Durzan Malakim

So stealing from Killer Shrike, here are my proposed setting parameters.  I tried to keep it simple (I originally went through all the active members of Sentinel, Capital Patrol, and Justice Squadron, but how often will that actually come up?), but it's still longer than Killer Shrike's.  I couldn't decide on whether the campaign would be centered on 300 point or 400 point 6E heroes, so I just wrote it up as though either could be used.  This is very much a draft.
 
The Bluebird Champions Universe (BCU)
A Modified Champions Universe Setting
 
Main Differences from 6E Champions Universe
 
1. Magic is not the source of all superpowers.  Superpowers come from a variety of means, and supermagic is just one possible origin for superhumans.
2. Ignore all published dates in the 5E and 6E Champions Universe.  Unless a specific date is given in the BCU, all events simply occur in the past.
3. There have been no extradimensional or alien invasions of the Earth.  Very few people on Earth believe in the existence of extraterrestrials.  Superheroes and villains with alien origins exist, but the public either does not believe their origin stories or is unaware of them.
4. Other dimensions exist, but there are no known interdimensional empires or states.  Dimensions exist primarily as the domain of entities such as demons, Lovecraftian monsters, or unknown forms of energy.  There is very little extradimensional travel, even by these other entities, without elaborate summoning rituals.
5. UNTIL, PRIMUS, and similar organizations do not exist.  Governments monitor superhuman activity, but regular defense and law enforcement agencies are responsible for dealing with any threats.
6. Superheroes and supervillains cancel each other out in a geopolitical sense.  Governments and militaries are far more powerful than even the combined might of all superhumans, so superhumans are not a factor in global political maneuverings.  No government maintains a large superhero team to supplement its military forces.
7. Supertechnology has not really spread enough to have any effect on the world’s technological level.  Virtually all villainous henchmen use real world guns, not blasters.
8. Superhumans were largely inactive during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.  The modern era of superhumans began with the appearance of Vanguard about 12 years before the Battle of Detroit.  This coincided with the rise of Dr. Destroyer and Takofanes.
9. The Battle of Detroit happened eight years ago.  The battle seriously weakened the superhero community, causing most teams to slowly disband and many solo heroes to retire (if they weren’t killed in the fighting).  For unexplained reasons, many of the villains active during this time also faded away.
10. The new era of superheroes began with the founding of the Champions a “year or so” before the present year. Almost all villain origins should be considered to start within a few years of this event, unless there is a strong thematic reason to have them active in the earlier modern era.  (The purpose of this is to keep villain ages somewhat realistic.)
11. Although in decline, the Sentinels and Justice Squadron (called Justice in the BCU) are still active, although they are rapidly being eclipsed in prominence by the Champions.
12. The following master villains from 6E Volume 1 do not exist in the BCU: Istvatha V’han, Shadow Destroyer, Shadow Queen, Skarn, Tezcatlipoca, Tyrannon, and Doctor Yin Wu.
13. The following master villains were “finally” defeated around the time of the Battle of Detroit, and are not active: Dr. Destroyer and Takofanes.
14. The following villain teams from 6E Volume 2 do not exist in the BCU: Red Guard and Tiger Squad.
 
Typical Hero Rules
 
1. Typical "new" heroes are created either as low powered (300 point / 60 matching complications) or standard (400 point / 75 matching complications) characters.
2. No character may have more than one characteristic above 20 without a strong thematic reason (no randomly high dexterities or constitutions, as is common in published material).  If someone has a Dexterity above 20 or an intelligence above 20 for example, there needs to be a reason they are one of the world’s greatest athletes or one of the most brilliant humans to ever live.
3. In general, active points are capped at either 60 points (low-powered heroes) or 75 points (standard), with possible exceptions for an individual power.  DCs should be capped around 12. Villains and NPC heroes will be adjusted to compensate for this, as needed.
4. Non-speedsters should not have a SPD above 6.
5. Extradimensional origins should be avoided.

