Chessack

Re: Drama Dice I would say you could use the idea almost as it was originally implemented. Unlike 7th sea, adding more dice isn't always going to be a good thing in Champions (for example, adding dice is a drawback when doing KB). And subtracting them doesn't always make a huge amount of sense either (it could lead to guaranteed actions in some cases, and drama dice don't strike me as being able to guarantee something). However, what you could do is something like this: For whatever reasons you want (reward for good RP, or however you do it), you award "Drama Dice." A player can use a Drama Die at any time upon making a die roll (but I'd say never more than one, as it could otherwise be abusive). To use the drama die, he simply chooses any one of the dice he just rolled, and re-rolls it. For example, suppose you have an 11 or less to hit something and on 3D6, you roll a 6, 5, 4. That's 15, so you miss. However, you could opt to re-roll the 6. You'd have a 33% chance of hitting (a 1 or 2 would work, anything else would not). This would give the player the option to try and change events, without guaranteeing success (if you take a die away in the example, it's an automatic hit, which strikes me as too much control for what drama dice are supposed to do). I actually like the base idea a lot, and I might well implement it if I were running a table-top campaign. As it is I'm not doing that right now... but it's in the mental file for the future. C

Re: Least Abused Powers I agree about VPP. In principle it could potentially be quite abusive, and I have seen some attempts at seriously abusive things (the all-time prize winner has to be the guy who tried to put +3 overall levels - usable vs. others - uncontrolled/continuous into his VPP on the fly, and then before a battle, hit his whole team with it to give them all +3... and then pitched a fit when I disallowed it). However, early bad experiences with VPP taught me a very simple lesson... inform the players that all VPP powers must be pre-approved. Allow them to maintain a list of a reasonable number of pre-fab powers (20-30 powers total) that "could" be put into the VPP. I always said that in save-the-world or emergency situations, if the VPP nature allowed it (not all do), they could come up with something unique on the spot. Under normal conditions, however (which occur 99% of the time), they had to pick something off the pre-approved list. Once we started doing that, it became standard practice and VPPs were never a problem after that. Likewise, summon could be very troublesom if people can just make stuff up off the top of their heads in mid-session. However, that takes so long (designing a new thing to summon) and is so impractical that insisting on a pre-approved writeup for each summoned creature was pretty much a no-brainer. Requiring pre-approval (with the proviso that emergencies will allow some flexibility) pretty much solved most of the abuse problems with both of those powers, and some of the most interesting and successful characters we ever had, used those powers thereafter. C

Re: Balance versus flavour The thing I always liked about Champions was that it does not have pre-defined roles. It doesn't force characters into such a role, and as a result, I have always found much more variety from one game to the next, than in D&D. Now of course, within the group there may not be that much variety in the short term. For example, in D&D you will often have a team consisting of say, a Fighter, a Wizard, a Rogue, and a Cleric. In Champions, you may not see as stark a difference between the "Energy Projector" and the "Martial Artist" as you do between Wizard and Rogue. But... over the years, if your game group plays long enough, you'll notice that all Rogues are essentially the same, all Wizards end up learning basically the same suite of spells, all fighters end up using the same weapons (some kind of sword, usually) and armor (some kind of magic plate). On the other hand, no two Energy Projector type characters are the same. No two Martial Artists are the same... they will be very different from each other. The other thing not having defined "archetypes" built into the game does, is it gives the players freedom to do unusual things or to "hybridize." D&D has a very limited form of this with things like, being a Fighter/Rogue, but even there, almost all Fighter/Rogues will essentially be the same. On the other hand, in Champions I have seen some VERY wierd stuff... like the guy whose super-power was to take newspapers, fold them into shapes, and transform them into full-sized creatures that matched the shape, and that then served him in combat (Summon, Charges, Fragile, etc). In other games, the designers make up pre-existing "cool stuff" like fireball spells or swords of vorpal madness, and the players and GMs "pick" from that pre-existing cool stuff when building characters, NPCs, etc. In Champions/Hero, you can buy source books with pre-existing cool stuff, but you don't need to (and we rarely did) -- you can just make whatever you want up as you go, using the fundamental building blocks. I find this leads to far more unique and unusual (and interesting) ideas than anything the game designers of most games can come up with. C

