dialNforNinja

If you're shopping opinions:
 
Way back when, we used to do Combiners during our attempt at Transformers on the Champions engine (don't ask how it went.  I mean, mechanically, it went _great_.  but it was the very first thing we attempted under 4e (Duplication was new to us with that book), and a lot of the 4e stuff -- well, we were too excited to _use_ the new differences to actually _learn_ the differences, and it got all whompus-jawed in a hurry)      by building the big, put-together version first, then using Duplication (duplicates are less powerful and different, obviously) and limitations on the powers of the "base robot"  that were not available to him while duplicated:  a couple levels of Growth, the big monster attack power (whatever that happened to be), etc.
 
you might consider going that route.  It was a pretty clean build-out that way.
 
 

Well, you have just described exactly the business model that has led Hero from being the top of the of Superhero games list to being functionally out of print. 
 
It is not Pathfinder that has amazingly somehow found a method to sell adventures.  Every single successful RPG, and by successful I mean actually selling books, has invested in well crafted adventures/campaigns.  They are not throwing out dozens of half-baked one sessions.  No, they are putting out  one or two well crafted campaigns (6-12 chapters/adventures) a year.  D&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, Star Trek Adventures, Star Wars and Shadowrun is just a short list of the lines currently succeeding at this.  D&D is the actual example to use.  They started with free league adventures, and then they changed to "buy and run one of our adventure books on league night".  And it took off.  The FLGS has a regularly scheduled league night and coordinates GM's, the biggest issue is enough GM's.  There are new "as in I have never played D&D ever" players every league night and they always buy the Players Handbook and at least one Adventure book. 
 
Yes, the concept of using established groups to introduce individual new players to the game is neat.  But when the established groups that play Hero are virtually extinct, it is still the same loosing strategy that was adopted in the late 90's.  
 
What Hero needs in 2019 is a new strategy aimed at "how to get new players using just the books by themselves" and "how to get Hero back into the spotlight so that it is on the FLGS shelf".
 
1) the rules are fine.  DO NOT waste effort on yet another ruleset.
2) DO add a chapter(s) to the rulebook that contain an adventure with pregens to walk new GM's and players thru the process.
3) Publish at least one starter campaign, no end of the world mega villain stuff.  Instead a local in city crime spree or revenge on the city by a local master villain/mastermind.  Something that can be resolved by a new team based on standard supers build points.  
4) Tap into the fan-base and allow them to create and sell adventures using something similar to D&D's DM's Guild and Chaosium's Miskatonic Repository.  These allow fans to publish adventures and supplementary material and charge a price of which the company gets a cut, while maintaining control by limiting where they can be sold. 
5) Establish some form of League Play.  Either a prebuilt campaign adventure like D&D does or a campaign frame released in parts like STA. 
 
The point is the current strategy (95ish till present) has failed. 
A new strategy needs to be formulated and in this case we have a plethora of successful examples to emulate.
 

If (and it might not be; I may have missed the actual thrust here) the point is to simplify or reduce the size of the rules book(s), this apparently can't happen.
 
While I personally (this often-overlooked term is a word that indicates I'm offering an opinion and not just trying to stir up hate and discontent that leads to a thread-derailing argument of hurt feelings and wounded pride) think that a considerable amount of the rules bloat came from a shift in attitude of the rules themselves.  Someone else on these boards stated it more concisely than I could have:  the rules have gone from "permissive" to "restrictive."  That is, once upon a time, powers and skills and such included whatever you expected them to include-- put another way, whatever you and your group / GM expected them to.   Then came the creep-in of "NO!"  Bits and pieces were slowly pulled out and teased apart and suddenly became advantages and adders and modifiers, all of which had to be explained, costed, and demonstrated.   One small example is "Change Orientation" for Teleport.  Used to be assumed, now it costs money.  A recently-discussed second option is "Rapid" for perception.  What was once just a schtick now costs points, and from that same recent discussion, it seems like it can cost a hell of a lot of them for what, if actually role-played to meet the description, would absolutely wreck everyone else's good time in addition to being totally impossible to do.   (we don't make people with flight by life support vs cold to fly higher than a kilometer or so, but we _do_ make speedsters pay for the ability to see where they're going?!  Crap; I shouldn't have said that.  Edition 7 will now include "able to survive the use of your power" as a separate element for half the powers now....)
 
Once upon a time, you assumed things like "can see where he's going" and "can fly at least 3km up because there's air for him to breathe there" were already included (and you didn't bother with math about the energy expenditures for parabolic travel versus plowing flat over the ground at a height of ten meters, nor the loss of distance traveled in the same time between the two techniques.   That'll have to wait for either 7e or APG 9 or wherever it is we decide additional complexity should go.)
 
