zslane

Fingers and toes crossed!

One small issue with higher starting point totals is that you have a greater chance for attack/defense disparity since the range of potential values is greater. With lower point totals, starting attacks and defenses tend to settle towards a median value that makes an attack on the upper end not so devastating against defenses on the lower end. Higher point totals also seem to entice players to create more complex builds with more powers on the sheet, which makes combat take longer (it is an odd phenomenon, but a very real one nonetheless). Full disclosure: I have always found the point system a vital element of the game. I am not likely to find much in common with players who regard the point system as unimportant.

Standard superheroes went from being 250 point characters to 350 point characters with the advent of 5th edition, at least according to published point guidelines. These guidelines establish the expected norms, reflected in villain and other NPC supplements. And these norms are embraced by players, largely out of necessity as GMs pit published villains against them (or build their own villains according to the inflated "official" campaign standards found in the rulebook). I can find no compelling cause for the 100-point(!) jump between 4th and 5th editions; the restructuring of characteristics costs had not yet occurred. But this 100-point inflation simply carried over into the 6th edition, and when coupled with the new costs for things like secondary characteristics, you end up with an additional, nominal increase of 50 points just to maintain feature parity. The result is 400 point "Standard" superheroes in 6e. So you see, from what I can tell, the problem began with 5e and was simply propagated to 6e without much scrutiny or justification.

I agree completely with Christopher. Those Characteristic levels quoted for earlier editions is what I am used to and nobody that I played with ever felt non-superheroic (except maybe for Endurance depletion). I am quite frankly puzzled by the point inflation that has creeped into the game in the last two editions. Back in the 2nd edition era, having a Speed higher than 6 was often undesirable because End costs for everything were twice as high and your character would be completely winded before the first post-segment 12 Recovery came around. And yet, when End costs were cut in half for 4th edition, people didn't suddenly build characters with 8 Speed. Instead they kept 2nd ed-scale builds and enjoyed the wonders of fighting at full power for more than a single Turn. The change to baseline Endurance costs (which included the simpler +1/2, +1 Reduced Endurance schema) was probably the single most significant (and most welcome) change made by the 4th ed rules. Everything else ever done to the system is small potatoes by comparison, at least in my view. Any system changes that have since created the need for 400-pt starting superheroes with 28 Dexes and 7 Speeds are highly dubious to me.

I think the candidate for Social Interaction Most Similar to Combat would be the kind of interaction covered by Persuade Skill(s). I think the Mind Control power gives us some hints as to ways we might elaborate upon a simple Persuade skill roll. Even things like Interrogation, Negotiation, and Seduction are ultimately forms of persuasion. You are persuading someone to part with information, goods, or their heart. All the same elements found in the Mind Control rules are at work during mundane persuasion campaigns. However, chances are you're going to have to add some sort of new resource to measure the compliance of the target over time. More bookkeeping, yay!

I'm curious what a detailed simulation model for social interaction would be. Combat is largely driven by the underlying physics of physical force and resistance (which can appear in a dizzying array of forms, especially in a superhero or fantasy context). It is an inherently complex activity with lots at stake (often your character's very life!). Most social interaction is not, which is why nobody bothers to construct more complex/detailed mechanics for it.

Do we really need rules to simulate social interaction? Most of us have an innate sense of how to handle that, otherwise I don't think we'd be involved in a hobby called roleplaying...

I'm assuming they don't want to create marketplace confusion as to what constitutes the official rules. CC completely supplants the 6E1/6E2 books and represents the current state of the rules. For those who already own the hardcover books, Champions Complete is not exactly complete. However, anything in 6E1/6E2 that isn't in CC is considered deprecated and, ostensibly, "unofficial" now. And yet, the logo on all the covers say "Sixth Edition," so you can imagine how confusing that would be to someone who doesn't know the convoluted history of the system. Imagine how upset a new buyer would be if they spent money on softcover versions of 6E1/6E2 only to find that those rules aren't the current rules anymore.

Yeah, but there may be character/device concepts for which that is entirely appropriate.

