Christopher R Taylor

Hard to answer without knowing the genre or type of game.

Some examples of warrior and rogue type talents from the upcoming Jolrhos Player's Guide: BASH: You are able to strike your target so hard it interrupts the action they are taking. This requires a successful attack roll and then the opponent must make a CON roll at -1 to keep doing what they are doing. Cost: 2 points, +2 points per -1 penalty (based on Change Environment) VICTORY RUSH: Gives the character a surge of morale and triumph with each defeated foe. When a target is knocked out or killed, the character is healed 1d6 Endurance automatically. Can only trigger once per turn. Cost: 12 points VALOR: This leadership talent inspires great confidence and courage in all around him. The effect is an Aid of 1d6 Ego Defense* and defensive Presence each (only for fear and intimidation effects), fading at 5 points per turn. Requires a Presence Roll at -1 and ½ DCV concentration over a full phase of incantation Cost: 5 points CLOSING STANCE: This stance is used to close on and engage enemies at range, and is not useful for combat in other situations. It adds 12m of movement only for increasing half moves and grants +2 DCV against ranged attacks, while reducing OCV by 2 while in effect. Cost: 5 points LIGHT TREAD: Allows the character to move up to 10m over any surface without triggering any weight-based effects such as sound or traps; maximum movement half normal running speed. Cost: 5 points COWER: Causes attackers to make a Perception Roll at -2 or lose track of and ignore the character until they make an aggressive action. This requires an attack roll and a Stealth Roll to succeed, and only works on a single target within 3m. *All characters in Jolrhos Fantasy Hero start with EGO/5 in Mental Defense

And, of course, martial arts are another option. Remember: Martial Arts are not an eastern Asian thing. They are simply regimented, stylized combat systems of regular patterns. Boxing is a martial art, but so is one school of fencing or a particular region's teachings on how to fight as a knight.

In 6th edition it is, yes. Previous to that it was not. I believe the change was because the concept behind Transform was, if you can kill something with this many points, you ought to be able to make it into something else. And since killing damage is effectively cumulative, so should Transform be.

They are talents, translated into D&D for 3rd edition Literally, that's the origin, they borrowed a Hero idea. So that's the answer to me: plenty of talents to give mundane combatants "spells" to use to enhance their abilities and do special maneuvers.

I agree, its probably worth a serious examination of different powers as to how they work universally rather than building around Champions, should a 7th edition ever come out (please, not for a few more decades) My house rule is that its a limitation for duplicates to disappear permanently, and ordinarily they recover as if they were damaged: Body recover per week until fully healed, then you can use them again. Yes, the classic example of duplication is Triplicate Lass in the Legion of Superheroes who lost one of her duplicates permanently to death and became Duo Damsel but let us not be trapped by too-faithful copying of comic book examples.

Summoning is pretty limited though. The creatures comes through and can do nothing for a phase. You have to negotiate, defeat in a battle of wills, or compel the creature to take action (or it gets more expensive to not do so). Duplication is fired off right away. Its a house rule, but I reject the "if they die the points you spent are gone forever" aspect. Really? My character loses character points permanently?? That sounds like a limitation, not a feature.

Both summon and duplication (and follower for that matter) are a little bit off in cost because of how many more points it takes to make the same character in 6th but there's not an easy way to fix that.

Best tips I can give for running Champions are these: 1) The purpose of playing a game is entertainment; don't let rules or your story get in the way of fun 2) Try to make the game feel as much like the source material your players are used to as possible -- movies, comics, animated etc, whatever. 3) Ham it up, be over the top, role play and be goofy and bring the NPCs to life If you and the payers are new to the system, try the Champions Begins rough draft as a tutorial! So far all the people who offered to playtest it have not followed through yet. Its tough these days to run an RPG though, I understand the challenges.

