Tech

I have to say, there are some refreshing superspeedster names here.

I'll post in brief my original character (particularly since he's so experienced). I named him Neutron. At the time, Enemies I or II hadn't even been out yet so he and Neutron of the Conquerors have had several fights just to see who keeps the name; it's been undecided. When first learning how to play Champions 1st Edition, I had some misunderstandings of how to build a good character so keep that in mind.    I should mention the campaign doesn't use 6th edition; the majority didn't want it, so it's primarily 4th -5th edition with some 1st-3rd edition thrown in.

I have the original sheet; I just can't find it so I'll go with my memory so here's him at creation:

10 Str        OCV: 8  DCV: 8  ECV: 3

23 Dex

20 Con      

15 Body       7d6 EB

10 Int           Flight 15"

10 Ego         

10 Pre

12 Com        Yes, we still use COM

7 PD

9 ED

7 Spd

9 Rec

40 End

40 Stun

Pretty simple but I was learning what power level is good and so on. Since then, he's changed quite a bit. I'll post some of him because quite frankly there's too much to post. Our campaign has several houserules so I'm not posting costs:

20 Str          OCV: 9 DCV: 9 ECV: 9

26 Dex        11d6 EB

24 Con        Flight 25"

15 Body  

14 Int          His most devastating attack:

17 Ego        10d6 EB, APx2, 10" AE with Hole in center, Variable size

30 Pre

12 Com       PD & ED are 3x hardened

27 PD          Lack of Weakness -5

27 ED          Mental Def 9 pts, 3x hardened

7 Spd

15 Rec         Classic Martial Arts

50 End        4 Combat Levels with 6 various skill levels

51 Stun       Gobs of skills

He's the leader of one of our superteams; we have 7 superteams. Needless to say, we have lots of active characters.

It's hard for me to believe I'm saying this but come this June, our campaign will be 40 years old, along with the 40th Anniversary of the game Champions. It's actually mind-boggling to me, that any campaign could be that long. The campaign is older than my friend's marriage as well as some people in the campaign. I'm planning on buying some plastic award medals that you can put your own emblem inside of and giving them out in June. By the way, this is the same continuous campaign - never stopped or retconned. It's gone through changes over the decades and has seen players & characters come and go, but the core players are still playing some of the same characters that the campaign started with.

So along with saying it's been 40 years, I also want to say that it is the Champions game that is so durable and flexible that made this happen. My hat off to you, Hero Games and more specifically, to Champions.

On 1/14/2021 at 6:01 AM, steriaca said:

I'm sure people have already suggested these names.

 

Dogwood.

Root.

Evermean.

Thorn (ok...this one is already taken).

Poison Oak.

Kanabus.

Hempman.

Ah, I see you mentioned Thorn, who's in CKC.  He's been used effectively in our campaign.

I wouldn't allow the Perceivable. My understanding is once something costs END (whether by default or by adding Limit: Costs End), the power is obvious. It's morning so if I'm mistaken, you know why.

The regeneration very much seems 'plot-device' and not worth buying.

On 2/3/2021 at 4:30 PM, unclevlad said:

Not Entirely of this World:  doesn't stop 1 BODY isn't worth anything, IMO, not when the defense is that small.

Gotta agree with this.

L.L. I'm surprised but happy you remember Hank the Ranger from the old D&D cartoon.

Archer, gotta say I disagree with you when you said, "It just seems like arrows are very much against the setting of most worlds the PC is likely to be on. So even if they weren't made illegal by the Empire, it's unlikely you'd run across a bow shop and be able to restock that old physical arrow supply. Yeah, you can make your own if you keep the equipment on your ship. But how often can you get back to your ship? "

If the character is from the 31st century, I'm sure the bow can be made of nearly indestructible material, the arrows can have a tech advantage to them (now that arrow made a BIG boom), and until more arrows are available, there's always a high-tech/energy sword or blaster. The arrows being hi-tech can easily be made that once fired - and after hitting the target - they return to the bow character (but not the BIG boom arrows).  Also, the arrows can continue to track their opponent until they hit.

Since she's new, the arrows that return can be simplified to just be Blast, and so on. Don't want to put too much of a complicated build together on a beginner.

I think the Duplication option is not what I'm looking for. As N-B said, I'll go with the Stretching idea.

 

12 hours ago, IndianaJoe3 said:

 

That sounds like a variation of No Conscious Control. He can't take his own arm off or move it, but he otherwise controls its actions.

 

(Full disclosure: I haven't actually watched Frozen so I may be completely misunderstanding what actually happened.}

*Gasp* What's with you, man?Joking aside though, it's great to watch that movie, if you can.

Not nitpicking, just throwing out a thought. Perhaps Dr. Nope should have a power affinity with an array of Entangles (or even Drains), instead of poison. The name suggests a denying of something, whereas I'm not feeling the name associated with poison. An entangle denies the bad guy from attacking/retreating/etc. Your thought?

I'll go with Chris' idea. Thanks. I'm thinking though, that it might be always on. I'm picking on Olaf since he's the best example: when Kristoff takes Olaf's arm, Olaf isn't spending any time activating a power: it just happens.

When did the 1st edition of Champions come out? I know the year was 1981 but does anyone know the month?

Olaf (from Frozen/Frozen2) and Jenny XJ9 (My Life as a Teenage Robot) both have arms that can move, even though not attached to the main body. In both cases, the arms can point or even hold someone's hand. How would you build that?