Disclaimer: I read the 1st page and a bit of the 2nd but have not yet slogged thru the rest.
 
@PamelaIsley, what you are attempting to do here makes sense to me, and is well within the expectation of adapting the printed material to suit your preferences. Most GM's do something of the sort, as I'm sure you know; often in an organic way without deliberation, sometimes formally and deliberately, but the end result is a variant setting that better suits the preferences of the GM / player group.
 
For me, when using the Champions Universe I can bite off on the cosmic and extra-dimensional aspects and the magical variants of both to some degree, as well as the unlikely longevity of main characters, as I recognize the tropes the setting is imitating are obviously true to the main examples of the medium (the Marvel and DC settings). 
 
The two things that most irritated me with the CU which I felt were not introduced to further the analogue to Marvel and DC were A) magic is the ultimate source of all superpowers, and B ) the timelines of the published Hero System settings across genres are shared (ie the Turakian and Valdorian Ages and the Star Hero settings (and so on) are in the same timeline as the CU, officially).
 
The magic is the root of all bit doesn't make sense to me, and is not accurate to the medium, and is entirely unnecessary as a justification. 
 
The shared timeline bit was done for marketing or internal reasons, and is unnecessarily restrictive and contorted, and serves little useful purpose to me. 
 
A third issue that isn't really a problem for me per se but did present some awkwardness from time to time when incorporating players who had played earlier editions of Champions, is shifts in tone, power levels, and details between versions of the CU from different real world eras and game editions.
 
To simplify things a bit and give my players and potential players a heads up as to how I ran my CU campaigns, I used the following guidelines and close variations for several 5e era Champions campaigns; it might be useful to you or not, but here it is nonetheless: 
 
Character Design Characters are built on 250 Base Points with up to 125 Disadvantage Points. The Campaign has been in progress for some time, so new characters may start with 75 additional Experience Points to catch them up.
 
Any Origin is nominally allowed, but try to avoid Alien and "Cosmic Entity" type Origins.
 
No Active Point Caps are in effect, but certain Power constructs deemed to be abusive will be denied out of hand. Try to avoid plot-destroying powers like full Precognition, EDM, and similar effects.
 
Tight concept/SFX driven character construction required. No grab-bag Frameworks, please.
 
It would be best if your character is either PRIMUS Sanctioned, or keeps a few points back to become PRIMUS Sanctioned soon after entering play. The SANCTION PACKAGE DEAL is on page 43 of the Champions Universe supplement. The Contacts are not necessary if you don't want to be able to call on them at will.
 
I run a lower SPD campaign. As a general rule of thumb, I prefer physically normal folks to remain between 3 and 4 SPD, trained fighters, super agents, and "normal" MA's to remain between 4 and 5, genetically engineered, chi enabled, mutant reflex scrappy types, Speedster-Bricks, etc to be between 5 and 7, and SPD 8 and above reserved for dedicated Speedsters or other characters with a strong justification for excessively high SPD. Setting is a separate Dimension For reference purposes, the Champions Universe setting as described in the 5th edition era as used by me can be referred to as CU5-KS1 and by the book Champions Universe can be referred to as CU5. The official Champions Universes of today (5th edition) and yesteryear (1st thru 4th edition) can be thought of as alternate dimensions in classic Comic Book style. A few key deviations between CU5 and the CU5-KS1 dimension: Magic is not the seed of all superpowers. The Champions went missing a year ago. No one seems to know where they went. This isn't necessarily a campaign plot point, I just wanted them out of the way so that the PC's can have the stage. Their base and other accoutrements are in the care of Dr. Silverback in the meantime. The smart chips used in MC are not generally known about by anyone, even most cops. Turakian Age, Valdorian Age, Terran Empire, Galactic Champions, and other published settings are not in the same timeline as CU5-KS1. Campaign morality is a little darker than CU proper. Not Iron Age dark, but a little grittier. People do get killed, and Killing attacks are used from time to time. Killing people as a hero will result in legal action and/or issues with other non-lethal heroes.

