Christopher R Taylor

Yeah there are tricks to make fights with agents/goblins/mooks faster and easier.
 
The classic is to assign each one a number of hits they can sustain before they drop: 1-2 for the regulars, 3 for the sergeant types.  No matter how hard the hit is, they take two hits, they drop. 
And don't let bad guys recover unless they are important or have a role to play.  Once they go down, they stay down.
Treat stuns as knockouts for all but important enemies.
No power pool changes unless you have the powers written up in advance.
If someone can't figure out what to do in 30 seconds, they hold and go to the next on the hit list until they figure out what to do.
 
Really familiarity with the system is the biggest key: if everyone knows their character and what they are doing, it goes smoother and quicker.

Plausibility and groundedness.  I like my fantasy to feel obviously made-up and at least semi-impossible.  Otherwise I get a feeling of uncanny valley.

I have to agree with only allowing prewritten powers for any VPP.  That is the only way I will allow a character to VPP that can be changed during combat.
 
The best way to speed up combat is for the GM to be organized.   Having the needed information on the combatants so you don’t have to go digging around for it when something takes a hit is a good start.  Using tools to do much of the work can also speed things up.   Spreadsheets and small programs to handle the details can be a valuable resource.  
 

I've always disliked the big VPP designs as well. TBH they feel a bit lazy to me in terms of defining what a character can do. (Not that I would ever call Steve Long "lazy." The man's work ethic is legendary.) I much prefer characters to have more specified abilities, although there are some concepts that practically demand the VPP approach. You couldn't do the Silver Surfer or Green Lantern justice without one.
 
 
If you're familiar with 4E or 5E (they're very similar) so the system differences from 6E won't give you pause, I'd suggest sampling Classic Enemies for 4E. It's a broad cross-section of Champs supervillains which has quite a few that were later updated, but also quite a few that were not. Overall power level is definitely lower, and there are more "small fry" suitable for low-power or your specified average-power campaigns. And the PDF in the Hero store is only $5 US. That would give you a sense of whether those villains meet your needs well enough to want to invest in more of those books. And you can always come back to the forums if you want recommendations.
 
 

Arthurian England, based on the animated Prince Valiant, but with Queen Guinevere as a Knight of the Round Table and Rowanne as a soldier and, when necessary, Guinevere's squire.

Characters who have been operating since Champions 1 would probably be strong enough to kill Destroyer by 6ed. Talk about dedication.

I have never run any of the 6th edition villain builds in any campaign largely because they are wildly overpowered.  They won't just knock out a hero they hit, they'll probably vaporize them.  But I tended to run lower powered games than some do here at least, and as Liaden points out an old campaign with tons of xps probably can handle that sort of thing better.

I have never run any of the 6th edition villain builds in any campaign largely because they are wildly overpowered.  They won't just knock out a hero they hit, they'll probably vaporize them.  But I tended to run lower powered games than some do here at least, and as Liaden points out an old campaign with tons of xps probably can handle that sort of thing better.

AI tool identifies hundreds of new possible psychedelic drugs
 
That link is to a Nature commentary.  New drug discovery is a problem, so this might not actually be making the world worse.  But "AI-discovered psychedelics" sure sounds like an idea for a Champions or Dark Champions adventure.
 
EDIT: The item reminds me the premise behind a number of things in @Drhoz's Edge City items in the "Quote from the gaming table" thread in the Champions forums, too.

You could as a GM rule that if you roll x or lower then there's no visible or audible trace of your passage.  For example: if you make your roll by 5, there's no sound.  If you make your roll by 8, there's no visible damage to the rice paper.  This is more old school Hero, but certainly within the concept of the skill.  It just represents someone with astoundingly great stealth or an amazing effort doing things beyond the believable.

If you're going to set your campaign in Medieval England, you may find one of the calendars here useful.
 
Just for grins and giggles, you can find the phases of the Moon here. Why? Because werewolves, that's why.

The 13th century had the Mongol invasions, so it would be an opportunity for lots of adventure and fighting. Almost like a medieval world war, I suppose. As I recall, they went on for a couple of generations before the Turks managed to repel them.
 
