BoloOfEarth

Looks solid. 
 
I'd personally also mention that a Champions character starts strong and gets minor improvements whereas as D&D character generally starts weak and gets significant improvements.  What you start with matters, since you'll be using it for the character's lifespan.  This is also a significant part of why a Champions character takes longer to make: It's like starting at high level. 
 
I'd also suggest setting up your tone.  If you're going Silver Age, things like "Fights aren't to the death.  Killing people is bad and wrong and not heroic.  Heroes knock the villain out and arrest them, not shoot them and dump their body at the police office." in the introductory document can go a long way towards establishing the tone you want.  There's a bunch of takes on superhero out there, the last thing you want is somebody bringing The Gunisher to your idealistic Justice League-esq game. 

I'm waiting until Phase 12, because that's when the action really starts.

I think the "special snowflake" is a person with an inflated sense of how important he/she is, and feels entitled to special treatment.

Reading this, I was reminded of a bit from one of the Dream Park books, where the rookie GM is complaining to the more experienced GM that the players completely missed something in the background that was key to his game history.  IIRC, the experienced GM said, "Don't worry, it'll get noticed in the home version of the game."  That doesn't apply in your case, I just had a flashback I wanted to share.
 
There's always stuff the GM creates that the players either don't notice, or don't realize the significance, or just plain don't care.  I try to throw things in that, should the players notice or dig deeper, it could potentially help them out a lot.  When they do hit on those things, even if it ends up short-circuiting an element of my plotline, it seems to make things more enjoyable both for me and for them.
 
I try to write up the text stuff for all of my homebrew Champions supervillains (Background/History, Personality, etc.).  Sure, 90% of that won't matter to the players, but I find it helps me find the character's "voice" and make that character less 2-dimensional.

I think the "special snowflake" is a person with an inflated sense of how important he/she is, and feels entitled to special treatment.

I think the "special snowflake" is a person with an inflated sense of how important he/she is, and feels entitled to special treatment.

One of the players in Sunday's D&D game was not able to attend.  The prior session, her character got engaged to an NPC, with a wedding planned basically the next game session.  Since she wasn't able to attend, we delayed the wedding, though texts went back and forth:
 
GM:  We could have your wedding and the groom would get to make all the decisions.
Player:  Oh, I don't think so.
Me:  Two words:  Nude wedding.
Player:  Umm, I have no response to that.
Player 2:  For everyone, or just the people getting married?!
Me:  Well, Raphael [my character, a vain, flirty high-Charisma paladin] would be good with everybody.
Player 3:  Absolutely.  Good heroes like us have nothing to hide.
Player 2:  Oh my!
 
During the game, some more texting to and from the missing player:
 
Me:  The bride was very lovely in her lace veil... and nothing else.  The groom had a very fetching bow, strategically placed.
Player:  Ugh.  I'm at work.  Quit bothering me.
 
In prior sessions, our female fighter (Marie, who used to wield a +2 great sword) got an intelligent, powerful spear with additional cold powers, so she sold her great sword and used the money to buy some magic plate mail.  Later on, she got transformed - the spear disappeared and she became able to generate an ice spear at will.  However, due to other baggage she didn't like her transformation so we managed to get her changed back to normal.  However, she now has no weapon.
 
Marie:   Does anyone have a great sword I can use?
Raphael:  I do.  (wiggles eyes suggestively)  You know why I call it my "great sword"?  Because I have to wield it two-handed...
Marie:  ??

DANGER:  Long, boring war story ahead...
 
Many years ago, in a larger gaming group, we had a group of characters having trouble getting along.  As the GM, watching the party about to split, or more likely fragment, I put a die on the table.  I told the group to decide which characters would be sticking with each other, staying in contact, etc.  Once that was decided, we would roll the die, counting from my immediate left.  Whoever's number came up, that was the character the campaign would follow.  Any character still associated with him stayed in the campaign.  Anyone else needed a new, compatible character.  Maybe we can return to the others in later campaigns.
 
I never did have to roll that die...

One of the players in Sunday's D&D game was not able to attend.  The prior session, her character got engaged to an NPC, with a wedding planned basically the next game session.  Since she wasn't able to attend, we delayed the wedding, though texts went back and forth:
 
GM:  We could have your wedding and the groom would get to make all the decisions.
Player:  Oh, I don't think so.
Me:  Two words:  Nude wedding.
Player:  Umm, I have no response to that.
Player 2:  For everyone, or just the people getting married?!
Me:  Well, Raphael [my character, a vain, flirty high-Charisma paladin] would be good with everybody.
Player 3:  Absolutely.  Good heroes like us have nothing to hide.
Player 2:  Oh my!
 