I feel for GMs who have to find that sweet spot between cake-walk and flip-the-table-in-frustration combats. HERO System has many rock-paper-scissors power interactions that over time can promote the creation of characters with adaptable power builds over static ones. For example, most of the villains mentioned in this thread have high DCVs and high resistant defenses. Such opponents will be a challenge (or nightmare) to characters with static powers who have no choice but to overcome these defenses. However, characters with adaptable powers may find this same opponent a pushover if/when they can find the weak spot in their opponent's defenses. Suddenly these hard-to-hit and hard-to-damage opponents face attacks built specifically to negate defenses such as area of effect, attack versus alternate defense, and penetrating.
 
The large number of possible attack/defense combinations is why a simple point-total comparison does not accurately describe someone's overall power level and combat effectiveness. Generally, the fewer points you have to spend, the more choices you have to make between attack/defense combinations. My 400 point villain might be great at defending against targeted physical and energy attacks, but not have any Flash or Mental defenses. Such a villain will be stronger versus characters whose attacks match those defenses and weaker versus those whose attacks are met with little to no defense. Given that most games have multiple players, chances are someone has a character build that will  be effectively stronger versus any given opponent. That is unless and until the villain has an unlimited budget or the GM chooses to only use villains who have appropriate defenses versus the player's available attacks.
 
One thing I haven't seen in my Champions games lately is the recurring villain who you eventually beat because you learn over time how to best deal with them. The first fight you lose or the villain gets away because you don't know what to expect. The second fight might be more of a draw. You adjust your attacks, and the villain adjusts their defenses.  Then you "think outside the box," spend some XP, or train to specifically defeat this opponent. If/when you win you feel a sense of accomplishment. I don't know if that story arc depends on point totals. It may just depend on an eventual mismatch in attack/defense combinations. Maybe my GMs have been trying to introduce such arcs and the clue-by-four has yet to penetrate my skull.

This should be a separate topic, but one thing that comes out when I read over the answers in the thread is that, wow, a lot of people really like the tactical combat angle of PnP a lot more than I do.
 
I can just remember so many DnD 3.5 games when the instant the DM said "Roll for initiative", there was nothing but collective groans around the table.  DnD, M&M, and Hero combat is just so . . . tedious.  
 
But as I've said repeatedly, everyone has their own definition of fun.

Find an answer within your concept.

To tangent off this, one of the best ways to make a player feel like they made good character creation decisions is to build a competent villain with a critical weakness to one particular PC.  Put the Invisible Man against a party containing a blind hero, or The Human Lantern against a party containing Fireproof Man.  They'll react like it's Christmas. 

One of the main things that causes players to build things that make GM's cringe is GM malfeasance.  If you keep throwing enemies at the players that their characters have a hard time hitting, they're going to stack OCV.  If you keep throwing villains at players that their characters have a hard time hurting, they're going to stack damage or get attacks that bypass defenses.  Players don't like to feel weak or worthless, they want to feel like... champions.  
 
That doesn't mean nobody should ever have a challenge, but it does mean you should watch how your players react and what they do, to make sure you aren't annoying or frustrating them.

This topic highlights the differences between what makes a good superhero story and what makes a good superhero role-playing game.
 
Superhero stories usually delay the fight scene for as long as possible because once the fight is over, the story is over. The drama and interesting bits of a superhero story are the chase, discovering what's going on, and identifying who's responsible for it. In fact, there are superhero stories such as Batman where the super villain specifically does not target or want to directly fight their superhero nemesis. In the Dark Knight movies, the Joker doesn't attack Batman, he attacks normal people and institutions. The Joker creates situations where Batman must respond to his schemes rather than confront him. Losing a fight is usually part of the Joker's plan. "While you've been wasting your time fighting me, my minions have been busy strapping Harvey Dent and Rachel to explosives."
 
