Christopher R Taylor

Yeah I think that's the direction to go with character sheets: strip out all the stuff nobody needs during the game. Nobody needs the values of modifiers on their character sheet. Nobody needs the cost of stats, nobody needs base stats. Just give the character's abilities without the background gamer stuff. Somewhere (usually in Hero Designer) you need all that stuff, but not in the sheet.

That was the intention and reason behind the change. But whatever the reason was, it deemphasized primary stats. I would prefer not to do any more of that. I mean 6th edition in general reduced the significance of characteristics in the game by making many of them cost less than they ought, in my opinion. I agree very much that the cost of stats wasn't looked at closely enough. REC and END both cost too little. I agree that INT and EGO probably should cost a bit more, but I can see why DEX is expensive: it gives many combat-useful rolls and combat rank. But overall, a missed opportunity to fix the costs. I used to use it every so often in my games for things like reacting to poison etc. Constitution is how well you absorb diseases, being stunned, etc. Body handles how well your body handles lethal system shock. But not any longer. I've never liked the "well I never use it in my campaign so let's delete it" argument; that's how we lost Comeliness. Even when Bob Greenwade wrote up a great article on how to use Comeliness and its roll in games, that was ignored because people who made the decision never used Comeliness in their game.

With 6th edition removing figured characteristics, making Body a damage stat with no roll, and decoupling CV from DEX and EGO, Characteristics have already taken a pretty big hit in terms of function in the game. Stripping them away from skills would make primary stats nearly valueless other than STR. Deemphasizing characteristics even further is to me a very bad direction to go. Why even bother buying any at that point? You can get levels and lightning reflexes for cheaper than stats.

I'm not fond of making characteristics matter less and less

Maybe he'll be on a quest to Find Himself. Again.

Yeah the thing with role playing and social interaction is that you have to work with the best that person can do. Don't penalize characters for what their players are incapable of. This is why I don't like puzzles, riddles, etc in games unless you have players that are great at them or you don't have significant clues and assistance to get them through it. We're playing a ROLE PLAYING game here, not some test of player abilities. If you have a timid player who is awful at social graces and chatting up a lady, don't use his awkward confused and scared lines against him. Use the roll and determine if this is a good effort from them as a player. I am confident everyone here either knows, knew, or is that sort of person and we play these games to be better, stronger, more interesting and active people than we are in real life.

I have an NPC superhero in my Champions campaign named Captain Invincible. Other than flight and 40 STR, his only powers are defenses. Lots, and lots of defenses. I built him so he could fall out of orbit or be hit with the deadliest weapon listed in the book and not be stunned. His defenses were ALL double hardened. He was very expensive, but I thought, what if some PC bought a double AP attack? Can't have him be bothered by that... He was mostly a nuisance hero. He is... not bright, and has a very fixed code of very simple boy scout ethics, so he gets into some confusing situations and is easy to fool. But he was always for the right thing and honor, so he'd listen to the PCs if he caught them doing questionable stuff or if they were body swapped/mind controlled/replaced by clones, etc. He was just very, VERY hard to put down.

Yeah I fenced a guy at a Ren fair once. I grabbed his foil Rob Roy style and jabbed him in the heart. That was objectively a win, he was completely unprepared for it. But according to the rules, it was a loss; I "cheated." To be fair, I was fighting for a pretty redhead, so it was a win either way in my book.

Honestly the book isn't 100% clear, and Steve isn't here to ask, sadly. It could read either way: either you can buy just 1 point and it covers everything... or you have to buy all your defense impenetrable to get anything.

Well Pittsburgh could surely use a hero

I gotta figure most athletes are speed 2 or 3, max, and those only in sports like Hockey. Speed 4+ is reserved for military types, combatants who learn how to react well and efficiently in combat.

I had a clever player with mental illusions who would always try to find out if a target had special senses, to target them with the illusion. He figured that it would lead them to believe the illusion more and find them more compelling because they picked it up with their unusual senses

I do think its good to have more discussion of the pros and cons of allowing action after an attack, though. It would change some fundamental things about how Hero combat feels and moves, but would it be necessarily bad? It definitely would be a bit more complicated.

But there is an area in which you are not flying, not attacking, and not using your defenses. You cannot fly around shooting targets, or you start to fall out of the air. If you had them outside a multipower, you can fly and attack. You cannot have your defenses up while you attack, leaving you vulnerable to anyone who has held their phase or acts at the same DEX rank as you. It is limited, just not as much as by the rules. Like I said, it never has been a problem in the past, but perhaps nobody took advantage of it. I never insisted anyone should do this or that its by the rules. I just mentioned that in my campaigns over 30 years it never was an issue. I mean, I literally posted that yesterday.

Or as Grailknight pointed out: which means it doesn't matter how you run things, it still poses a concern. Except you can only use them one at a time anyway. You cannot fly and blast, you cannot defend yourself and attack. You can rapidly switch, but you're still vulnerable or not flying or not blasting at the same time.

Well, here's what the rules say: Now, I have never run it that way, I've always allowed changing powers in a multipower at will on your own phase, without any particular negative results, but this would be one way of limiting the problems of being able to act after attacking.

Talk about a literal place to use side effects

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it would force people to hold and attack the enemy when they get an opportunity instead of more like taking turns. But it would require careful watch on how long actions take and so on. And from many a brain-aching night of playing Magic The Gathering on when things take place in what order and in what speed, this can be a bit more of a pain than is worth what you gain from it.

And it is your position that the competition could not be the "combat" portion of a campaign with other stories?

I think that if you have ever played a competitive sport, you have a better grasp on why someone might enjoy this kind of game.

There are Hero-specific issues as well. Say you have a multipower with high defenses and attacks in it. at the beginning of your phase, you turn off your defenses slot and turn on your big attack slot. You attack. Then you turn on your high defenses slot. Like a mask and unmask attack: hiding behind something, popping out and firing, then ducking back. The problem is that you have effectively negated much of the limitations of a multipower, which is why it costs less to have all those powers.

I would sign up for this game at a con in a heartbeat Something worth considering is that you could have two scales of CV: vs other giant robots and vs people. People should have no problem hitting a skyscraper-sized robot. But the robot vs robot combat should be a bit more tricky, as its at their scale

The thing is, history, academia, philosophy, theology all discuss nature vs nurture but in the end it really is both in almost all cases. Some people are more inclined to horrors, and they are directed toward that by how they are raised or their environment. It cannot ONLY be nature, because that doesn't explain how evil people can twist and turn others to their side and to follow their wickedness. It cannot ONLY be nurture or where the heck did the first bad guy come from to create the environment that makes people go bad? Ultimately though, I only bring that up as a thought exercise, because in a game I don't care. None of that applies. The only purpose in a game is entertainment and story. It doesn't matter where the bad came from, unless the entertaining scenario is about that. Bad guys are bad because I need them to be bad for this story and everyone has fun with it. Getting into how the orcs are mean because they were mistreated by hobbits 3000 years ago and have struggled for their homeland blah blah, no. That's neither fun nor an interesting story. Stick with the GAME aspects of the game, remember what we're doing here.

LOL Snopes

Yeah I could enjoy a game of MLB, with the life stuff going on behind the scenes, the training, the games (basically combat), etc. Its a valid form of role playing as any other, just not necessarily for everyone.