 
 
Agreed, but given the creep toward restrictive build rules -- i.e., "No; not unless you also buy this and this and this and this, (which made the 5e out-of-nowhere inclusion of "Growth Momentum" really glaring.  All other editions recognized that there was no inherent momentum in "I get bigger," and characters wanting it built it as a separate attack (or extra damage) with "Growth Momentum" as a separate attack.  I didn't mind the inclusion of it, but it seemed to weird next to new rules that were pulling stuff _out_ of "this power comes with" and turning it into "costs extra.")  it won't work.  If you are going to design a rules set that requires those options to build what the player envisions, then you are going to have to actually present those options.
 
Now it might seem that I'm being really hard on the new overall attitude of the rules, but I'm _not_.  I'm pointing out one of the main reasons that the rules _are_ so big and _why_ there are so many options presented.
 
Here's the edge you have to walk to write a set  of rules for this game:
 
Keep it short and brief.  Okay, one paragraph each for powers.  Let's be kind and say "no more than three paragraphs each for powers."   If you want to limit the size of those paragraphs to less than a page each, you'll have to include "not written by a lawyer" or possibly even specify "must be written by a mathematician  (Why is that word so hard to type?!!!)."   I can't _fully_ endorse either of those things, though:  lawyers are trained for keen and specific use of verbiage, and tend to be careful about selecting their words and ensuring that contradictions either don't exist or are well-explained (which leads to the verbosity, of course, but now we know why that's not always bad) and I don't know of anything I've read written by a mathematician (I am so done typing that word!  We're going back to AMG: amazing math guy), but if playing with numbers is your real joy, well there are likely to be great and lengthy sessions of tear-out and build-in of the various elements to seek the mythical "perfect balance" between Swimming and  Ranged Killing Attack. I can't see that _not_ ending up with more and lengthier "power does include this, but if you want any of the following sixty-two elements, you must by the appropriate advantages, so let's explain them, too."
 
 
Now I started out saying that this shift in the attitude of permissive / restrictive rules is _part_ of the bloat.
 
 
The rest of it is us.
 
You heard me:  It's us.  The players.  We _had_ the very thing we're sitting here crying about not having.  First edition was 56 pages start to finish (+10 if you add the covers and eight character sheets).  2e was eighty pages (which included a selection of villains to get off to a quick start).  3e was 96 pages (boxed set) and had _no_ character sheet (it was printed on the rear cover of the separate 40=page Campaign Book in the boxed set).
 
Third edition gained ever more rules spread through supplements, adventures, etc, all of which were specific to situations presented in those supplements and adventures and eventually even entirely new games build using Champions rules with custom tweaks for the game being presented.
 
4e, as we all know, was little more than gathering _all_ that material in one place.  All of it from all the supplements and previous editions and hammering it all into one cohesive rules set that would cover _everything_.  You would never need another rules set again, because it was all here.   The the genre books came out and totally wrecked that idea:  Here, have new characteristics!  Have new Talents and Skills!  Have new modifiers for other powers!  Have some Kung Phooey!
 
5e was lather, rinse, repeat, meaning that it had the ground work of 6e already laid in.....
 
 
So why this constant growth?
 
 
Us.  We weren't happy with what we had.  We had questions.  We had problems.  We didn't want to answer all of them ourselves.   We have this super-anal fetish to make sure we're doing our thing exactly the same way someone else is doing their thing (or vice-versa).  We might be having the time of our lives, but we're not happy until we know it's a book-legal time of our lives.  (Yes; I know every time someone mentions this inherent need to be book legal, we pay great homage to the idea that "the game is yours!  Change it how you want!"  Then we run off to some other thread to make sure it's all nice and book legal. )
 
 
There were _so many_ great points you raised, and I wanted to address so many more, but I have _got_ to get going, so if I may simply offer a poor wrap-up of what I've started  (I _am_ sorry to lurch off like this, but the pop-up says Hugh has replied, and it made me glance at the time, and I really have to be somewhere in just a few minutes):
 
 
We wanted more rules.  Some people figured out their own vehicle rules, for example.  Others didn't.  Others _wouldn't_, and demanded to know how to do that "officially."   
 
We ran into situations we weren't sure how to handle.  We wanted rules for that.  We developed the habit of building the entire world in HERO stats (what was the DEF of Granny's screen porch again?  Doesn't it take x4 BOD from fire-based attacks?)
 
We _wanted_ rules.  We asked for them.  We begged for them, and lamented the lack of new ones all through the long years of 4e when everything HERO-related stopped, and we turned to the internet and our fellow fans for new ideas.  We wanted to hard limits to help the different kinds of players work well at the same tables.  We wanted to be able to mathematically simulate (and to price in character points) every single aspect of the world we were building, and wanted it all to be precisely relevant tot he world in which we live.  Hell, I'm not claiming I'm exempt!  I _love_ building stuff in HERO terms!  
 
We just wanted lots and lots of rules.
 
 
Well now we've got them.  
 
 
Yet look at the number of "how do I...?" threads.  There are still issues that are not clear.  There are still problems.  Yes; I personally think the restrictiveness creeping into the massive rules tomes is part of that problem, but I also don't see a solution in simply doing away with it and stating "Okay, just decide that a power features all its elements automatically, and take Limitations on any of them you don't want in your build."  Honestly, either way still gives advantage to the clever or the highly-motivated.
 