Superhero games tend to devote most of their rules to combat resolution and HERO System is no different. Players expect to use their powers to fight. I don't know what your games are like, but in the Champions games I've played most fights are completed in one turn or less. That's true even when a team of superheroes fights a more powerful opponent who also has minion support. Having weaker super villains might change that dynamic to fights lasting one to two phases, and there's nothing wrong with short fights as long as everyone enjoys it. Such games become less "Superhero fight club" and more like the source material where heroes spend their time and effort chasing and overcoming obstacles between them and their super villain targets.

Things that get too genre specific make my hackles rise. Games aren’t comics and vice versa. Players have a lot of experience, and often learn from their mistakes. 
 
Way before Dark Champions, costumes in many local games slid into Kevlar and Army Surplus XD
 
as to the first question,  What ever happened to the 200 point villain, essentially a talented normal with one or two blockbuster powers and a little intelligence?  A good one hit wonder can screw up the Heroes best plans on occasion. 

On the subject of Joker-like villains, I ran the Champions Battlegrounds adventure with the Black Harlequin years ago and it was very Joker-esque. Really confounded the heroes. Very fun adventure, for us. 
 
When the players finally managed to get past all the deathtraps and hone in on BH himself, it was over very quickly and they accidentally killed him while he tried to escape. Oops. 
 
They expected him to be a viable toe to toe combat threat in line with the lethality of his traps, and were quite surprised when he pancaked on the ground and went splat. In game there was some wringing of hands and moral wrangling, but out of character the players got a good laugh out it.
 
Trappy tricky villains just require a lot of set up and planning to pull off their dastardly deeds, and thus a GM trying to employ one must put in the set up and planning on their behalf. It's time consuming, and doesn't always work, but when it does its a lot of fun.

I go for a mix of villain power levels depending on the arc.
 
It can be fun for the heroes to trounce a bunch of mooks and a few low grade super villains. It lets the players feel that their characters are strong and capable. It's a supers game after all.
 
Other times I'll go for a mega villain. Someone the team has to pull out all the stops for, including good team tactics. It can really ramp up the tension and give the players a chance to go in for some serious melodrama (self-sacrifice, learning to be part of the team, you know the drill.)
 
But my fave is having a group of villains all about the same level as the PCs who can give the heroes a real mixed bag of a fight. These tend to be loooong fights though. Frequently with plenty of chaos and collateral damage.
 
Clearly all the above is just talking about fights. You can challenge the players with mysteries and role play challenges too. And these can, and should, be of various challenge levels just as the above.
 
As an aside: I love when the player (and maybe the character) know who the villain is but can't prove it (yet!) Then they meet at a party. Let the catiness begin!
 
 
 

The timing of this topic is interesting because this weekend I got to experience what groups of "weaker" enemies could do a "stronger" character. A group of 200-point minions completely pwned my 300-point hero.  Granted, this was a case where the GM had three really good dice rolls targeted directly at a hole in my defenses, but from a pure point-total versus point-total perspective it should not have been as one-sided as it was.
 
Point comparisons are only as good as the assumption behind them. Are the limitations on villain powers really limiting if the GM never plays the villains when their powers would be limited? If villains can ignore campaign limits, does it matter how many points they're built on? Is a lower-point villain who is spectacular at one thing really weaker than a higher-point hero who's just good or moderate at multiple things?

While there may be GM's who falsely believe themselves to be exemplars of authorial acumen worthy of award and accolade, I would hazard that the far more common case would be GM's attempting to emulate genre-appropriate plot and story as found in books and on screen. Some may be less skilled at it than others, but at least they are trying to do something other than show up and roll dice.
 
But yes, sometimes a GM's reach exceeds their grasp when they lay out a plot for their players to experience and it doesn't work. There's also the problem that some GM's don't even attempt to tell a story and just run players through one pointless encounter after another.
 
Somewhere in the middle is where the majority lay.
 
 
Yeah. This happens. I've played in games where the GM has made one or more mistakes. I've been a GM that's made one or more mistakes. Mistakes happen. Feedback and adjustment, and remembering that presumably everyone who showed up to play did so to have fun are a way to move forward. 
 