During the game, some more texting to and from the missing player:
 
Me:  The bride was very lovely in her lace veil... and nothing else.  The groom had a very fetching bow, strategically placed.
Player:  Ugh.  I'm at work.  Quit bothering me.
 
In prior sessions, our female fighter (Marie, who used to wield a +2 great sword) got an intelligent, powerful spear with additional cold powers, so she sold her great sword and used the money to buy some magic plate mail.  Later on, she got transformed - the spear disappeared and she became able to generate an ice spear at will.  However, due to other baggage she didn't like her transformation so we managed to get her changed back to normal.  However, she now has no weapon.
 
Marie:   Does anyone have a great sword I can use?
Raphael:  I do.  (wiggles eyes suggestively)  You know why I call it my "great sword"?  Because I have to wield it two-handed...
Marie:  ??

Nah, I think she has the hots for him.
 
Hots... Flame Strike... get it? 

One of the players in Sunday's D&D game was not able to attend.  The prior session, her character got engaged to an NPC, with a wedding planned basically the next game session.  Since she wasn't able to attend, we delayed the wedding, though texts went back and forth:
 
GM:  We could have your wedding and the groom would get to make all the decisions.
Player:  Oh, I don't think so.
Me:  Two words:  Nude wedding.
Player:  Umm, I have no response to that.
Player 2:  For everyone, or just the people getting married?!
Me:  Well, Raphael [my character, a vain, flirty high-Charisma paladin] would be good with everybody.
Player 3:  Absolutely.  Good heroes like us have nothing to hide.
Player 2:  Oh my!
 
During the game, some more texting to and from the missing player:
 
Me:  The bride was very lovely in her lace veil... and nothing else.  The groom had a very fetching bow, strategically placed.
Player:  Ugh.  I'm at work.  Quit bothering me.
 
In prior sessions, our female fighter (Marie, who used to wield a +2 great sword) got an intelligent, powerful spear with additional cold powers, so she sold her great sword and used the money to buy some magic plate mail.  Later on, she got transformed - the spear disappeared and she became able to generate an ice spear at will.  However, due to other baggage she didn't like her transformation so we managed to get her changed back to normal.  However, she now has no weapon.
 
Marie:   Does anyone have a great sword I can use?
Raphael:  I do.  (wiggles eyes suggestively)  You know why I call it my "great sword"?  Because I have to wield it two-handed...
Marie:  ??

Sitting with my back to the rest of the room.  Maybe I was an Old West gunfighter in a prior life, but something about having to sit with my back to the room (because other people grabbed the good chairs) bothers me.

Sitting with my back to the rest of the room.  Maybe I was an Old West gunfighter in a prior life, but something about having to sit with my back to the room (because other people grabbed the good chairs) bothers me.

Sure, I created a life-or-death situation (reactor designed to go boom) for the heroes to deal with, as well as some killer supervillains (in the case of the Aquans, Riptide and Biohazard).  So I'll accept some of the blame for setting a potentially lethal tone in that situation.  However, I don't think that necessarily makes me a Killer GM.
 
I believe I mentioned before that the PCs went into retaking the research station already knowing about the reactor - and that Montgomery was almost certainly behind it's design to go boom - so the heroes had shut the reactor down before even starting on the supervillains.   So the potential nuke was already dealt with and to be honest, that's pretty much what I expected was going to happen when I created the situation.  Had any player tried to use the no-longer-dangerous nuke's existence as a reason for going lethal on the supervillains, when they weren't even aware of it, let alone behind it, would have been being willfully ignorant on his/her part. I'll note that the players didn't do that, so that's cool.
 
As to the killer NPCs -- if the hero had unleashed his HKA on one of the killer supervillains, I don't think I would have been irritated.  I kinda expect the players to go harder on the nastier villains.  But to act like, "Killer villain A slashed up my teammate pretty bad, so I'm going to ignore killer villain A and go hard-core lethal on one of his teammates instead" seems counter-intuitive.  Removing villain B from the ranks of the living doesn't do much of anything to stop Killer Villain A from continuing his rampage.
 
I don't mind the game world having shades of gray, including the PCs.  It's when the gray becomes really-really-dark-gray that I worry. 

