Nekkidcarpenter

The post credit scenes I won't spoil might generate some interest but... 
 
The thing is, having characters that are Marvel comic book guys doesn't really make them feel like an MCU film.  The fun quality does.  Guardians was different but... kind of in a bad way, that has in my opinion tarnished every marvel film since then.

Seems like a reasonable SFX for Aborting to Block, or even Dodge, against an attack with a physical manifestation. If the attack misses due to the aborted action, it's shot out of the air.

That restriction was introduced in 2e Champions. It blocked one of the major bugs in 1e - the perpetual motion machine you could create by buying, say, 10 000 Con, and selling back almost all of the resulting figured characteristics. Or you could buy 20 000, 100 000, a million... You could do the same thing with Str.

Of course there were other ways to block it. Capping the value of Str or Con you could buy would do the trick (well enough). You might also need to make sure any limitations the character had on their Str and Con were strictly enforced.
 
Obviously this is just sensible GM vetting of characters - but having such a bug in the rules as written is a blatant invitation for players to try it on - and not all GMs would spot the issue or deal with it well.

Jolly Blackburn for Knights of the Dinner Table
 
Would Rich Burlew qualify for Order of the Stick ?

I believe it's a series.  I enjoy this silliness because,like Deadpool, it is general kept apart from the more serious superheroing.  Doom Patrol is like this as well.  Though DP is just downright wacky, moreso than going for funny.  Of course, if Peacemaker is as brilliantly written as Doom Patrol then I will be pleasantly surprised.

Yeah a Gm has to keep a close watch on it like many powers, such as saying "if you always have that stat at that level, you should buy that stat up, not use aid as an end run around it."

Standout moments:
 
Monster-Hunter All-Stars: Ghost Rider leapt onto the Scorpion King's back and "possessed" him as a vehicle. Scorpion King lit on fire, and Ghost Rider rode him into battle against Lo Pan and Beetlejuice.
 
Cereal Killers: Sonny the Cuckoo was almost "zoggied" (zombie Soggy) by the lactic undead (only 2 points of transformation BODY left out of 13), and with no apparent way to cure him (Lucky the Leprechaun's magic kept backfiring on him), Count Chocula slit his own wrist to force-feed Sonny some undead chocolate blood. (Some Chocoholics Anonymous sponsor he turned out to be!)
 
Meep on the Borderland: Squawk (Big Bird as a Gladiator) was airborne out of reach of most attacks, so Polearm (Sweetums as a Monk) leapt up and took a swing with his giant staff, but barely connected. Savage (Animal as a Barbarian) leapt on Sweetums and ran up the staff at just the perfect moment of its swing, and took out Squawk with a well-placed war club.
 
Spideys on Infinite Earths: Being hunted by extra-dimensional Inheritors who eat spider-life-energy, Agent Venom: Space Knight (legless Flash Thompson bonded with a cured symbiote) decides that since the weird multi-space vampires are used to hunting only Spider-Men types, that he should approach the situation is as un-Parker-like as he can, so he sets up with his alien sniper rifle and pegs Morlun in the back of the head.
 
 
 
 

"It is I, Collateral Damage Man!!" as we break into a mansion to liberate a captive there.

Because THAT was a beloved classic?  The only interesting things about the original show was that it was called 'The Kato Show' in China, and that the writers would sometimes use the same jokes in both Batman and the Hornet.
 

My sister died of COVID this morning. So god damn pointless and preventable.  

For me the problem is that those kinds of large sweeping setting are useless to me.  Except to weigh down a shelf and collect dust.
 
Adventures do no happen at that scale.  A smaller setting book that actually has smaller focused information is far far more useful.  The Sword Coast is what?  The map is around 1200 miles north/south and maybe 600 miles east/west not including the ocean.  The islands are in an area around 300 miles N/S and 100-150 miles E/W?  And even then the SC is an immense area where most of it will never be actually used.  And yet so many settings seems to think mapping out and entire world in even broader wide strokes is "better"??
 
While not perfect, Sword Coast is the best modern setting of it's type.  A broad high level overview of area.  And then individual supplements that combine setting and adventure information for specific locations.  But even then the setting info is suitably imprecise allowing the individual GM to tinker or ignore easily. 
 
