pawsplay

I don't agree "we" won the military conflict. The Civil War was fought between two slave-owning powers. At the conclusion of the war, the two powers were stitched back together and slavery was nominally ended. The Confederacy for its part wanted nothing less than the perpetual, state-enshrined institution of racialized slavery. The Union, for its part, wanted to be maintain military and economic strength, at virtually any price. At the beginning of the war, the Union notoriously tolerated a "contraband" policy, and at the end of the war, slavery did not exist in the South but shambled on for some time in the North. Some of the last slaves of that era were in Washington, DC. That is the legacy of the Civil War: absolutely omnipresent racism, oppression of blacks and other minorities, and the expansion of the imperial state. The Civil War dealt a grievous war but did not end it. Slavery exists now. Systemic oppression of African-Americans continues.

In my opinion, the Champions Now way is that if you can do just do lots of wild, varied stuff, you should do Variable. Plastic-Man? VPP. Hawkeye? VPP. Green Lantern? VPP.

Do you think Sith lightning is a cone AoE?

I will accept this description if you consider MS Office to be a below-medium app.

I think a simple punch would be an eligible choice, I'm just not coming up with reasons to apply Find Weakness to that. It seems like any kind of mystical or scientific or whatever punch would probably be a Martial Strike already.

In Champions Now, Endurance cost is by power points. There is nothing in the Modifiers suggestion that suggests they affect END, except for special cases. This is different from most Hero System games.

My suggestion is to do this as a fan project, then use your Internet fame to boost other projects you want to do with more commercial potential.

Pregens are cool, but generally I just expect players to submit their characters a week before the game starts.

i think it robs something of the experience for players not to at least try to come up with spells, Psychs, etc.

That sounds like a lot of work. It also means the players don't have to think about tradeoffs, and don't get to. Okay for newish players. I personally don't have that kind of time.

Dark Champions is arguably the genre of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (graphical lit, not the kiddie cartoons).

The other way to discourage everyone from playing a mage is having powers medium-costly both in terms of points and requirements. Which takes us back to the OP: Multipowers aren't generally used in FH because they are too "easy" and tend to be thematically weak, not because they are inherently more powerful.

Simple: "Victory" sign while gazing at your target. Complex: ASL interpretation for The Realm Slim Shady while twirling your Focus (burning censer)

If you have to do the Hokey Pokey, that's arguably Restrainable as well.

I can actually think of a lots of spellcasting protagonists, even part timers. Lythande, from Thieves World, swordsman-mage; Grey Mouser, thief-fighter-magic-user; Harry Potter, ace pilot and wizard; Luke Skywalker, ace pilot and wizard; Willow, farmer/rogue/wizard. A lot of this goes back to the Combat Luck controversy. Sometimes, it is inappropriate. But in high action games, when your dodgy characters get hit, they don't usually go down in one hit, and that's what Combat Luck does for you. Different options make sense for different campaigns. Some campaigns might ban Variable Power Pool. Others might require ALL spells to be Variable Power Pool. Some campaigns might ban Multipower. Others might require it for the standard set of magic spells.