I run a Champions campaign, and spend (probably) far too much time creating or updating the NPC villains, as well as writing news items and typing up my notes for the upcoming adventure.  Oh, and there's also the map -- I like to throw lots of details into the maps.  (My one of the VIPER base, with various reproductions of movie and TV robots, was especially cool.)  Most of that's not Hero's fault, it's mine, except maybe for the time spent creating a new character. 
 
I will say that a well-crafted Hero system character, with thought-out Complications, can add some fun to adventure creation that I don't think readily comes into play in other game system.  I've had several times where the heroes' and/or villains' Complications made an expected adventure take a left turn.  For example, a simple tech theft that the heroes were supposed to stop became a whole lot more complicated when I rolled a critical success for a supervillain's Hunted by Mechanon.  (I decided to let the heroes' investigations uncover why that character was hunted by Mechanon, so the killer 'bot's appearance didn't just come out of the blue.)

I remember a conversation with a hobby store employee back in the late 1980s or early 90s, where he proclaimed that GURPS was better than Hero specifically because "it's too hard to kill a player character in Hero."  My own opinion was that this was actually a good thing, not a bad thing.  (I later learned that this person was a very adversarial GM -- you know, the guy with a Mary Sue GM-PC to show up the PCs -- along with other obnoxiousness.)
 
That said, as GM I've accidentally killed a superhero PC (due to a design flaw in the PC's defenses and other powers), and had to go out of my way to keep other PCs (trained normals, not supers) from getting slaughtered.
 
I'll admit that way back in my early days of D&D gaming, my characters were all cookie-cutter 2D cutouts who existed mainly for churning through dungeon crawls to pick up cool magic items.  If one died, another was quickly rolled up and took his place without blinking an eye.

I had bowed out of this thread during the discussion on paladins, but figured I'd respond to something else I had missed.
 
 
I did pretty much this in a prior Champions campaign, though not so much as reaction to their actions as it was in reaction to a PC's backstory, plus the fairly logical progression of in-game events.  While the storyline got quite interesting, it was pretty unanimous that things got much darker than anybody liked. 
 
There was an encouraging note - the killer PC was grumbling last session about not using his HKA "because everybody's worried I might kill someone."  So perhaps the talk has borne a bit more fruit than I expected.

flux-calibrated

The Batbike.  Much better environmentally, and pedaling across town helps keep him fit and in fighting trim.  Plus, Gotham City just put in all those bike lanes, it would be a shame not to use them.

, I can't help you with characters or story for the 6e universe, or even the majority of the 5e universe (after deciding the rules set was a bit more oppressive than I cared for- but was easily backwards-adaptable, I focused on genre books and a couple of settings (I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Tuala Morn, considering it was Fantasy, but I liked it a lot). 
 
I just wanted to encourage you, because this can be a lot of fun.  Back in the Era of the BBB, I was inspired by the Murder in Stronghold adventure in Champions Presents #2.   Not for the adventure, but for the backstory of the character Salamander: the super-criminal who, though never caught, had a very short career before deciding to fight the good fight.  Moreover, I liked his tendency to let the criminals go if they surrendered their ill-gotten gains and promised to become better people. 
 
Sure, it rarely worked, but I got to thinking about those times that it _might_ have worked.  What would those people do with their lives. 
 
So I played with it. I didn't think of the "let's start a new campaign where the Pcs are all reformed villains.". I wish I had, because I can see lots of potential there, too. 
 
Judge Leroy Colton was voted into office shortly after moving to Campaign City.  Historically, before coming to Campaign, he had been one of those" go to jail or enlist in the service" judges when dealing with first-time offenders (or at least first time _caught_ offenders). 
 
Then one day he was presiding over a trial that involved super villains and noticed that one particular lower-powered individual had, in all the scenarios for which the group was being tried, had seemed to go out of his way to not injure non-combatants.  In fact, he really hadn't even done much property damage, compared to his associates.  He smashed a few things, fought some superheroes, but only enough to ensure his getaway.  Mostly he just menaced the crowd with displays of power and threatening speeches. 
 
So Colton, when passing sentence, gave this one individual a choice: spend the next sixteen years in Lockdown (we already had a prison for supers before Stronghold was published, I'm afraid.  It was actually the very first thing we needed outside the core book:  we fight supers, we catch supers...  Where do we _put_ supers?) or serve as a special officer for SWAT. 
 