Speaking of Hero products, and this is my personal opinion, they suffer from the "Far Far Far Too Much" syndrome.  Too much detail. Too much density.  Far too intertwined.  Too much in on book to effectively use.  If you decide that "blah blah" is not right for you campaign and decide to remove it, the removal is far more effort than you can expend for a weekend game because instances and influences of "blah blah" are throughout the product and you begin to drown in removal and replacement "fixes".   And even if you decide to run it as is, the details and density of text mandates the expenditure of more effort than was required for your most daunting real world professional requirement.   I was able to read/skim the Sword Coast plus an adventure in a single afternoon and ran session zero the next day.  I spent an entire weekend with Narosia, which I had to READ, and after getting through the 2nd culture, took a look and realized there were a bazillion to go.  So it went on the shelf and I was all "D&D it is". 
 
In the games that you actually play, Medieval Stasis isn't really relevant.  If you are slogging down the muddy track between villages on the frontier of the Kingdom Blah Blah, the fact that there is a ruin from the Ancient Ones really doesn't matter.  Even if the GM has turned the ruin into a dungeon.  But to the PC's and the current regular NPC's the exact history is irrelevant.  Oh the GM could easily make up myths and legends for entertainment.  But unless it is to set up a quest, none of the players will care about the "history".  Heck they will not care about any of the surrounding kingdoms/nations/tribes unless their PC's actually need to do something there or counter something here.   The only purpose for extensive timelines or deep histories satisfy the author and provided casual reading for the GM's.  Since reading the complete setting/adventure book by the players should never be done since it would spoil the game, just what value to the weekly session is knowing that 45,000 years before your adventure that the High King Blah Blah rules the Kingdom of Who Cares?
 
As an intellectual exercise Medieval Stasis exists.  But what practical or impractical value does that 1000 pages of minutia have for tomorrows afternoon game session.   Especially when the participants of that afternoon games session are only able to scrape up four hours every two weeks to game and the GM will only be able to dedicate maybe an hour to prep.   That is the market.  
One hour prep for a four hour session every two weeks. 
 
People will spend a couple weeks to read through a RPG's rules.  Not sit down and study them, but to read a few pages here and there over a period of a couple weeks.  Once they believe they know enough they will see if they can get their friends to make PC's.  And if the session zero takes more time than their normal session or the PC's do not intrigue the players enough during that session zero they will not play it. 
 
IF the GM manages to lead the players successfully out the other side of session zero, then he must be able to run the four hour session with one hour of prep for the campaign.  
 
That is why D&D 5th is dominating.  The average GM can prep for today's session with an hour of prep.  Each Adventure book may have six to ten individual encounters, but the DM only needs to read the one they are playing today.  For League night it was common for each tables DM to arrive about an hour early and prep right at the table before the players get there. 
 
Does D&D's world have a long and detailed history?  Yes, after all the game has been around since the 70's and carries all the baggage and detail that comes with it.  Did WotC immediately inject all of the history into their 5th product?  No.  The selected a tiny slice of part of it, boiled it down to just what a DM and players might need and published that.  Medieval Stasis?  I don't know because the info I am using today doesn't really talk about enough that it would come up.
 

Agreed.  Many limitations become far less limiting when all they mean is "only out of combat".  10x END?  Who cares if you can just recover after.  Activate 8-?  So what? You can just keep trying.  Even if you need to roll a 3, that's 1 chance in 216.  For a 2 SPD character, that's less than half an hour, on average, to roll a 3.  [2 phases per turn x 5 turns per minute = 10 so 600 tries an hour]  Extra time, 5 minutes?  Meaningless when you have all day.
 
If the resurrection means "he'll be back in time for the next significant scene", nailing down the phase by phase process isn't needed.
 
If, however, we envision recovery from death so rapid that they may be up and running in a turn, these questions become vastly more important.
 
Why do I keep seeing a Steve Long Rules Q answer of "if the GM is going to allow in-combat resurrection, the GM will need to figure out detailed rules for that."

Depends on the Organization.  Viper, and UNTIL would have very skilled agents and good equipment, same with domestic and foreign Militaries. Some might have skilled agents but poor equipment. (New Villains, and Martial Arts based villains), And some may have good Equipment and poor skills (Like AIM in the comics, they are competent, but not very skilled tactically), or they may have have poor skills and poor equipment, (Like a Criminal gang, hired by a single villain, the typical popcorn minions). The level of the agents the Heroes are going up against, should reflect the level of the opposing BBEG they are going up against. I tend to make competent agents a threat to give pause to the heroes, that they have to take seriously, but then I tend not to do Silver Age flavored campaigns.