Obviously simpler rules ins't the answer:  I don't think the PDFs of 1, 2, or 3e in the HERO store are selling like hotcakes.  I'm pretty sure even Sidekick isn't doing anything appreciable, nor even HERO Basic (Sidekick 6e, dammit!    )
 
Look also at the fact that in the subsequent books, bloat wasn't just in the build rules.  It wasn't just in the breaking things rules.  It wasn't just in combat or movement.
 
There was more and more bloat in the "tell me about the world I'm going to be playing in" sections, too.   People have _always_ wanted playable-out-of-the-box worlds.  People have _always_ wanted pre-build adventures.   Given the amount of time it takes to create from whole-cloth in the new rules (much, much more to select from when you're building _anything_, after all), people need them more than ever.
 
 
But not everyone.  Not at this point.  Most of us have game worlds and game groups with long-established histories at this point.  Let's face it:  new players aren't happening as fast as the old ones are dying off.   There's not a big enough market to support it anymore.
 
 
So let's try this:
 
Fan-built adventures.   Post 'em here.  Co-operate and build one together.   Get with Jason and see if you can toss them into the store: a buck a piece, even.   I won't lie:  I've got three groups I have to run, and a  job  that eats up over 70 hours a week.  I'd buy even a passable adventure in a heartbeat.  As much as it shames me to say it, I've been recycling from group to group for over a year now, simply because I don't have the time to come up with new stuff like I used to.
Now I really, really have to go.  I wish I could have addressed more, but such is life.
 

We the grognards often note the complexity of Hero is largely front-loaded to character creation, and this is true.  So why does every edition present character creation first, in all its detailed glory?  What if, just spitballing and looking at the ToC for 6e, the rulebook were restructured/reordered to present:


 
-          The Introduction, more or less as is

-          Chapter 1 - Character Creation Basics, but move Templates later, and add

o   Basics of Characteristics (the chart on V1 p 40, and no more than a quarter page on what each stat does, very basically

o   Basics of Skills, limited to the basics of skill rolls, the tables from V1 p 56, p 58 and p 61.

o   The basics of Perks, Talents and Powers, including the tables on V1 p 98, p 103 (Fringe Benefits; maybe merged with the table on p 98), p 108, and combining the Powers table on p 134 expanded with the lists in the various sections that follow, in the format of p 162-163 (with duration, target, etc.) incorporating a brief, 2 line max, description of what each one does, probably derived from the Summary Table on p 163-164.  Basic explanations of each power type (e.g “Adjustment” and “Special) and the headers (e.g. Duration and Range).  Mention Advantages, Limitations and Frameworks, but no details provided.  Stress that the use of these elements varies depending on the game itself, so the reader should not get hung up on the details at this stage.

o   The basics of Complications, stressing their game function, and the flexibility of their design (e.g first, think about your character’s challenges and flaws in non-game terms).  The table on v1, p 416 and p 418 is likely enough detail for the specific complications.

This is all the meat they need for character creation up front – a nice overview.


 
-          Chapter 2 – Sample Characters:  Now let’s put in some sample characters, maybe even all of the ones at the back.  One or two could be detailed character design discussions (like Randall irons, or the 1e Crusader and Starburst; highlight various genres and include several from one, for reasons seen below, and include some mook sheets – maybe with standard stats and a stat/equipment block for fantasy, modern day/supers, Sci Fi and the animals from V2 Ch 6.

 

-          Chapter 3 – Entering Combat:  OK, now let’s figure out how to play the game.  We are done with Volume 1 for now.  Move into V2 with a somewhat stripped-down version of Chapter 1, Entering Combat.  Discuss how the various senses, and PER rolls in general, work, but pull some details for the more detailed Character Creation sections (e.g. we don’t need the use of Adjustment Powers to affect Senses here, no toolkitting, no optional rules, mounts and vehicles get saved for later).


 
-          Chapter 4: Combat takes a lot of the current v2, ch 2, and sets out how combat works.  Strip out optional rules (e.g. encumbrance) and unusual situations (e.g. environmental situations).  Maybe this also includes combat maneuvers and martial arts maneuvers (V2, Ch 3).  Keep most of this, but relegate corner cases, and maybe some really challenging aspects (Multiple Attacks, say, but explain combined attacks) to later discussion.  Merge combat and optional maneuvers – must identify the “Optional” ones.  Depending on length, maneuvers or just Martial Arts, could get their own chapters,


 
-          Chapter 5:  Damage and its effects is largely V2, ch 4, but pull all the Optional and Other Effects stuff, other than maybe knockdown and knockback.


 
-          Chapter 6 – Other Combat Rules and Effects, gets pulled from V2, Ch 5, with some stuff relegated to “complex/advanced (like crushing damage, dragging, disguising damage).  This covers things like inability to perceive the opponent, recovery, endurance and PRE attacks.  Maybe we even relegate Pushing to an optional rule.