Armor Piercing isn't quite the same as Find Weakness since it can't be used repeatedly to cumulatively halve a target's defenses. Why was FW removed from the game?

I would love to see an all-new TH that brings the T5 state of the Third Imperium to the 6e Hero System. I even have a prototype cover for such a book worked out in Illustrator... But I realize that licensing costs and the miniscule size of the potential TH market make that a virtual impossibility.

Well, a bug is "only an sfx" if you intend to ignore all the essential details surrounding the fact that it is, well, a bug. Like, you don't intend for it to move (independently) like a bug, or be squishable like a bug, etc. But if you do intend for the spell to bring an actual bug into existance that then troddles off to deliver a message, I think Summon is the most sensible way to handle it.

Without question. And, in fact, I would argue that the presentation of the Hero System since 5e has suffered from excessive attention to minutiae, making it exceedingly difficult to extract out the essentials. I feel that is a separate issue, however. In my view, the Disadvantage system as a system is just fine the way it is (note that I am not speaking about the Complication system now because I feel that its departure from dice-roll-based frequency determination led to some of the usage ambiguities you allude to). No matter how the rulebooks manage to obfuscate Disadvantages, the underlying system itself is still a very sound one, IMO. The biggest question is that of how to properly make use of that system in your own games. But that is the same issue the entire game system carries with it (as does pretty much every point-buy system that exhibits any degree of flexibility). Regardless of what the rulebooks say (or don't say) on the matter, it is still up to you, the GM, to police player character designs so they don't pose problems, be they problems of concept, power level, or plot integration. The rulebooks can't possibly know how you like to run your campaign, or what you find overwhelming as a GM. Only you know how you want Complications to function in your game. By the same token, however, I happen to feel that the complexity of the game can be managed quite well without resorting to altering the fundamental nature of the game's subsystems. And I've rarely encountered a group of D&D players that didn't spend all their time at the table hyper-focused on killing things and taking their stuff. That doesn't mean that is how I intend to run a D&D game of my own should the opportunity ever arise.

That's a nifty web page! It's a shame there's no way get those 8 supplemental PDFs from ComStar Games anymore.

Agreed. I wasn't envisioning your typical "write up the Follower as a character" approach; rather I envisioned using Follower purely in the spirit of design-for-effect. Basically, I as GM would just assume that a message-carrying scorpion can be built on 25 points, tell the mage that this is a 5-point spell (maybe less if loaded up with the usual spellcasting limitations of gestures, etc.), and just let the concept of the spell take care of all the details in play. There's really nothing to write up here aside from "Scorpion Messenger, 5 points".

ghost-angel said: "I would remove Points from Complications completely, but not Complications. Instead those need to be turned into 'Plot Complications' and a player will choose 2-5 items they would like to see brought up in the story by the GM."

I dunno...I might have built these bugs as Followers... I don't like the laundry list of Modifiers that must be loaded up on Mind Scan to account for all the ways a physical bug presents complications in the use of the spell. A bug can't cost more than the minimum (5 pts?) as a Follower, and making it capable of delivering a message through "magical speech" can't make it much more costly than that (in fact, a 5-point bug Follower built with 25 CP is probably plenty). IMO, the only part of this spell that needs (or should be) defined by the sfx is its ability to "speak" the message when it reaches the recipient. Eveything else about it should just be handled as a bug that moves from one location to another. Unless there is something else about these bugs the OP isn't telling us.

Christopher Taylor is your best friend in situations like this. He is real good at breaking the system down for newbies. I would avoid his character designs though; they are way over-engineered, IMO, but that's a common symptom of someone who knows the game system perhaps a little too well. ;-) I feel a little sorry for newbies trying to learn the Hero System today. Many of them have the same rpg experiences I had before I first read the Champions rulebook, but they are having far more difficulty than I ever did. I feel the main reason for that is the escalation of complexity that began with 5e. Back in its 2nd edition days, the game was quite a bit simpler. Characters were built on half as many points and the example heroes and villains were easy to study and digest. I almost feel compelled to tell newbies to start with 2nd edition, then move on to 4th edition. Transitioning someday to 6e is entirely optional, in my view, since there is little benefit in doing so unless you play in a veteran group that has long-standing bones to pick with 5e. So I guess my best advice is to find a used copy of 4th edition on eBay and learn the fundamentals from that. Don't be surprised, though, if you never find a reason or need to use any other edition. As an aside, did Champions Complete forget to include the usual page on typical point totals for different types of characters (Normal, Competent Normal, Talented Normal, Hero, Super Hero, Cosmic Hero, etc.) styles of campaigns?