A good example that comes to mind, I was playing in a superhero arc @WilyQuixote was running...this was a Champions 5e game coincidentally...and it had been going great. A series of really fun sessions leading up to a final encounter at a charity ball. The heroes had been following clues and knew a big sacrificial ritual was going to go down at the ball, so we all showed up on the doorstep of the mansion it was being hosted at a little bit before the start time.
 
After some blah blah blah, we the PC's came into the presence of the rich owner of the mansion and host of the event and his son and his son's fiance, a couple of body guards, etc. As the conversation developed, I intuited that the son was in on the evil plot and that his fiance was to be the sacrificial victim of the dark magic ritual. I was 100% certain of it. How? Contextual clues, the law of character conservation, a subtle mistake the GM made that only someone who knew him well would notice, and also I'm just one of those people who's good at guessing who did it in the opening scenes / pages. My character had enough information so that it was not unreasonable for him to have deduced this, though it was thin, so I felt justified in acting on my player intuition. In character, I shifted the focus onto the son and accused him of being in on it.
 
The other players thought I was crazy and their PC's turned against mine, and the NPC's turned as well. Suddenly my PC was the bad guy. The scene got ugly. The GM was pissed off at me. I got pissed off. My PC left and I sat the session out.
 
In the end, it turned out I was right; the son was in on it and the fiance was the sacrificial victim.
 
But that wasn't the point. 
 
The GM was trying to tell a story, and was doing a decent job of it, but made a few mistakes...in the set up by not including more than one character who could be the victim (per genre tropes) and more than one character who might be the heel (again per genre tropes), another in making the motivation of the son to betray his father too obvious, and an execution error during actual play (a tell) that gave it away to someone alert to it. 
 
I as the player should have been more alert to the needs of the session (this all happened within the first 30 minutes of the session), and the arc (this was to be the big culmination of the arc), and the players (we were due a big satisfying confrontation with the big bad, who'd been off screen the entire arc), and the PC's (this event would be a big defining milestone for the superhero group's exploits), and instead chosen to roll with it and collaborated to help the GM bring the session and the story arc to a more satisfying conclusion despite them having made mistakes in their attempt to tell the story. My error as the player in trying to force the denouement was far greater than the GM's technical errors in pursuit of telling a good interactive story for group participation and enjoyment.
 
Is WilyQ an award winning author of any genre? Nope. Was he able to still tell an interesting story, warts and all? Yep.

Strongly agree with all of this.
 
Unfortunately, many players don't have the patience or the cognitive framework to pursue investigation, unravel plots, figure out what's really going on, etc. This is true in most genres, but seems to be particularly true in superheroes, where they want to get to the big fight throwing coffee cans of damage and knocking back bad guys for crazy distance, and so forth.
 
With supers, I try to remember to not fight human nature and reverse the scenes and story beats, placing conflict where normally there would be build up / plot development, and plot development where normally there would be conflict. 
 
One of the main issues with developing a story in any rpg is that what drives the characters forward is their individual agendas / motivations. But a lot of superhero character motivations are simply "...they fight crime!" or "...oppose supervillainy!", etc. Put a face for them to punch in front of them, and their purpose is clear. Put a situation for them to figure out in front of them, which is basically a maze with one or more supervillains hiding in it metaphorically speaking, and most players with their paper thin character motivations become inert with no clear drive forward.
 
Some players of course want to play "mystery men" detective types, and want to engage with a plot that requires / allows them to explore investigation and mystery. But if you've got one of those and three other more four color players at the table, its the classic problem of balancing the boredom factor for the uninterested players while you and the the plot engaged player scratch your story development itches.
 
Including some lesser moments of combat like breadcrumbs through the maze to a big bad on the other hand allows the interstitial bits of the story to be doled out but keeps the players who showed up for fights periodically reengaged, and also allows the players to feel that their characters are powerful. Finding the balance between interesting and boring is the trick of course...too much and taking out the trash becomes a slog, too few and there wasn't much point to having them at all. 
 