 
-          Chapter 7 – Equipment would cover weapons and armor, but leave out  automatons, computers, vehicles and bases.


 
-          Chapter 8 – BRING IT ON HOME – now we provide a detailed sample combat, or several, using the genre for which we have at least a couple of example heroes and one example adversary from Ch 2, and give the Bad Guy some minions from Ch 2.


 
And that becomes the Basic Rules.  To stick with the “Complete in Two Volumes” theory, Volume 2 has the Advanced and Optional rules, including:


 
-          GameMastering (v2, Chapter 9)

-          Hero System Genre by Genre (v2, Ch 😎

-          All the details we held off on for character creation, including power frameworks.  We make a real point here of identifying which sections are more important for which genres, and how they are typically used in those genres, or that is part of Genre by Genre.

-          Advanced Combat Rules, including detail pulled from the info provided in Vol 1, the optional rules, the environment rules, etc.

-          Advanced Equipment – automatons, computers, vehicles, bases.

-          V2, Ch 10 – Changing the System - the Toolkitting stuff can go in each section, or in here.


 
This would not mitigate the need for “easy play” options, like  pre-fab characters and scenarios.  Publish an Adenture Path-like structure for a couple of genres, with pre-fab characters starting from the genre’s sample characters in the main rules.  But by focusing Vol 1 on “how to play” instead of “how to build anything you could possibly imagine”, we would front load the basics, instead of front loading the complexities and advanced options.

Hero has had MANY rewrites and rulebooks.  In addition to the big core books they had the Sidekicks and Basic Rulebooks which were streamlined books of 128 or 138 pages.  Champions Complete is yet ANOTHER basic rewrite for only minor changes. 
 
The reason that hero is on basic life support and giving up the ghost fast is that it was decided in the past (4th or 5th?) to not provide any kind of campaigns or adventures.  Real gamers don't use them and similar tripe.  Sure, I still believe the 5th edition and 6th edition genre books are fantastic sources for designing worlds/campaigns.  As are the setting books.  But none of those products address the HUGE massively glaring missing part of the game.  Literally every successful RPG on the market has it, except Hero.  
 
PLAYABLE Adventures and Campaigns. 
 
Yes, I know.  The microscopically tiny remaining gamers that are even aware of Hero insist they "would never use prebuilt".  But it is 2019 and the vast majority of gamers simply do not have time to built stuff.  That is why D&D packs the house.  Many of the people I know that play it don't even like D&D.  But it is one of the only games that they can actually play, as in sit at a table and actually chunk dice. 
 
Hero has never been hard to play. 
It has never been overly hard to design characters providing the person doing it has a basic imagination.
 
What has been made into a overwhelmingly daunting task is the requirement for the GM to design everything from practically scratch.
 
Hero does not need Champions Now, Champions Later or Champions Counter Clockwise. 
What it needs is the minimum support for the existing line.
Champions Complete is the current version.
Now we need a few STARTER adventures suitable for initial build characters and at least one campaign to help new GM's with a practical and PLAYABLE example of a superworld. 
 
The myth that people do not buy or play adventures or campaigns may have been true years ago.  But they are majority of product that moves in the here and now. 
 
I feel like we are a group of old curmudgeons out in the stable hammering out horse shoes because "Dag-nab-it, them there horseless carriages will never catch on".

I did not realize that Lucha Libre Hero was a complete game unto itself. Are there other 5e Hero books in this vein?

There are some 3rd edition books like Danger International and Western Hero I think should be redone for 6th.  Yes, Dark Champions kind of covers DI, but DI was specifically about spies and mercenaries with a specific flair of James Bond kind of approach, and I think its a niche that is still unfilled.

I like your player's concept. I agree with you, VPP does seem like the best route. I would also make the time to switch something that needs to be done out of combat.
 
I would sit down with the player before hand and express my concern that the concept has the potential of overshadowing the other PCs and ask them what things we could do to make sure that everyone still had fun. I would come to the table with some ideas, but ultimately I want the player to choose to self-limit so they have buy-in on what they are playing. Treating players with respect and dignity FTW.

Wait, Lucha Libre Hero? Really?
 
That's awesome. And not just because I've always wanted a story where a Luchadore beats up Bane and takes his mask for shaming the spirit of Lucha (he uses guns, and both uses and sells drugs) and that's why Nolanverse Bane has that goofy fang-face instead of looking like the comics and animated versions.

I agree with those saying VPP; it's what it was designed for.
 
With a little bit of customization to how/when powers can be "switched out"; as the default assumes you have every power imaginable and that switching is for individual powers that are 'active' in the Pool. An additional "can only choose from the list in the book" on the Framework itself at, perhaps -1/2, would restrict the player to a given Suite of Powers at a time. Then the standard limitations of how often an individual Power can be brought into the active Pool based on how you see any given Book being used (is switching out powers as simple as turning the page? probably as a 0 Phase Action, or does the character have to find the right page, and quickly read it's instructions (1/2 to Full Phase) actions...