This is my go to power to simulate Duplication.  Physical manifestation of TK plus alterable origin point for sense groups.

As I understand the effect, you don't roll dice.  The victim just dies.
 
I'd say it's a physical complication: Dies if control signal is sent. (Infrequently, Fully)

So me and my friend are getting into this and I want to know what the best way to do that is. I bought the BR, the Character Creation book, and the Combat and Adventuring book. I started to read the BR but do I have read all of the books in their entirety?

Don't get me wrong,  I like the two Templates book but certainly not for the layout of the character sheets. Something I particularly dislike about 6E (and I like 6E) is the "wall of characteristics". If a sheet simply lists all the 17 primaries and secondaries in a big block with no attempt to divide them by functions, it's 2 strikes against the sheet in my book.

Liquid paint does require special disposal, but do you know what doesn't?  Painted pieces of broken shed.  Don't bother brushing or rolling it, just pour some on a dry surface and wait for the surface to dry.  Repeat till the paint is gone.
 
And don't stand around watching it dry.  You've had enough trauma.
 

1. Theater of the mind is perfectly fine for Champions.  Some people really want to measure things out and try to place their area effect powers so that they hit in the optimal position, but combats can already be time-intensive, and extra detail can be a huge fun killer.
 
2.  There is a quick start guide available on this site.
 
3. If you look at the Champions GM screen, you'll see a huuuge section devoted to Presence Attacks.  Read up on them, use them.  Few things equal the fun of your hulk wannabe character smashing a car and stunning everyone into a momentary paralysis.
 

Hi John. Sorry to hear you are having difficulties. The script should be in one Click on Tuesday. It has been updated so you will need the new JSON export to go with it. If you want to send me a copy of the HD file for the character I will do an export and try it out to make sure the script itself is not getting hung up on something. I had a few bugs with odd characters in the JSON export that could be your issue as well.
 
Edit: I will also update my gihub with the latest .js and HD JSON export format today.
 
- E

1. Theater of the mind is perfectly fine for Champions.  Some people really want to measure things out and try to place their area effect powers so that they hit in the optimal position, but combats can already be time-intensive, and extra detail can be a huge fun killer.
 
2.  There is a quick start guide available on this site.
 
3. If you look at the Champions GM screen, you'll see a huuuge section devoted to Presence Attacks.  Read up on them, use them.  Few things equal the fun of your hulk wannabe character smashing a car and stunning everyone into a momentary paralysis.
 

I'm sorry I missed this conversation (having written the Narosia book). 
 
My original pitch to DOJ for Narosia was to be an all-in-one intro to fantasy hero with all of the systematic decisions already made (magic works like THIS, equipment works like THIS, etc.). We succeeded on that point. However, I think it ended up being too much. The tenets of my design philosophy were:
The world needed to make sense. It is a deconstruction of dungeon crawling. Why dungeons? Why tougher monsters the deeper you go? Why don't the monsters overwhelm the surface world? Hand players a ready to play game powered by the Hero System. The GM needed to be able to easily keep the history of the world in their head. Not the details, but the framework.  What could have been better was the accessibility of it all. It's absolutely a fair criticism that maybe it's too much. That is the consequence of trying to make it complete (which it isn't, actually). I developed the Quickstart character building system (and have a generic Fantasy Hero version of it) to facilitate rapid character development. At cons I would run a Narosia Quickstart: build a character in 45 min and then play for 1:15 (2 hour slot) or 3:15 (4 hour slot). I was always successful. Absent such a system, which is fairly comprehensive in its character options, you end up with classic decision paralysis unless you know how to play Hero. 
 
Still, there is a lot there. I built 2 (arguably 4) magic systems for the game. The feel of each system was exactly what I wanted, and conceptually a Skill based magic system where you pay only 1 point for a spell proficiency seems simple enough. Looking at it now, there is a lot of detail (which provided 100s of hours of fun for us), but that detail can still be overwhelming. In many ways I traded one set of complexity (building Hero powers) with a different one. The magic systems are still complex, but in a different way from core Hero. Is that a positive or negative? Entirely subjective. 
 
I still run Narosia, and learned a lot from writing it. I have worked on Narosia 2.0 because I see how it can be better, simpler, and more unique and inclusive.

There are constructs in the book (like race) that don't need to be. The cosmology can be simpler and cleaner. 

