds like a Campaign Guidelines issue rather than a moral one.
 
One of the things you need to be mature about before playing HERO is the idea that you are there to have a good time and not there to "win".
 
Most RPGs have specific guidelines about what is and isn't OK and there is a low-level war between the designers trying to make content and the players who are trying to Power Build.  The GM has to enforce how wild things get.

With Hero, there is *NO* attempt to say its illegal to build this that or the other character.  The rules are a toolkit and The players & GM all agree what they want to do & they build characters that are fun for all.  If someone is trying to showboat, it is because they are trying to showboat, not because they are more or less enlightened.

If you don't like the ranges, change them.  It's HERO dammit!

Back in the Fourth Edition rulebook there was a section on Powergaming in Hero.  They said that making a good character was what everyone wants but this is the guy who "takes Missing One Hand as a Disadvantage, but tries to get it per finger in order to get more points out of it."
It then goes on to give helpful tips on powergaming builds like "PlanetMan" who buys enough shrinking to keep planets in his pocket and then throws them at people, or "LandLord" who used the base building rules to buy all the space in the observable universe.

The basic point of it was that Hero lets you do anything, but that doesn't mean you should do anything.

Multiform exists because there are certain characters that greatly benefit from being able to buy it rather than do all kinds of torturous things with other rules to simulate that they are three different guys timesharing one body.  Hero doesn't tell you what you can't do, it gives you tools to build whatever you want and trusts your gaming group to all build things everyone will have fun with.

Robin.... varied a lot from one version to another.  Some were OK, many were not.  I always appreciated a character that was audience friendly but wasn't useless or irritating.  I feel like a lot of folks involved in these projects assume children can only relate to idiotic bumbling cowards for some reason.  I felt like this was and is a too common trope.

Personally, I was a child of the 80s and my friends and I watched a lot of Toy IP Cartoons.  Every single one had a character clearly designed for us kids to relate too and my friends and I hated them all!!   Scooter from Gobots, Snarf from Thundercats, Orko from HeMan, Scrappy Doo, Godzooky from Godzilla, Tbob from MASK... I could go on.

GI Joe for some reason didn't have an idiot sidekick.. at first.  They eventually had ShipWreck who was an imbecile but could still fight and wasn't a child.  The Transformers had Bumblebee but he was both brave and competent and just "one of the gang".  We were OK with him.  (and he is right up there in fandom popularity even today)
 

I ran a version of the old Island of Dr. Destroyer ages ago as a one-off at my FLAGS.  I posted a game report.  Here it is:
 
 
 

No villains J-L?
 
I feel like the Agent Corps is a really James Bond idea that somehow took over Hero 3rd edition.  In the comics agents are relatively rare.

That said, I always liked the Jokerz from Batman: Beyond.  Basically street thugs with a clown theme.  They saw themselves as the heirs to *the* Joker.  Batman saw them as a bunch of wannabes.  (The man himself treated them like a pre-made henchmen brigade when he arrived on scene.  Which was about as survivable for the Jokerz as it was for any of his other Henchmen)

Simple builds.  Complex, situation-specific tweaks are a royal PITA and IMO just tend to lead to more hassle and argument than they're ever going to be worth.
 
I've mentioned before:  I'd prefer to have 10-15% more points...but almost literally no limitations, or at least limitations with value.  Where they can be avoided.  (Rapid Attack...the HTH only or Ranged only is a limitation I'd ignore for this purpose, treating Rapid Attack (HTH) as a 5 point skill.)

But it's not a Side Effect. Those occur simultaneously or after the Power goes off. Without the minion, the Power can't be used in the first place here.
 
This is an Expendable Focus. Using the Power uses up the minion, you'll need another to use the Power again.

The only situation I might be OK with such a limit is if someone was buying a portable power source that only worked for some things.
 
"Glowing Crystal: End Reserve, only to power artifacts of the ancients"
 
So you can open the teleport portal with it, or power up the forgotten temple of Atlantis, but you will not be running the camp lights or the space heater from home depot off the glowing crystal.
 
The Power Supply for your Power Armor?  I'd be inclined to say that is pretty specific already & doesn't get the extra point costs.