On 1/20/2021 at 12:12 PM, zslane said:

My favorite example of character write-up bloat is Mechanon. None of the GMs I played with back in the day ('80s and '90s) ever had a problem running villains as written up in editions 1-4 of the game. Perhaps this perceived need to spell out every little possible detail is an indicator of how the player base has changed since guys like Steve Peterson and Rob Bell left custodianship of the game in the hands of others.

I wouldn't say it's the player base. I'd say it's the author's personal style with the combo of rules changing. As each edition comes around, more points are handed out to players.

This is 6th edition so I'll take a try at it: I wouldn't apply No Range to it and would add OAF to it, since it appears anyone can pick it up. Since it is a physical manifestation and focus, you could theoretically roll it away from you, creating light at a distance; No Range wouldn't allow that. An Accessible focus can be mobile so that takes care of the Mobile problem. Just a quick thought.

Alternately, I could also see this is 0 points, similar to a flashlight.

Ashura, I'd go with what JmOz and LoneWolf said. Second, liking the animated gif.

17 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yes and no.  Sometimes I do, sometimes I have the rolls out in the open, depending on what the character is aware of.  Its a role-playing tool.  

What he said.

As for villain attack rolls, I always roll them in secret. Let's face it: in every gamer's life, there are days when the dice are just set against you. You blow your block roll, your attack rolls, everything. It happens. I'm not going to add to the player's misery when he's rolling lousy and I'm on a streak of fantastic rolls. I did that just this past weekend - I changed the attack dice roll of a villain (more than once) from a 'hit' to a 'miss'. I don't do the DnD killer DM stuff: "You missed? Ha! Wow, are you going to get it!"

In my opinion, to powergame means to do everything a player can do to make his character as tough as possible, as powerful as possible, to be at maximum ability for any situation. I've heard from many forums here, as well as elsewhere that when talking about powergaming, it's very commonly in the negative sense. For the most part, I agree.

It depends on the campaign and the GM whether or not it's overwhelming, or it fits right in. Quite frankly, I think it'd be almost necessary for the Justice League but I think the majority of us don't have those kind of campaigns.

Having said that, for the campaign I'm in (and also GM as one of the 4 GMs), we work with character concept for any character, not powergaming. If someone wants to build a mentalist, martial artist alien, give us the concept and we'll work to see if it'll work. We are quite open-minded but we have our limits: someone once wanted to use a character from a different campaign who had a CV of 7 with 10 lvls, massive PD, ED and damage, etc etc. We said 'no'. I'm glad we said no; many of his other characters were broken builds according to the rules, such as hitting yourself to absorb the damage using that very power but I digress.

As I said, and others have too, it depends on the campaign and GM. Some campaigns will almost require it, other campaigns powergaming will break it and likely lead to hard feelings between players. For our campaign, it's carefully looked at.

Thanks Duke. However, after downloading them and upon trying to open any of the files, I'm told they're not a valid file format.

Duke, I tried to check those character sheets you scanned. After signing in to google, it says you need to request access.

11 hours ago, Sicarius said:

I am using 4th ed. 😬  It seemed a bit less overwhelming than 5th or 6th but I do have all the books.  The Limited Power makes sense. 

If that's what you're comfortable with, stay with 4th edition and enjoy your gaming. I rarely touch 6th edition myself.

I would go with 'Only in Hero ID'. 

Making an assumption on the original post, I think JmOz is talking about how do you like your write-ups, not write-ups for someone else. fdw3773 is right at making simple builds at conventions but I'm (again) assuming JmOz meant 'for you personally'. Personally, I like making my hero & villain write-ups pretty detailed most of the time; it's fun for me. No one else is going to be running my villains when I'm GM'ing or my heroes when I'm player.

If he's talking about what someone else is going to use, simpler is better.

For myself, I still use Panda & Raccoon. I like them enough to have updated them a bit and sent them against the heroes recently.

2 hours ago, JmOz said:

So working on some stuff, and got to thinking about this: How detailed do you like your write ups?  Do you want every single thing written up, with every single limitation, or do you prefer "simple" builds that get close enough

 

As an example

 

Electrical Blast: 12d6

 

or

 

Electrical Blast 6d6

+6d6 not vs grounded (flying, etc...) (-1)

+6d6 vs conductive (standing in water, etc...) -2

The second one is a bit much but I see your point. As both GM and player, I like to write things out, but not to extremes. I would write out that attack as 12d6 EB but if I was feeling overly creative, I could touch a bit on the second part. There is a certain pleasure with writing villains out, even if you're the only one who's really going to see it as GM, simply because it's fun. As GM, I write out/stat out all my villains, if only because I like to express my creativity. If I'm using a minor villain who is a one-shot, then I will go with brief stats such as:

example: 10 Str, 14 Dex, 20 Con, 10 PD, 10 ED, 5 Speed, 40 Stun. CV 5, 8d6 EB.

It's not worth my time to write-out minor villains who the players will (most likely) never encounter again. Of course, there have been those exceptional times when the players say "I really liked that guy..."  That changes things; he'll get a write-up.  

I've used the 'forgotten' (but not to the campaign I'm in) villains and the seasoned players are like "wow, it's him again!" when they do show up. It's fun to see that reaction.

Never heard of Hero Games being called a 'cockroach'

It's whatever you want. As LL replied, there is no "most common occupation".

The players use cells once in awhile to talk to each other but surprisingly, it hasn't come up much. It's a freebie, like a player having a car.