Re: Regen Regeneration in 5th ed is the way it is because they (for some reason I will never understand) decided to remove the actual Regeneration Power (I re-instituted it in my campaign, and the link gives you the text of the old Power from 4th ed), but realized they needed to have some way to have regeneration, since it is such a common Power in Champions. So they made this bass-ackward, super-complicated modification to the rule that takes them 3/4 of a page to explain, when the old Regeneration Power accomplished the same thing (better, actually) in a few sentences. I will never understand what the "benefit" was of getting rid of Instant Change and Regeneration and turning them into very complex variants of other Powers. It provides no good I can detect, and ends up taking far more lines of text both in the game rules and on character sheets, to accomplish exactly the same thing. The Regeneration rules in particular are so insanely complicated now, for no good reason, that my game group (all old school Champions players who just bought 5th edition recently) were acually laughing at the rulebook over it. There was not even any question about whether we would use the 5th ed version of Regeneration. It's a silly formulation. My advice would be to just institute "old school Regeneration." That's what I did. C

Re: Total Darkness Sight Yup. This is how we do "Classic N-Ray Vision" in my campaign (i.e., old-school N-ray, which was an unusual sense, not a sight sense). I give players the option of buying it the "5th edition way", and making it a sight sense, but then it gets blocked by anything that blocks Sight senses... Or buying it for 32 pts and keeping it "Unusual", and then it is only blocked by something that for +5 points "blocks N-Ray." And since N-Ray has to define one thing that it can't see through, you're all set with the blockage business. C

Re: What is special about this? The category is there as a guide. The fact that the GM has to give special permission to allow Special Powers into Frameworks means he has to think about it. That tells the GM that the designers think this isn't a great idea, and that it can be unbalancing... and so he should be cautious and not just willy-nilly allow it without at least considering whether it could cause some imbalances. If they remove it and turn them all into Special Powers, what happens is this: Vet GMs who know what the Special Powers used to be, will keep a careful eye on whether those Powers should be placed into Frameworks, etc, and New GMs, not knowing this, won't know to keep an eye on it. To be honest, if they got rid of the designation, I'd just add a new House Rule to my campaign that re-defined the former Special Powers back into Special Powers, and I would rule that these may not, without special permission, be placed into Frameworks. I.e., I'd just re-institute the rule even if they removed it -- because I think it's a good rule. It's done that way because Special Powers inside Frameworks can be abusively powerful if not done right. In fact in my current campaign's house rules, I re-instituted the old forms of Instant Change and Regeneration, in part for this reason: so that they would become, once again, Special Powers, as I believe they ought to be, rather than variants of Standard Powers (Healing, Transform). I also re-defined Multi-Form as a Special Power because I don't think it ought to be put into Frameworks. This points out another use of the designation. If I don't want a Power -- any Power -- placed into a Framework, all I have to do is make a house rule that re-defines it from a Standard, Mental, etc, Power, into a Special Power. That automatically brings all the rulings on Special Powers into effect without me having to re-state every one of them. C

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... This thread his huge... but enjoyable. I have a simple one. We had one guy who was an awesome GM and player, and made great characters, but really bad at naming them. He had martial arts villains named (I kid you not), "The Ninja", "Ninja", "Ninja Man", and "Ninja Master." You get the idea. So this player made up a hero who had telepathy and empathy powers, and called him "Telempath." Everyone thought it was a goofy name but he was rather sensitive by this point so nobody said much to him. One day Telempath, the team leader, got out there and delivered a blistering soliloquy to the villains and made a nice PRE attack. One of the other characters turned to him and slapped him on the back and said, "You tell 'em, path!" We all about died laughing... even the guy playing Telempath. C

Re: Best superhero game thread poll: Go Vote Yes that was what is known as hyperbole, or emphasizing how much I love Champions above any other game I've ever played. C