I'm expanding on the familiarity system slightly with this book as well. Familiarity is now broader than just a penalty to OCV, and the penalty is generally lower. Penalties are based on the complexity and commonality of weapons: Common = -1 OCV non-familiarity penalty Uncommon = -2 OCV non-familiarity penalty Exotic: = -3 OCV non-familiarity penalty Exotic Weapons are unusual and complicated ones such as Dwarven repeater crossbows and chain weapons. Further, familiarity allows you to make 1-body repairs to items out of combat, such as replacing a strap, pounding out a dent, honing a sword, etc. Familiarity also lets you use a weapon more extensively: without familiarity, the only weapon maneuvers you can use are Strike, Haymaker, and Block. There is armor (and shield) familiarity as well now. Having the familiarity allows a character to properly fit, adjust, and wear armor, so that for the purposes of encumbrance, the armor weighs half as much for those with the proper Armor Familiarity (cloth, leather, chain, plate). Further, without Shield familiarity, the character cannot use shield maneuvers such as shield wall. The idea is that this makes familiarity matter a bit more without being so great a penalty for use. -3 OCV makes a weapon virtually impossible to hit with on average (two characters with equal OCV and DCV = 8- chance to hit), which is absurd.

The Body-Stun-Endurance system in Hero is one of the big reasons I fell in love with it, as opposed to the Hit Points model of D&D. The all-or-nothing hit point model of "you are perfectly healthy and active until you die" always annoyed me, as did the complete lack of any kind of fatigue or energy model.

Kevin Maguire is one of my favorite artists, he was amazing on JLI

That's excessive, in my experience and what I have heard from others. They're slower to use, but not actually slow.

Yeah, "Haste" and weapon speeds as have been implemented in game systems do not very well represent actual combat experience, but it is true that a big heavy weapon is tougher to get back into action than small, light ones. But things like a small penalty to multiple power attacks (cleaves), for example, can help represent things. As can a small reduction in DEX Rank (when you act in a segment). Small modifiers, but nothing so complex you need a spreadsheet to engage in battle.

Reduced by range is a pretty simple mechanic already in the game, so that's not tough to cover.

Its less dire than portrayed, but to what extent it is an issue, the rebuild of KA damage we did makes all the difference.

I feel the same way about weapons: could they be modeled better, with greater distinction between each type? How can we make an axe feel cool but a sword feel cool in a different way, so they both are attractive in different situations? How can we make different bows matter other than just a few DC difference in damage?

City of Heroes had a great character creation tool as well, you can download just that still I think, and it is free to play now with everything unlocked.

If you had to build it, you could make it invisibility only vs reflections and cameras 0 END cost, etc but I'd probably call it a physical complication or distinctive looks, because its as likely to be a problem as a convenience.

By the way, there's a pretty enjoyable computer game called Freedom Force (silver age stuff) that's a lot of fun, but tough to play. Not really on topic but I enjoyed the game quite a bit.

Not very many combat systems in games take full advantage of the way armor works in real life, protecting well against some kinds of attacks and not against others. Even Hero doesn't quite, because it gets really complicated differentiating between different special effects of weapons. Hero does special defenses really well. For example, Mongol warriors wore silk armor which were good at stopping arrows, or lessening their effect: the spinning arrow would spin into the fibers of the silk and slow rapidly, reducing their effect on the target. Hardened defenses! But yeah, padded armor is actually quite good defense, surprisingly good, against a lot of different kinds of attacks. There's a reason knights had that padded Gambeson on under the armor. Its better than leather for blunt and abrading attacks, worse against edged attacks, and bulkier, but lighter according to my extensive study. Padded is also cheaper than leather, but takes longer to make (unless you add in curing time). But as Duke notes: you look like the Michelin Man wearing the stuff, which is tough to impress the ladies with. Something I've done is break the normal and resistant damage of armor out so some armor is better normal defense than others, some better resistant, and of course, the ED is different in each. Plate armor has remarkably bad energy defense. Padded and leather, pretty good. The tough part is keeping swift, interesting playability balanced against really gritty simulation. Phoenix Command went way, WAY overboard the simulation side. Marvel Superheroes and Top Secret went overboard the other direction in my opinion.

My magic system is based around levels of power based on active cost, which you buy as a talent. Buying Apprentice in this kind of magic lets you use and learn spells up to 19 active points, for instance. You buy the spells themselves with money or learn them yourself.

Yeah I have a copy of Heroes Unlimited but never played. It has great art, but the world and character building didn't appeal to me.

Any of the old Carl Barks duck tale comics were terrific pulp fun

The only other supers systems I have tried are Villains & Vigilantes and Heroes Unlimited. I got the rules for Marvel Superheroes, but never played it. Ditto for Silver Age Sentinels.