I also find the politics of Italian city-states to have lots of potential. Plotting, scheming and knives in the dark.
 
Like others have said, there’s always fun with Vikings. I would go for an older era for this. Perhaps 7th or 8th century.

Interesting.  What's next, another sequel to Freedom Force? 

Indeed it does. But even the legendary Welsh sources are very thin in detail, and would require much elaboration to use in a RPG context. The actual historical existence of a real person inspiring the legend is highly doubtful. And that legend includes practically none of the iconic elements of what most people consider Arthuriana.

Absolutely. My only request, outside of them being in good resolution, is that the trade dress not be as forefront as a cover is. In some cases that's fine, but that Perez 5th ed Champions cover? I would love to have it as a "virgin" image as they say in the comics field.

Right, if it could go either way, give it to the player character.  If they probably wouldn't make it, let them just barely pull it off, gripping to the edge of the building with their fingernails.  Use a DEX or appropriate roll to get up safely.  This is HERO games, not chump games like real life where you'll probably fail and die.

I would love to have a lot of the old Hero covers as posters; Justice Inc, Danger International, Fantasy Hero (any of the editions), Lands of Mystery, Champions 4th edition as you say, there's been so many great ones.

Right, if it could go either way, give it to the player character.  If they probably wouldn't make it, let them just barely pull it off, gripping to the edge of the building with their fingernails.  Use a DEX or appropriate roll to get up safely.  This is HERO games, not chump games like real life where you'll probably fail and die.

Right, if it could go either way, give it to the player character.  If they probably wouldn't make it, let them just barely pull it off, gripping to the edge of the building with their fingernails.  Use a DEX or appropriate roll to get up safely.  This is HERO games, not chump games like real life where you'll probably fail and die.

The answer is about 0.65 seconds. A SPD 6 character running at 40m goes 40m in 2 seconds.  So would go 13m.
 
This will vary with running and SPD of each character in working out how far they move in 0.65 seconds....but as Christopher says, we are not doing physics, we are playing a game.
 
I would fudge towards reasonable feats for heroic purposes, possibly giving harder rolls the bigger the stretch being asked by the player.

I wouldn't say that the rules have gotten more complicated, they've just gotten really specific and try to cover every contingency rather than leaving it up to the GM.  I noticed after 6th came out I was looking stuff up in the book all the time instead of just winging it -- and finding I was almost always doing it according to Hoyle just from experience and common sense.

I just want to note that under the 6E AVAD rules, you can also have exotic-defense Normal Damage attacks with that Advantage which will do unimpeded BODY to a target without that Defense. It just won't do as much as a comparable Killing Attack on average, but will do more STUN.
 
Being able to do BODY damage with AVAD is an additional +1 Advantage. And the price of AVAD goes up the more exotic the Defense is. So rather than starting an arms race by creating something overpowered, the Advantage is self-limiting in that it provides diminishing returns the rarer the Defense against it is.

As a more specific answer to this question; Flash does not deal any body damage, its not actually using the damage rules at all, it has a separate mechanic which uses the normal damage rules to count body, but only to determine the effect.  Its like flipping a coin doesn't actually involve any payment or wealth, its just a device to determine an outcome.

There was a one-shot my friend ran for us when we were all home from college on winter break. The antagonist in question was Captain Heroic™! He had Superman-esque powers: brick, flight, super senses, a couple of ranged attacks, etc. He just showed up in town one day and started doing good deeds.
 
The catch: there was a fee schedule attached.
Help an old lady cross the street: $5 Get a cat out of a tree: $20 Rescue people from a burning building: $50 per person Stop a robbery: $500 (Mom and Pop store) up to $10,000 (large chain bank) Fight a team of supervillains: $5,000-$50,000 per villain ...and so on. He even had a toll-free help line: 1-800-HEROIC-1.
 
It was annoying, but as he and his well-dressed publicist pointed out, there was nothing legally or ethically improper about it. We had no real reason to shut him down.
 
Until we discovered that he was using his powers to cause a lot of these problems. For example, using his heat vision to start an apartment building fire, hiring villains (through shell companies) to rob banks or kidnap the mayor, things like that.
 
It was a hard final fight, but it was incredibly satisfying to take that guy down.