I think the easiest way would be with a VPP. I could have each book just contain a selection of powers and a side effect of the VPP being that they can only use those powers unless they swap out.
 
This was how the concept was relayed to me: 
 
"Each book would have some sort of a theme, and the powers available within would vary. So, for instance, I could have a book inspired by a desert traveller which would grant me some skill bonuses, survival powers and maybe some fire powers. Another one could be about archeology and give me a lot more skill bonuses. Maybe a warrior manual would give me martial arts."

To keep it balanced with the other characters, I don't think I'd allow more than a single book's powers to be accessible at once. I'd also probably have it so some in-game time would need to pass to swap them out, making choosing the one you want to use have some weight instead of being able to continually swap around powers in combat. It will also make my life easier as the GM!

Yeah one of the speedster tricks I came up with on my last hero I've played was Stooge Slap (line effect attack); he runs up and back, smacking everyone in the line

You are absolutely correct, Sir.  (unless of course, my own understanding and yours are flawed in precisely the same way).  This, I suspect, is why we refer to "when can act" as "Phases" as opposed to Segments.  "Phase 12" means that your action _begins_ on Segment 12, and runs until the start of your next "Phase."  If this weren't the model, it would not be possible to react to something that happened on Segment 2 by "aborting" to another action: if you were done acting at the end of the Segment, you would not still be "maneuvering" about to make that call.
 
Or that's how I understand it.  I seem to recall numerous suggestions over the years to model movement precisely this way to (and I hate this as a concept) "make it easier for new people to learn."  I don't hate Segmented Movement-- I use it myself for really, really fast things, but the idea of teaching someone the _wrong_ rules to make it easier to learn the right ones:  Okay, great!  Six sessions in, and you've got a fantastic grasp of the wrong rules.  Now forget all that, and here's a new set of rules!"   yeah.  That'd charm the Hell out of me, I assure you....
 
But enough of that.
 
 
 
Well if it helps, I still use (many, many copies of) a thirty-seven-year-old rulebook.  I was totally turned off by the cover of 3e (that logo!  Oh my God!  And that nauseating color scheme!  The art was amazing, but what they did to it when the colorist got hold of it!  And it introduced the layout that would become the 4e layout, and I never warmed up to it.  It felt too....   uppity.....), so I never upgraded.  I crib a bit here and there, but nothing much past 4e, and not much of that.  When 5e came along-- well, we'd been playing for nearly 30 years.  We had enough house rules that we didn't really need someone else's.  Our gaps were filled in, so we didn't do more than read that.  Etc.
 
What I'm taking way too much time to say is that there's nothing _new_ in what I'm saying.     I don't use any new rules.  Honestly, I try really hard to stay out of these "How do I build" or "let's pull apart the rules" type threads simply because I'm the least qualified (and interested) when it comes to the newer editions.
 
But I think you've got it together, as far as the ideal way to construct a character:  Look at what happens _first_, then figure out how to model it.  Honestly, the only thing I could suggest further is to totally ignore the special effect-- you know, while keeping it in mind.     That's not as obtuse as it sounds:  what I'm getting is that sometimes there are ideas or concepts that are harder to get your head around just which part is SFX and which isn't.  Speedsters are one of them, simply because it's so _obvious_ that their power is _speed_.  So you start to think "how would I do this with speed?" or "What's the best way to show that I can do this because I have speed?"
 
Not far enough.  Speed is nothing but SFX.  As a half-crocked "proof" of that:  a character has a movement of 60".  if it's running, it's speed.  If it's flying, it's speed.  If it's T-port, it's just distance, as T-port is, game-wise, "instant."  He didn't _move_ there per se; he just _got_ there.  But even then, Running can be "running," or it can be Limited Flight or very bizarre Swimming or even "tunneling, only through the air, and only when feet are touching a surface."  Yes, it would take a jackass to do that to the GM, but it's-- scratch that.  I don't think Tunneling is movement since Steve took over.  I think it's just "really fast lock picking" now.  .  Or, if you're just dying to burn points, perhaps it's "Shrinking: usable as attack, the planet earth and everything on it. Personal immunity."  Once the planet shrinks, he takes one or two steps, and re-inflates the planet.  if he's only got 2" of movement and a SPD of 2, but can cross a continent that way, is it speed?
 
Speed is just another special effect.
 
 
it's a matter of removing _everything_ from your idea: get to the bare-bones, which is nothing more than the effect that the character has on the world and those people in it.  "He can perceive at such a rate as to make him incredibly aware of details, because he has time to dawdle and look for them."  That's not necessarily (or in my games, _at all_ )  "Rapid."  That's not even a "sense," really.  That's increased levels of PER (skill levels, or what-have-you) and INT-rolls when remembering details.  Not a hundred-and-three points of Rapid.  That's insane.  Well, unnecessary at any rate.  Certainly pricey in the build you presented.
 
