Gnome BODY (important!)

I did. I don't see a single instance of the word "Abort" on page 86 of 6e2. I don't see any text granting an exemption to the normal "You cannot Abort after using your Actions" rule. All I see is a discussion of the very specific case of serial DFCs. Please quote the text you're talking about if I'm missing it. Edit: On rereading, I don't even think it's an exception for Aborting. It seems to be talking about DFCs in multiple Segments and talking about if a character can DFC while still prone from their last DFC.

It doesn't matter if you can Abort to the action when you Abort, you can't Abort at all if you've already taken an Attack Action or otherwise used all your Half-Phase Actions this Segment. And most things you'd Abort to are Attack Actions. Dodge, Block, et al are Attack Actions despite not being "attacks".

It feels to me like there's an obvious blind spot for "Knowledge Disadvantages" which are like PsyLims but involve knowing things and INT rolls to overcome.

If a taser can subdue somebody well enough to let the taser-er handcuff the taser-ee, a taser can also subdue somebody well enough to let the taser-er drop a brick through the taser-ee's face. The ability to incapacitate inherently provides the ability to incapacitate and then kill. If, and this if is theoretical and I don't believe for a second applies in this case, the prospective taser-ee believes the prospective taser-er intends to follow up a tasering with further violence then the taser should absolutely be thought of as a lethal weapon. If, and I wish this were unqualified, the police officer can be trusted to not use unnecessary force on the taser-ee after tasering them then the taser is clearly a non-lethal weapon.

VPPs must have a tightly defined SFX. No vaguely defined "cosmic power VPP (does anything)" or "magic VPP (does anything)". You, the player, cannot have the Extra Time Limitation. When your Phase comes up, you either have the thing you want to VPP fully built or you're not VPPing that thing right now. These were in response to the guy who took a Cosmic "magic" VPP as his character's only mode of combat and would take three minutes just to figure out that Fireball is RKA 2d6 AoE. It was horrible.

Barton, would you mind elaborating on those teaching techniques? My group is (well, was, until COVID) getting a lot of newbies coming through and I can't shake the thought that we're not teaching them as well as we could. Retention of information in particular is very poor among our players.

In my experience, the process goes something like this: Two weeks before session 1: Tell the players that hey, we're shifting GMs for a bit and it was a major story arc we just finished, switch PCs if you want but get me the sheet by [one week before session 1]. One week before session 1: I have one PC's sheet. Ask the players for their sheets ASAP. Plan anyways, hope to get sheets soon. Week leading up to session 1: Complete silence from the players. Session 1: All but one player sends me their sheet day-of, generally no more than two hours before game starts. Plans are already finalized. Half the PCs have obvious issues that require immediate attention to fix, so there's no time to work the game around the PCs. The last player seems utterly determined to not hand over their character sheet, for reasons beyond anyone's knowledge. After session 1: Too angry at players refusing to provide sheets to give a flying fornication about working them in.

I've noticed that lasers in Heroic books have that Limitation and lasers in Superheroic books don't.

Then I don't have enough information to guess if your trick will be allowed and you should talk to your GM.

Q: How much damage are you going to deal? Q: What's your DC cap? A: Well there you go then.

Maybe this is true in the case of your players, but it's not a universality. Many players take Limitations for other reasons. The two big reasons I see at my table are "This Limitation is necessary to simulate the effects the Power should have. I can't not take it without changing the concept." and "I need points and am willing to deal with this Limitation.".

Of course it would be a Limitation. Let's just go down the list of things it does to aid the enemy. - The enemy knows it's there. Foes likely to run into the DR are going to know it, as will foes with attacks likely to bypass it. Anyone with a relevant Adjustment Power is going to know they've got a target. - The enemy knows the SFX. For example, nobody's going to use a NND: Forcefield attack on somebody with DR defined as a visible forcefield. It wouldn't do anything and they know it! But they might have wasted a shot if the forcefield wasn't obvious. - The enemy knows your SFX. If Electroweak Man's forcefield is bright and glowy, it shows the world (or at least the parts of it that can pass a SS roll) he has electroweak force based powers. - Everyone nearby knows if your combat powers are active. Secret ID stuff, social stuff, disguise stuff, all sorts of fun implications. And more, this is just a minute's thoughts on obvious things.