 
Now, even with greater simplicity, does that serve the Fantasy Hero Quickstart objective? No, not really. I wanted it to be that, but no 500 page rulebook can be that. 
 
Ideally, something with an edited Hero System Basic ruleset + fantasy character building + basic magic + adventure is what I'd like to see. 
My Fantasy Hero Quick Start is 38 pages with very little padding (that covers characters, magic, and equipment). Add that to 138 pages of basic + 32 page adventure and that's a 200 page book. 
 
Here's the question I would pose: why make such a product?
 
I dreamed once of winning the hearts and minds of gamers over to Hero to have the type of gaming experiences I've been lucky to have. I don't think that's realistic. Hero does what it does in its way and those that engage with it will like it or not. At the end of the day if the 4-6 players at the table don't engage with it, the point is kind of moot. I think we can always win over 1-2 players at any table, but winning them all is really difficult, and everyone has to WANT to play the game that operates the way Hero does or the campaign fails. Especially when player expectations of online tools, online content, and accessibility is such that the legacy of Hero I don't believe can match. Nor should it. 

I've got 3 active projects right now:
1. Narosia 2.0
2. NOVA6
3. Atomic Sky
 
Narosia 2.0 and Atomic Sky drove the development of NOVA6. I'm super happy with that game and I run it weekly. It's just about ready to launch (and you can find it on the website in its most recent version). It isn't Hero, but it is a descendant of Hero. It addresses the accessibility aspect, with rapid time to play that I feel doesn't lose much from a fantasy hero experience (at least). We finished the Narosia grand campaign in NOVA6 (meaning the original playtesters going through Village of Gillkas, to the Library of Baradahm, and finally Act 3, all in NOVA6) and it works. I will say,  however, that it is a different experience than the Hero version of Narosia, all good, but not necessarily "better" (depending on what you want out of the game). 

NOVA6, especially in its more detailed version (which we call NOVA6 Expanded and aren't moving forward with), was tailored for Narosia and Atomic Sky. However, I didn't like how it played for Atomic Sky (dieselpunk atomic apocalypse). So... Atomic Sky drifted into other directions, other systems. At one point it was going to be its own system (*shudder*, like I need to make ANOTHER system). It was in D&D 5E (and working, and would, I think, be attractive to a wide audience there). But I didn't like it. I only ever really liked it in Hero. Years ago I did a full conversion (well, full-ish) of Fallout and S.T.A.L.K.E.R., both of which I ran on the con circuit for years and had a ton of fun (and are still on my website). So, I've come back around to Atomic Sky being in Hero and, thinking through it, having it be essentially PA Hero 6E. However, I'm not going to replicate all that material since I think it is largely unnecessary. What I will do is use that material to make a complete setting book (no integrated rules), make the campaign decisions about how powers and such work, and then build out scavenging and campaign guidelines for what Atomic Sky is about. I want power-armor character, scrappy snipers, monstrous mutants, synths, high tech, and low life, scrabbling for survival with hope for a higher purpose. Hero GMs can build on that material (or not). 

I've learned a lot on this journey, and I'm happy to be focusing on Hero again. This time my objective is different: I want to make something I, as a Hero fan, enjoy playing and hope to bring some of you along with me. I'm not trying to win over non-hero players (like I was with Narosia). And this experience will likely result in a Narosia 2.0 that is also more of a service to this community rather than tilting at the windmills of winning over D&D players to Hero.
 
They'll join us if they want, because they see us smiling, shouting, and having fun at that "table over there" rather than challenging them that they are engaging in wrongfun and that we know better. 

If it takes a special detect to hear it, I wouldnt consider it as a Disadvantage at all.  It qouls be like taking "can be seen behind walls by characters with X-Ray vision" as a Disadvantage.
 
Still, its a neat idea. 
 
Now if all the "major players" can just hear it be default, or if anyone with this soundtrack can hear anyone else with it....  Well, even then, i'd be hard-pressed to call it a Disadvantage since its more of a "thats just how the world works" kind of thing.
 
I would definately see the disadvabtage if ony major players had the soundtrack but everyone could hear it, but I can see the upsise too, particulalry for characters with a strong reputation (and it would prerty much wreck any chance of having a secret identity.    :😆  .  even then, though, I think a middle-of-the-road distinctive features would cover it.
 
 
but don't worry: someone will be along shortly to explain why I am wrong.