A GM can also say "Give me 3 or 4 solid Disadvantages and take whatever points they grant you, be it 30 or 100." Disadvantages are supposed to help drive the character's story, not to help meet some arbitrary point threshold. It is part of a GM's job to see to it that players understand how to use the system properly. If they are just taking Disads to add points to their total, then that's a player problem, not a system problem. This problem is not unique to the Hero System, though, nor is it a product of it being point-based. Virtually every RPG that has ever adopted a Powers/Disads system (e.g., Storyteller calls them Virtues/Flaws, etc.) wrestles with this problem. And that's because at the end of the day, players are good at finding exploits in any system--the more flexible the system, the more exploits there are to find. It is always up to the GM to reign that in and make the system work as intended despite player's best efforts to min/max the hell out of it. Again, the important thing here, as I see it, is to recognize that this isn't a system problem. It's a player problem. Changing the system (by making it non-point-based) is treating the wrong disease.

Do you intend for the time-to-delivery to be based on the actual movement speed and capabilities of a bug or scorpion? And why is the word "speaks" in quotes? I know that bugs can't talk, so what do you imagine happens when the bug arrives at its recipient? Is the intention that the bug can be squished, eaten (by predators), lost in weather, etc?

It seems to me that the problems of taking Complications only to fill a point deficit and Complications taken that don't ever come up in play are ones easily managed by the GM. After all, Complications that don't hinder a character aren't worth any points. It is up to the GM to assess whether any particular set of Complications exceeds his ability to effectively employ them in play. It is also up to the GM to assess whether or not a set of Complications fit well within a character's concept (and aren't just generic point grabs). A GM who can't do these things probably isn't equipped to "work together with the player" to figure out a new, more vague version of the Complication system either. The idea behind the Disadvantage system was that they were always optional. But I think the inevitable "moar powrz r better" mentality sets in and everyone sees the maximum allowable total CP as absolutely necessary for survival. Players feel forced to take questionable Complications in order to reach the point cap. But maybe instead of changing the inherent nature of Complications (a points reward for adding weaknesses to your character, which is actually a brilliant mechanic), try changing the campaign culture so that not having any Complications whatsoever is the norm, and that taking Complications (in order to have more points to play with) will have a significant impact on them during play. The problem, as I see it, isn't with the way Complications work right now, but with the way they are typically (mis)used by GMs and players. Any misused mechanic can be seen as a flawed mechanic, but it would be a mistake, I think, to change the wrong thing (the mechanic).

I suppose if thinking about it at all constitutes overthinking it, then I am definitely guilty as charged. The thing is, I have yet to hear an explanation for this bullet power that makes any sense to me whatsoever. A good Hero System rule of thumb: Describe what a power is doing in the game world (in a way that makes sense without resorting to handwavium), and the proper mechanics will follow naturally from that description. A huge clue that a power has no strong concept--if indeed it has one at all--is when the GM struggles to find appropriate mechanics to handle a situation that arises during play. I guarantee you that no Champions GM I've ever played with would have allowed a "regular" bullet (or the Super Act of firing one) to be defined as a Drain vs. Force Field without a really good explanation for the sfx.

How many pdf supplements were there? What were they, exactly?

I'd love to get my hands on a set, but they seem to be like Bigfoot. People believe they exist, and they've seen photos, but nobody has come into direct contact with them... The loss of the license also means there'll never be an updated 6e version.

Has anyone here ever seen the two Traveller Hero volumes in the flesh, so to speak? How many were printed?