Re: An Old Quiz, But A Nice One. You scored as Storyteller. You're more inclined toward the role playing side of the equation and less interested in numbers or experience points. You're quick to compromise if you can help move the story forward, and get bored when the game slows down for a long planning session. You want to play out a story that moves like it's orchestrated by a skilled novelist or film director. Storyteller 92% Method Actor 83% Specialist 67% Tactician 58% Casual Gamer 33% Power Gamer 25% Butt-Kicker 8% BTW -- nice quiz! Great find. C

Re: Best superhero game thread poll: Go Vote And so because you no longer like Hero the best, the fact that I do makes my approach "small-minded?" I'm not sure it's reasonable to refer to having a clear favorite being "small-minded." By that line of reasoning, anyone who's a Bears fan and cheers them on over all other teams is "small-minded." To be blunt I might somewhat agree with you if you were to say the current incarnation of the Hero system is no longer all that great. I have said elsewhere (to the point people are likely sick of it) that I far preferred Champions (by which I mean actual Champions, when the game was only a superhero game, and before they added all this other "Hero System" junk). The reason I say this is that tons of stuff has been added to the game deliberately to make it generic, converting what was once a highly specialized and perfected superhero RPG system, to just a different form of GURPS. I actually wish Hero hadn't gone down this road, but I'm probably in the minority. When it comes to superhero RPGs though, Champions is far and away my favorite. Nothing else comes close to it that I have tried. If that's gonna classify me as "small-minded," then I'll accept the title. C

Re: "Point inflation" in Hero A lot of it may have been how my group played. But that's sort of my point. In the 2nd ed era, a lot was left up to the GM and players. In later editions, less and less has been left open to interpretation, and much more has been set out in black and white. And I'm not sure that's a good thing. I preferred the freedom. Yes, you can still do what you want. But now that involves throwing out existing rules which is much harder for players and GMs to bring themselves to do, rather than just making stuff up to fill in the existing gaps, which is something GMs and players do more easily. C

Re: "Point inflation" in Hero I suppose our group has always subordinated lists of skills to well-written and comprehensive (and interesting) backgrounds. And to be honest we felt like this was not our idea but was encouraged by the Champions writers and AC article writers. And I still feel this way. That's why in my Campaign rules I list first and as most important, what you're supposed to put in the background fields, and only get to the points 3/4 of the way down the page. I suppose to some the points are guides, and to others the points are gods. I fall firmly into the former group. C

Re: "Point inflation" in Hero That's true to a point. However, in a 2nd edition Champions world, where the points are not THERE to slap onto the sheet, these things sort of HAD to be in the background. If my friend wanted his character to be "rich", there was no place else to put it but in the background. Similarly, if he wanted to be a military Lieutennant, there was no place else to put it but in the background. Thus I think that the over-abundance of these sorts of things in the game has led to players skimping more nowadays than they used to. If you can pay 5 points and be "rich", some players will just do that, and others will do that and write it in the background. But if you couldn't pay points for it, 100% of all "rich" characters would have to have it listed in the background. To see that this is not just a phantom of my imagination, look at the example of Dr. Destroyer. In the first version of him (pre-4th) he had no music skills but his music was listed in his background. In the current incarnation of him, he has the music skill, but it's left out of the background. So it's not just that players are skimping on their backgrounds, but that the rules, as written, are sort of (without doing this on purpose or deliberately) encouraging them to do so... or at least enabling them to do so. C

Re: Character sheet -- comments requested Oh my! That is wonderful! Yes, it looks just like 2nd edition's layout. /cheer C

Re: Best superhero game thread poll: Go Vote That was my thought too. Champions has always, to my mind, been the beginning, middle, and end of Superhero roleplaying. Yes, I know there technically exist other superhero RPGs (DC heroes, Marvel, COH for online play, etc). But honestly compared to Champions and the Hero system, every other one is laughable. I can't imagine anyone who's ever actually played Champions, ever considering any other superhero RPG as good, let alone better. C