I sometimes think the most important skill a GM can have is the ability to find "goldilocks zones"...not too much or too little of every thing that goes into a gaming session. In retrospect most errors I make as a GM can be reduced to "...overdid it a bit on that one..." or "...shoulda had more of that other thing...". 
 
Accordingly, I try to keep the threat levels of my bad guys and other obstacles distributed along a curve. A mix of stronger and weaker, solo and team, vectors of attack, motivations, etc. Variety. Seems to work, usually. 

When Dr. Bob Simpson was our GM in the late 90's, the flow of his games was a lot like this. there were three or four sessions of investigation, and det3ective work, with the occasional short fight, or Training day for the heroes, then all of that investigation and detective work would culminate in a fight, some s a long fight. He didn't use the single boss encounter very often, but it was ususally groups of villains, versus the heroes, so fights would last about 4-6 turns, and everyone was gasping for breath and using cover to recover. All in all he ran a very "rewarding game".
 
 
The situation we had as players, was that the villains might be as interested as you were in them,  especially after their schemes were thwarted, and they only barely escaped. Hell, the Heroes had a set of protocols of escaping when a fight went against them badly,  we had team tactics down to a science, and we did not suffer the fate of Dr. Bob's earlier player group, that lost a member to a mind control/transform, making the PC, into an NPC Villain, because he got captured by the Big Magical bad of his campaign. To keep the tactics interesting, bot sides had numbers and abilities to keep the combats dynamic, and i learned a lot from him. it made "Boss Fights" look and feel like cactus covered punching bags.

I've had a few fights last 2 or 3 turns, but have had just as many last less than half a turn.  I do think that it's good for a setting to have a handful of "mega heroes", who are usually busy handling their own business but provide at least a conceptual counterbalance to the proliferation of mega villains.  Someone's gotta be keeping the Dread Dark Destroyah in check when the PCs aren't around...

Very few Champions villains are built this way.  Most are built using more points than a standard hero and have a ton of different powers and skills.
 
I do think that focusing on points is sometimes misguided (it's why I like M&M's Power Level, which is a good short hand; Hero has nothing comparable, you have to look at a ton of different numbers).
 
But most CU villains in the 6E solo book are more powerful than a standard 400-point hero in every way (DCs, total point value, OCV/DCV).  It's that aspect that I think is off.  I don't think the average villain in a setting should be more powerful than the average hero (in fact, I like the opposite construction).  I don't like it in practice and I don't like it conceptually.  But that's just my opinion.
 
On a side note, I spent years converting DC characters into M&M 2E format to have a consistent universe.  I won't repeat that work for Hero, but it's a lot of fun.

As I create more 6E characters, I've been looking a lot more closely at villain stats in the 6E books, specifically the three volume set (Master Villlains, Teams, and Solo Villains).  I also have the 5E books, so the issue I'm going to discuss isn't just related to 6E.  When you look at the solo villain book, most villains in it are built to take on a team of superheroes.  Most of their writeups even talk about this fact.  There are a few that aren't built using 400 or more points, but those are really the exceptions. 
 
First off, from a gaming standpoint, I can understand why they are doing this.  Hero seems designed for a group to play and Champions deliberately makes superheroes so powerful that henchmen aren't a plausible threat (there is even an entire section on how to make sure agent fights go fast and aren't boring).  So that means the big bad guy for an adventure needs to take on multiple heroes at once.
 
But from a universe building standpoint, I'm not sure this makes much sense. 
 
Champions Universe says there are roughly three supervillains for every two superheroes.  So there are more villains in the world than heroes.  So we have a conceptual problem almost immediately.  If the villains are not only more numerous than the heroes, but also more powerful, then the world seems in trouble (you can always make the case that their divided, selfish nature keeps everyone safe -- evil eats evil and all that -- but that's a pretty unsatisfying answer).
 