Seeing the light creep amorphously into the space you currently occupy?  _That's_ a special effect of those bonuses / skill levels.  That's the speed part.  I have no about you are familiar with the more common speedster tricks: auto fire or even area-effect on strength-based attacks, change environment to create wind or fire, bonuses to DCV because you move so fast even in one hex that you're hard to target, or because it takes a _really_ clever angle to trip you up and prevent you from moving out of the way...    I can't remember seeing this in any published book (not that I've read a lot of them), but I've had more than one speedster presented to me with bonuses to OCV on ranged attacks, the SFX of which were "I run right up to him so it's harder to miss, blast him with the Fish Missile gun, and run right back where I was."
 
Why not?  It's speed.  It's a power that at it's base has _nothing_ to do with speed, but how the special effect is applied makes it nothing _but_ speed.  For shirtless Australians, it's "Martial prowess."  For powered armor guys, it's a targeting system."  For your guy, it's speed.  It even plays into your idea for perception:  He has effectively one hundred years to line up his shot.  Granted, he could beat him to absolute _dust_ in that time, but for whatever reason, he's decided to spend the next couple of decades lining up the perfect shot.  Really going to be irritating if you miss that, so ....   buy some Skill Levels (or more OCV, if you're using 6e) and really simulate that super-speed perception thing.
 
 
 
 
Use as many as you like.  I get almost none of them after 3e.  
 
As far as the approach-- Honestly, Amigo, I'm not just saying this.  I've been playing and running this game for _decades_  (damn.  That hurt more than it should have....), and have taught a _lot_ of people how to play  (at least, how to play 2e), and I can say this as a promise:  the more you fool around with making characters-- and in the early days, everyone does it.  You'll have folders full of characters-- good guys and bad-- that you will sock away and never see again, because character building is sort of the "solo" game for HERO fans.     But the more characters you make-- and believe it or not, the _more complicated your visions for these characters becomes-- the easier it will be to recognize when you are being guided by SFX and not mechanics.  Seriously:  the really odd stuff, once you see that there is only a tiny handful of shays to do it, and you have to figure out how your guy is using his power to get that effect (once you know what that effect is)....  You'll have this moment where you'll suddenly realize you can, if you were so inclined, fit any power into any elemental control--- well, _you_ won't have that moment, because they don't exist anymore (replaced by "Unified Power, it seems, at least in feel)-- but you'll have that moment where you realize that you can build every single power in the book and justify it for any character because he could use his powers 'thusly....'  That, Sir, is when you have really come to understand what is SFX, and how they should have _no_ bearing on what the power actually does; just what it looks like when it's being done.
 
 
Well thank you, too, Sir.   It was quite fun, and honestly, when I can actually do it, I like to help.  It's  a personal weakness.  :lol;
 

Not for lack of interest; it's a lack of time issue for a lot of us.
 
Here's the bad news:
 
It's this level of speed for which the "speed tricks" like the speed zone and autofire and AOE: Trail (Can someone _please_ point me to that write up?  I heard it mentioned a couple months back, and I'd like to compare it to the home-brew we've been using for a couple of decades.  Thus far, I've come up zilch.   ) and other such things were created.
 
Once you get to "ludicrous speed," it's just more cost-effective and mechanics-compliant to go the "simulated power" route.  But enough of that: I won't try to talk you into something that you've specifically said you don't want.  If you want my honest opinion, it's going to take handwaving some bits no matter what build you go to.  The only remotely affordable thing I can think of is "Running: megascale, 1" = 1/4 earth's circumference" or something to that effect.  (No; I did not take the time to look up the distance light travels in one segment), and even then is going to vary based on your SPD.  
 
Also, going from the video you offered as referenced (just finished watching it), that end result?  Where they are patiently waiting for the light to actually move?  Clearly that's much faster than light.  I can't recall what changed were made to FTL after 4e, but work up some handwaving to do it in an atmosphere, and run with that.  I expect the turn mode will _suck_, but Skill Levels can be used to reduce that (get lots of them).  The most significant problem with moving FTL, of course, is that your eyes don't work anymore.  Well, they work, I suppose, but once you can actually see light as a thing to itself, do you still see what it's bouncing off of, or just a billion shards of lighting creeping towards your eyes?  You can take all the "Rapid" you want, what happens when you read faster than the light itself can get to you?
 
On that matter, how much "rapid" is that?  What is the movement of reading, anyway?  What is the movement of hearing?  Personally, I would flat out ignore and hand wave that.  I can read 10 times faster than I can when I'm not using Rapid.  Well how do you read when you don't use Rapid?  What is the "standard" reading rate?  I've got a brother who could bankrupt himself on books.  Do you remember the old William Johnstone "Out of the Ashes" series a couple decades back?  He read the first four in a day.  Those things were huge, too  (and not great, for what it's worth.  The first two were strong; the rest just started slipping down and down and down...)    So what is the "Standard" reading speed?  The "Standard Hearing Speed?"  It was the utter pointlessness of that exercise that made me dismiss "Rapid" before I even finished reading it when it first hit the rules.  It's just .. well, seeing as how using "Cramming" or variations of speed reading have worked for a quarter-century, it's just unnecessary, and silly to say 10, or 100, or even one billion times faster than a completely undefined baseline.  That old "I want double my pay!"  "Fine; you're a volunteer anyway." gag.
 