I think this generally comes down to player agency and having actions matter. The PCs need to have an impact. Player decisions need to matter. And that means that when a thing happens involving the PCs, it should both follow from the PCs interacting with the world and not get undone on a whim later. 1) Being captured generally implies having lost. I don't think anyone in my group would object to losing if it felt fair. But that's the big sticking point. How do you create a fight where the PCs are going to lose without making it feel like the GM is scheming to force a loss instead of it being a legitimate "Could have done better, our bad" moment? Remember, the feelings are more important than the facts here. You're also assuming stables of characters. Two-thirds of the players in my group only have one PC each. "Hey, play another guy for a bit" is very different from "Hey, make a new guy". I've also run players through a "So between sessions, you were captured. By your teachers, you're in superschool and they know all your tricks. Yes, this is a test. Escape before your grade starts dropping!" and they enjoyed it. Maybe someday I'll try a full grown superheroes version. 2,3) My group doesn't care about this. We've had revolving doors for ages and nobody's batted an eye. I think most of this is that we've never hated a villain. We've never had a foe who we felt needed to be vanquished for good. No Joker killing thousands, no Doctor Destroyer leveling cities, just supercrooks. So consequently we've never felt "Yes! We did good today!" only to have it get flipped around and be told "No, your actions didn't actually matter". 4,5) See 1, execution and presentation and reaction are the god-kings. If it feels to the players that there was no chance to catch the traitor / save the hostage / catch the crook, they're going to be rightfully pissed.

That's not a problem, that's just setting everyone else up for success!

How do we balance the need to keep initial stages simple with the need to show HERO in it's best light and give the strongest start possible? If we start the complexity too high, there's no point in "easing in" the rest. We'll have lost interest. But if we don't include enough of what makes HERO great, we won't have a strong hook and will suffer losses of interest. Repeating this question. I have an interactive digital character sheet with integrated rules references that I'm working on. If we can do this legally, I'd be open to providing my sheet which should be a huge help for players trying to learn the rules.

I don't mean to wet-blanket the idea I chipped in on and think is great, but are we allowed to make and distribute this? I know the Hall of Champions license forbids reprinting core rules. Is the plan to get a different license for this (and if so, how are you going to get the IP rights from the people who help make it)? Or are you planning it as a pile of page references?

I'm very amused that you're accusing me of rules-fudgery and then repeating my solution as the RaW approach.

Good work! Nice to see people focusing on the new folks. >General Advice When Creating Champions/Hero System Characters No criticism, seems solid. >How much, how big You are using numbers here, and if the reader is in a game with different benchmarks following your advice will cause them problems. I strongly recommend removing the numbers. For that matter, you haven't even talked about campaign benchmarks here. I can't speak for all campaigns, but ED tends to be equal to PD at my table. I'd mention that because defenses are subtraction and tend to be a significant % of a capped attack, losing even a couple dice really hurts your damage output. >How to Win More numbers here. I'd recommend switching to formulas. You're missing a conversation on the topic of NNDs and how high your CON should be to not get Stunned by NNDs. Also how to not chump to Coordinated Attacks. If you're suggesting ranged characters hang back in range-penalty-land, you should also suggest range PSLs. >Reducing Costs I'd recommend waving newbies away from Activation Roll, RSR, and well anything that involves more dicing. I'd also recommend recommending they keep the Limitations off their main attack and defense so they don't have to worry about sudden inability to function on the battlefield. What I'd Like To See Added A section on Skills: Numbers, what everyone should have compared to what specialists should have, using Powers as super-Skills. Talk about effect-first and how to go from description to effect to write-up.

Sure it applies. Execute a "Target Falls" maneuver with the Leaping UAA. The maneuver knocks the target prone, the Leaping hurls the target into the distance. The end result is that the target has been thrown a distance and lands prone.

FREDp364 right at the end of the page, 6E2p25 also right at the end of the page. Subheading of "MOVEMENT AND STRENGTH".

There's a huge difference between "this book which the GM may not have or feel is appropriate to the campaign contains optional rules that let you do this" and "it's right there in core". Now that the job is done, let's put away the tools.

Wasn't aware that Shove, Trip, and Throw were added to 6e's core maneuver set! Thank you for pointing that out. I feel at that point there's not much value in retaining MA. There's some things that can't be replicated like Flying Dodge, Grappling Block, and Defensive Throw, but I'm vaguely expecting that they're all things that shouldn't be retained or aren't interesting enough to retain.

That would absolutely do it.

I don't feel that "I Martial Strike!" is more flavorful than "I Strike!". I've experienced the opposite occasionally, actually. Players with MA seem more likely to describe their attack via the maneuver while players without MA on their sheet don't know they're using the Strike maneuver so are more likely to use a narrative term as their verb. I see a lot of "I Martial Strike!" "I Defensive Strike!" compared to "I slash him!" "I clobber him!". The implicit narrative of "What's your MA Style, anyways?" can just be moved to "Hey, when making your character, tell me what martial art they favor or gimme a sentence or two about how they fight.". Yes, of course. I've never said "THOU SHALT PLAY MY WAY". I'm trying hard to put an "I feel" or "I believe" in when I'm talking about this because not doing it the way I would isn't objectively wrong, it's just not the way I'd want things to be. Also, you're sure very talkative on this subject for somebody not in the mood to argue!

Duke's objections to MA seem to mirror my objections and I entered with 5th. I feel that most MA maneuvers are CV/CSLs pretending they're something fancier. There's a few things MA does that CV/CSLs don't but I feel those should be killed (such as FMove) or moved to distinct universally-available maneuvers (such as Target Falls).