Does the idea that individual villains are more powerful than individual heroes fit with other comic universes?  It certainly doesn't with the Batman and Superman settings.  With very few exceptions, Batman as an individual is significantly more capable than almost all of his Rogues Gallery, especially if you look at the era around TAS and the 1990s and 2000s (the time period I'm most familiar with).  Superman, of course, goes without saying.  The X-Men face a lot of villains that are threats to their entire team, but I'm not sure the average X-Men villain is more capable than the main team members.  Same goes for Spider-Man.  Is he weaker than each member of his Rogue's Gallery?  I will concede that I know very little about other Marvel rogues galleries.
 
I'm a lot more familiar with Batman and the JLA than with any other comic setting.  So a lot of my biases come from that universe.  It seems to me that the tenor of most adventures is that heroes have to figure out what the villain is doing, unwind the villain's plot, and then confront them.  Is the last part supposed to be the most challenging?  If a villain is more powerful than a hero or a team of heroes straight up, then I'm not really understanding why a lot of them go to such trouble to have elaborate plots. 
 
Anyway, my own thoughts are a little rambling.  I'm mostly interested in people's opinions.  Should the average supervillain be more powerful than the average superhero?  Is raw combat power the best way to balance a supervillain against a superteam?  Does the Champions Universe go a little too far in making so many 400+ point villains?
 
My own opinion is that villains should be roughly equal to heroes (if not a little weaker), that most adventures are more fun when they are more about the villain's plot than the villain's stats, and that henchmen / agents / normal people should be more lethal than presented in CU.
 
Thanks all!

The history of money and banking goes in all sorts of weird and wonderful directions, from grain banking in ancient Egypt (centered on temples, as a matter of fact) to the unique time-nonetizing shell money of Rossel Island, but I'll leave that aside for now. I'm more interested in how a religion of Moderation appears.
 
A few years ago I read a book on comparative religion (IIRC the title was God Is Not One.) Not a great book, but the author has an interesting conceit of distilling each religion examined into a statement of what the essential problem of human existence is, and what the religion proposes as the solution. In  Christianity, the problem is sin; the solution is salvation through Jesus Christ. In Buddhism, the problem is karmic attachment to a world of illusion; the solution is enlightenment. Even atheism follows the pattern: The problem is superstition; the solution is reason.
 
Here, the solution is Moderation. How does the religion define the problem? "Fanaticism" or "Dualism" both seem plausible, and might explain how the religion started in the first place. (Assuming it isn't ordained by an actual god, which in a fantasy world is possible.) And it will play a big role in what immediate, social activities the church treats as worth its attention.
 
Dean Shomshak

I suggest creating some myths that reinforce and explain your core religious beliefs. From what you describe I'd say this religion is based on the principles of growth and obligation. Here's a sample myth using these ideas.
 
Long ago, in a game world far, far away, there once was a Divinity who created the first mortals and charged them to create and grow their world. The Divinity invested a portion its power into a group of mortals who became the first paragons. Each paragon was responsible for creating a different part of the world and strove to impress both the Divinity and each other. Paragons could also invest other mortals with the powers of creation. These new powers were often refinements or compliments to the paragon's power, but each person's power was different. Strangely, to our way of thinking at least, investing others with power did not diminish a paragon's power. Quite the opposite, investing power in others increased the overall magic/power available in the world. Over time the first paragons and their successors created the world we know today. As powerful as the paragons were however, they were still mortals, and when they perished their powers returned to the Divinity. The Paragon's legacy is the world they produced and the purpose to continue creation. This is why the church shares it power with others, so that they may continue the Divinity's mission. As the church invests in you, one day you too shall invest in your children and students. Thus we pass the power of creation from generation to generation.  

Security guards are usually hirelings of some kind rather than bank officials.
 
I'd been vaguely thinking of having the guards be people who the nobility donated for that cause as part of payback of loans which had been given to them. But given human nature, I'm not sure that trusting such people around money would be the best option.
 