We usually just hand waved it as a speedster schtick.  GMs that were a bit more anal  (No; I don't mean that as an insult: everybody's anal about something, even it's just being anal about not admitting that you've got something you're anal about) making sure every possible gag you could ever pull from a hat in the unforeseeable future before your character retired or died might make you buy "speed reading" or "speed tasting" or some such thing.
 
Taste and scent are both based on physical contact to keyed chemoreceptors: that are based on touching physical particulates to specialized cells (remember that the next time you experience someone else's flatulence).  When you are moving fast enough to watch light crawl, those particles are deadly to run into: the scent of that one old church lady who bathes in her perfume will kill you just as surely as running through a cloud of daggers.  Further, as scent itself _is_ physical matter, it will affect light.  We don't see it now, but if you're perceiving so fast you can watch light flow into a room, cross over to a mirror, and bounce back out...   Well odds are even air itself is going to be a huge barrier to actually being able to perceive_.  You see what the small amount of milk suspended on "clear" oil did in that video.  That glowing blur will be the world around you-- the entire world.  it's all you will actually see.  Well, that is to say, it's all you will actually see if you're trying to build this perception using "rapid" or trying to stay in keeping with any level of real-world science.  I _absolutely_ understand that you can handwave  that away and say that "it just works," but at the point-- well, that's when Rapid falls on its unnecessary ass yet again.  Why aren't you just handwaving that moving that fast allows you to perceive that fast (the way we have for a couple of generations now) so that you don't shift into super-photonic speed and lose the ability to see the walls in front of you?  (Remember how a Move-Through works: even though you don't use your STR in an accidental Move-Through, you still get to take 1/2 of that V/3 damage when you hit a wall at C+....)
 
Granted, MegaScale still requires additional modifiers (or Adders?  I don't remember.  Our homebrew version handled that part differently) to be able to travel locally.  I suppose you could reduce the cost somewhat buy using a Multipower, but I'd probably go with Variable Advantage (limited to scales of Mega Scale) and ... well, and yet again hand wave the sudden lurch between traveling ten-thousand KM per hour and dropping down to a mere thousand KM/hr.  I know Variable Advantage requires you to spend all of it's value, which is a bit harder to do know that reduced END is a two-step process, but you can pre-created a list for each "stage" of movement.  Still, it's going to be pricey.
 
 
 
 
This brings up another issue with "Rapid."
 
A century of _what_?  A century of staring at the oil painting that the traffic in the street has effectively become?   How do you play this out?  Know; I mean, I _do_ understand that part:
 
"Tell you what, Kevin, you take the next six hours and ask me anything you'd like about the scene in six cars at the intersection and the eighteen buildings you can see from here.  I'll answer every question and write them down in case it becomes relevant for next week's game.  The rest of you guys can home and we'll meet up again next week.  Terry: your turn to pick up the popcorn.  And don't get that double-butter crap; it stains the maps and gets all over the papers...."
 
We all know that's going to make for an _awful_ session.  So what do we do instead?  We uh...  we handwave it.   Again:  Look Kevin, you take the rest of your phase and look around.  Do you have that pre-rolled list I asked you to generate for your PER rolls?  Strike off your first ten rolls, and here's the three possibly important things you notice...."
 
Or:
 
"How many levels of "Rapid" did you buy?"
 
uh...  Sixteen!
 
"Okay, you spend the rest of your phase checking out the scene.  Anytime you want to remember something from this scene, you've got a pool of sixteen points you can add to your INT roll to simulate remembering a detail you noticed.  We'll mark them off as you use them."
 
Or:
 
Okay, make a PER roll with a +16.  For every point you make it buy, I will detail a clearly important thing
 
Or who knows how else, but we're going to handwave it, because the other players didn't come here to watch you spend a hundred years walking around the intersection in front of Rosie's.  (or was it Rose's?)
 
 
 
 
 
This is probably why the Flash is often pointed to as "the most powerful character is [whichever one he is with  DC, I think? ]'s universe.  For what it's worth, at first blush, it seems you're in the rules, but if I were you, I'd hold off for judgement from someone better versed in the newer editions to give some feedback (I don't always remember all the new "no; not unless you buy this"  stuff that the newer editions have added    )
 
And it sounds like you totally understand what would happen if you actually turned it lose in your game.    
 
