Christopher R Taylor

I really like Cloak and Dagger, but I fear for what they'll do to the story.  Its a great movie concept, not so great for a comic book series

It makes for really depressing storytelling but a superhero that finds out he's in a society where these days feels trump freedom would be a pretty effective sci fi type cautionary tale.

For most combats, I roll a d12 to see what phase we start at, so its unpredictable.

Not the leadership we need, but probably the leadership we deserve

Wouldn't make things any easier.  All it does is delete a useful stat without any increase in ease or play

I would love to see a Russian Federation sourcebook for Champions; Champions of the North Star or something.  I think a bronze age-themed 1980s Champions campaign setting would be pretty cool too.  It really is its own age of comics and history set apart from the rest.  When it was perfectly fine to be outrageously patriotic and chest beating, and the commies made such good bad guys.

You could just buy your fear-based effects to target presence rather than Ego (maybe a -1/4 limitation, depending on the campaign).

However, it is worth considering that for a lot of heroic games, almost everything will be speed 3 or 4 anyway, so there won't be a huge difference.

I did consider a system in which people had as many phases as their speed, then rolled 3d6 each segment they wanted to act.  If it was under their DEX, they got to move, but each successive segment of action was a penalty to the roll so it was harder and harder to act sequentially.

I'm fine with GMs using willpower to resist things that their personal character and force of personality will not.  Every game I've run, I have always allowed people to use whichever is higher.

A couple ways.  The easiest is invisibility, not invisible to friends (maybe a +1/4 advantage).  You're still there, still can take damage, just not perceptible for bad guys to attack.

Other, more expensive builds are out there, probably mind control is the most effective but very expensive version.

OK here's the first PC offering with background, Ace!

Each of these characters has been designed to be as flexible as possible in terms of gender and ethnicity, so the player can tailor the result to their wishes.  My idea is to have a double-sided card for each character, the male version on one side, the female on the other (with illustrations).

Ace is the Hawkeye/Gambit type, with shades of Bullseye.  Ace can pick up and throw anything, charging it up for a variety of effects and powers when it hits.  He can even charge up his fists to hit very hard or generate a kinetic field to protect and move more swiftly across the ground.  Ace is a baseball-themed character.

Ace.hdc

For me, the speed chart was one of the big draws for Hero.  Everyone moving like clockwork taking turns just doesn't feel right, plus the stat gives some very interesting effects in combat.

Sorry, which military? In what situation? 

 

Ships and submarines, also some stations in planes that require quick coverage and movement.

That's there so that the skill monkeys who want lots of skills don't get spanked so hard by the cost.

I used to use Elemental Control for that, but its the same basic effect; I like your solution.  You build a character like Batman and he ends up costing the same as Superman just to know a buncha stuff.

Yeah Lucius that's the kind of thing I was thinking of.  Other things like some luck, or a few extra defense on an item so it doesn't break, or a minor illusion to make the hostile creature less hostile to you, that kind of thing.  Cheap, small effects that are invisible and that have a side effect, so if you do it wrong, things get worse.

And only the magi really know which ones work and which ones are just coincidence or luck.

My Fantasy Hero setting has both racial and professional packages, I find them a good idea, and I liked how 4th edition did it. Forcing players to sacrifice creativity and flexibility for a set block of abilities worth a small reduction in cost seems reasonable to me.

If superheroes are being replaced, its probably by zombie fighters, as pathetic as that may be.

Pants should have 1 ED to protect from hot leather seats.

I do like to abstract things a bit more so as to not penalize players whose imagination or personal fighting experience is less than others.  So: if you put your levels into OCV, you feinted or were clever, or powered through their defenses, or any of any of a dozen other options, but it worked.

That said, using a sleight of hand or presence attack to gain a one-phase advantage is a nice trick though.

Batman in the cinematic universe (and, for decades, in the comics) has not been the world's greatest detective.  He's just the man with the plan.  Detective work is hard to write and boring, better to write huge disasters and have Batman being the only guy that can figure out how to get out of them!  Its worked for Dr Who and Sherlock Holmes on the BBC, why not Batman, too!

I love the concept, and it not only makes magic less dominant, it makes real dangerous magic that much more terrifying when an NPC can use it, always at some horrific personal cost.

I just love the idea of a fighter learning a charm to protect himself from snakes after he got bit.  And the "magician' being the guy who has the good spells which he refuses to share or let people know because it reduces his status.

Another interesting aspect of bronze age fantasy is how the magic worked.  We think of magic in terms of blasting things with fireballs and summoning monsters, but for the average bronze age type, magic was a matter of how the world just.... worked.  You said little charms to get your wheel out of the mud, to protect you from crocodiles, to get a good crop. Magic was just the way you interacted with the world when it was outside your immediate control.  When your spell didn't work, well it was a bad spell and that magician has a better one that maybe you can buy.

I think that a serious look at skills to decide if they should cost what they do would be in order, too.  Some of them are kind of questionable in utility for their cost, like Ambidexterity was slashed by about 10th of its cost from 5th to 6th.

Seems like you'd just have to break him down to his abilities at a core list: flying machine, various grenades, body armor, personal blasting weapon in gloves, etc.  His origin, his schtick etc all are up to the design.  you could make a variant of him that nobody would even know was the Green Goblin.  Put him on a broom with potions - the Alchemist!  Put him on a flying carpet with summoned imps that explode - the Arabian Knight!  OK that one is a bit Golden Age but you get the point.

IMHO 6e needs someone to go through it with an eye to seeing what things can be gotten rid of ie do we really need all of those Presence based skills, or is there some over lap between them that we can use to reduce the number of skills.

Perhaps better would be to have the larger skill list in the core rules and then for the other games, fewer as befits the genre.  Does fantasy Hero need Forensic Medicine and Computer Programming?  Does a gritty cop game need High Society, or Ventiloquism?  So the genre books don't need all of those skills listed.  They can refer to a larger list in the core rules to show what else is optionally possible but don't need the whole skill list.