On the other hand, if some fealty-sworn people broke faith with their liege lord and the church and made off with a sum of money, that could be a plot hook to get the PC's involved in tracking them down.
 
On the gripping hand, I'm envisioning most of the loans as being small and with them being given out fairly rapidly within the same communities as the repayment of loans so that for the most part there's not large sums of church money being at the local churches or in transit at any particular point in time.

I like any edition of Champions I actually get to play. To me the differences between editions are like the differences between sports cars. Yes, an Alpha Romeo T33/2 Stradale Prototipo 1967 is different than a Tesla Model S, but either one is a radically different experience to driving the D&D minivan.
 
Champions third edition was my introduction to super heroic gaming, and I have fond memories of it, but the people I play with run sixth edition/Complete. It's still a sports car even if the user manual is really, really long, and I'm not always sure how to refill the continuing fuel charge.

This thread reminded me of an adventure I ran once in my Champions campaign.  Through some method I don't recall, all of the PCs temporarily lost their superpowers.  At the same time, ARGENT kidnapped one of the PC's DNPCs and squirreled him off to Sealand.  (For those not familiar, it's a former WWII gun fort off the coast of England - outside the territorial limit at the time -- that got taken over and declared a sovereign nation I think back in the 1960s.   In my campaign, I decided it had been taken over by ARGENT in the 1990s and built up a bit more.)  So the PCs had to sneak in and rescue the DNPC, all without powers. 
 
I allowed them to bring any normal stuff they wanted, as long as they wrote it down beforehand and it wasn't too heavy/bulky.  I still remember when they were being chased up an enclosed circular stairway by ARGENT guards, and one of the players said, "I dump my bag of marbles down the stairs."  I laughed and said, "Yeah, sure would be nice to have a bunch of marbles right now."  And he pointed to the middle of his list.  I'll be damned if he didn't have "Bag of marbles" in the middle, right after "duct tape" and before "super glue (6 tubes)".  And yes, all of that super glue got used, too.
 
The free equipment use pretty much made that adventure awesome.

Hmm.  I'm not sure I can get behind the idea that any power that is more than you need is surplus to requirements, at least if you mean what you seem to mean.
 
Very few actual characters built by players are ever going to buy a NND as their only major attack: it is going in a MP.  You also almost never see an Entangle outside a MP, or a Flash.  There are many other examples.
 
The problem with MPs is not the mechanic, as such, but the way it seems to be habitually used - to cover a wide range of bases to make characters effective in a wide range of situations because that is play-efficient rather than because that realises a concept.  A lot of example characters I have seen are guilty of that.  You get powers with really complex builds that are there for synergy rather than anything else or powers that are situational.  You'd never splash out on that particular power if you were paying full points.  Well, almost never.
 
Remember Starburst (I think that was his name, could have been Opal Fruit) from 1eChampions?  He had a MP with an attack, defence and movement power in it, IIRC.  He was damn interesting to run.

Thanks for the kind words.  Oh and I'm definitely a male.
 
In ages past I spent a lot of time trying to break the system.  I was basically king of the powergamers at our local store.  GMs from other games would tell their players that they were prohibited from asking me to help build characters.  But what I found was that 4th edition was really solidly put together.  Primary characteristics were good, and Elemental Controls needed to be watched like a hawk, but the basic cost structure of everything was great.  With 5th edition, a lot of potential abuses opened up.  It got really easy to break the game really fast.  6th went over like a lead balloon at our store, and when I looked at it I just saw the problems of 5th compounded.
 
Now, I don't have the free time that I did when I was in college, and I haven't really torn the system apart like I did with 4th and 5th edition.  But I see things that used to work that have been changed significantly, and prices changed for no real reason.
 
Regarding heroic games, a game master can balance them.  But a game designer can't balance it when he doesn't know if you're going to be playing Call of Cthulhu or Car Wars.  Changes to the game were made for presumably Fantasy Hero, but that's a genre specific thing.  Balance it for that and you unbalance it for something else.