 
 
That's the problem, though: if you actually _are_ fast enough to see that, you can't.  If we're staying literal, I mean.  The playback speed shows that light moving the length of the bottle far slower than any observer could move the length of that bottle: the observer is existing faster than light.  As long as he's actually moving faster than light, that light will never reach him.  Now there are people on this board far-more physics-talented than I am, and they may be able to shoot every single thing I've said completely full of holes, but based on my _admittedly-limited_ knowledge, you can't make this work _and_ stay within the realm of literal movement.  You've got to simulate it, and unfortunately most of the best simulations for this use speed as a special effect for a number of totally-not-speed powers.  
 
 
 
I have _got_ to re-read 6e EDM, apparently.  How did we go from stepping into a dimension to "stepping into a dimension per phase?"  I won't get to it any time soon, but I've got to get it done, clearly.
 
 

 
Well done!
 
 
 
 

See?  That's the issue with speed and perception and all that.
 
By the time I get all that type up, you've got a half-dozen other replies!  
 

Well, that's why she's an archvillain. Fortunately she's also a patriot; in one campaign outline I wrote the fallback position if the party couldn't stave off an alien invasion was that Gaia would appear and have the remaining orbital defences allow a path through so the invaders would make their beachhead in Australia, so her most loving creatures could give them a taste of what to expect from their new nieghbors, so to speak. The Dread Emu would then have claimed the #4 spot in causing casualties among them, after snakes, spiders, and sheep, but edging out drop bears and gympie gympie shrubs (Dendrocnide moroides,) other human efforts only taking #6 combined.

Looks like you have some good suggestions for the original question, but considering the theme I suggest a couple more sidekicks/wanna-bes, or perhaps copycats to provide a false lead for the party while they're trying to deal with these guys: Bushrabbit and Cane Toad
 
They're a couple of my stock characters when superheroing leads down under, along with archvillain The Dread Emu and hero team Platypus Man, Argent Wombat, and Tassiewolf.

I would think that unless you're desolid, going at that speed, everything will be like an infinite defense object as molecules would still be moving at normal speed.  But this is comic book physics, so the most important limitation to observe is comic book physics law one (if it doesn't look cool in the comic, it doesn't work).

If I missed this being asked or answered, forgive me; I'm in the middle of a lot right now.  Are the duplicates identical copies of the primary character (sans Duplication, of course)?
 
Frankly, if all the duplicates are identical to the primary character, I'd likely just stick a custom advantage on the Duplication power that lets any given duplicate be the primary character, and thus the holder of the duplication.  I say that because from what I understand, unless you really _are_ pulling a castle maneuver and you each end up displaced from where you started, that's the final in-game effect of this power:  someone else now has Duplication  (again, assuming that all duplicates are the same as the primary).
 
So the way I would approach this:
 
Duplication:  Usable by others, Usable by Duplicates Only; Only one person can use it at a time.
 
 
There.  Move the Duplication power to the guy you want to hold it, and any personality change, etc-- it's all just SFX.  He's now the Primary, and the Primary is now him.
 
Now if the Duplicates are _not_ the same, well I'm still pretty sure a cleaner build can be had than the hundred-and-six (or whatever the OP stated it was) T-Port build he started with.

It's not the same thing and probably more expensive besides, but if the two duplicates are both projections you could give the original Desolid and Invisible or Extra-Dimensional Movement and Affects Real World/Transdimensional on Duplication, either way only available when there are two duplicates active, and have him teleport or return to "where a duplicate was just dispelled" while leaving the other in place, or dispel and pop to "where the duplicate that wasn't killed" was, like a photon forced out of quantum superposition. A different concept I guess, and yes, more expensive, but it's so cool...

I agree with this.  A lot.
 
Things that come to mind:
A large area change environment - Dry Heat - that changes temperature levels and causes REC/END problems.  Maybe even CON rolls at some penalty to avoid stumbling around desiccated at 1/2 DCV (roughly equal to DEX roll or fall on ice sheet).
NND Blasts as he drains the moisture from victims.
Drains vs. STR/CON/END as he withers the heroes.
More severe cases could be a Severe Transform into desiccated husk which he uses to shrivel victims to dust.
Drains vs. BOD against could be used as lethal attacks and ways to collapse wooden structures.

Drought is really the time when things don’t work, don’t grow, wither and die.  I would think that he would suit a whole suite of drain, suppress and transformation attacks.  

Heat NND Blast.
 
Transformation, liquid to steam.
 
Another NND Blast vs Plants, Does BODY (crops withering in the heat).
 
Change Environment (heat).
 
Darkness and Flash (dust).

I guess the strangest I ran in freeform us The Legendary Nellie Splitbottem for a game on Zombieland Saga Amino. Nellie, when she was living, was a Victorian teenager in Canada who got sliced by a buzz saw. Somehow, her body ended up in Japan where the necrom@ncer fixed her up, 'sleep' taught her Japanese, and made her the first member of his secondary zombie idol group.
 
She is rather 'normal' in the contents of Zombieland Saga. Now try translating that to Champions.

Having built several characters with MP (and one VPP) that was designed to be nothing but Naked Advantages on a base Power, it works just fine in play without any real problems. I found it no more ripe for abuse than anything else in the system.