Eventually, two other villains were given a similar choice. 
 
Public outrage--particularly from law enforcement--made this a high-profile fiasco, and three years later the program was disbanded, with the three former villains looking at serving the rest of their time in Lockdown.  
 
Blockbuster, the first villain given this opportunity, had come to find that he _liked_ what he was doing, and after a drawn-out and impassioned session with the state senate, was given the OK to create a charitable organization for the purpose of reforming super-villains. 
 
I'll spare you the rest of the history specific to our world, but suffice it to say that there were successes and failures, and the focus of this plot device in our world was the constant suspicion of the Pcs, and the often-questionable moments when the paths of the  Pcs and the Redeemed (guess who?) would cross.  Of course, every success story was questioned, and every failure--particularly recidivism--called the entire team and the program itself into question.  The best story arc we had was when a mentalist who had been with the team six months had slowly begun to mind-control the rest of the Redeemed, and lead them on covert criminal missions... 
 
That one nearly lead to the destruction of the entire program and cemented, in the minds of many other characters, including two PCs, that reformation was impossible for villains with powers: the temptation to use them for personal gain is simply too strong for weak individuals, etc, etc. 
 
 
Short version:  the Redeemed still pop up from time to time (and updating the team is as easy as thumbing through your file of mid-to-low level villains you haven't seen in a while) and not only did we have _lots_ of fun in the early years of this new plot device, it's still fun to break out every once in a while... 
 
I hope you have as much fun with it as we do.
 
 
Duke

Meaningful, cordial, to-the-point and mutually beneficial across-the-aisles discussions in Congress.

This is a campaign idea I've been thinking about recently to use with my current gaming group someday.
 
Second Chances is a boarding house set up to assist supervillains in their efforts at reintegrating back into society after they've served out their sentences in Stronghold, maybe for those who've gotten released early for good behavior or after serving on the Champions Universe's version of the Suicide Squad. It's a government-sponsored halfway house dealing in supervillains. It might even make for a decent convention game background.
 
My thought was to use it as the basis for a PC team, putting together former supervillains into a ragtag group of anti-heroes that actually can do some good together. Think Guardians of the Galaxy, only made up of parolees. It could also work for a Dark Champions: The Animated Series sort of setting.
 
One of the things that the government would do is provide new secret IDs for each parolee in their efforts at rehabilitation, so they would all have the Social Complications: Criminal Record and Secret ID, maybe at a reduced level for the Secret ID, since it is one known to the government. Watched by PRIMUS (or another group that deal with supercriminals) would also seem to make sense.
 
What sort of supervillains might work from the current CU as parolees? Shrinker and Foxbat might make for a couple of interesting fellow parolees, but who else?

Solarion
 
The solarite armor is a piece of alien technology. Highly advanced, it grants the user superstrenght and durability on brick level, as well as interstellar flight. As the name sugests, it derives it's energy from Sunlight with only a limited storage capacity. Not normally an issue in interplanetary space (or for short hops between Solar Systems), it still prooved a fatal flaw for the previous owner when he was caved in with not enough reserves to free himself.
 
Solomon Joffrion was a doctor who did cave climbing as a hobby. However it is a dangerous hobby, and a particular unstable part of a cave seperated him from his co-climbers and a way out. Imporpably he found the solarite armor and used it, to free himself.
He is only aware of the more obvious power - superstrenght, durabiltiy, atmopheric flight. He has no idea of its alien origin. Indeed the thought has not yet crossed his mind. Wich is a pitty, for now that the armor is active again a lot of old foes have picked up the energy signature of it. Slowly they are comming, to either take or destory the armor - and whoever happens to wear it right now.

Buy a small country, move there, chum up with Vladimir and get the secret handshake, do for robot sea monsters what Musk is doing with rockets, then use those developments to interdict the shipment of Australian coal to China, destroy the entirety of the Japanese whaling fleet leaving no one alive, exterminate the Al Thani family and free the de facto slaves and cap the gas wells, tow an iceberg to South Africa and sell it for a billion dollars, develop weather control technology and send a hurricane at each Trump development, send the monsters on a rampage and destroy all human development in and around the Spratly Islands and devour all subsequent investigatory expeditions into the area, buy all the water rights in Roberts County Texas and cap all the wells there, translate Industrial Society and its Future into Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Swahili, Hindi, Japanese, and Athabascan, and set up a zombiebot network to spam every machine on the entire Web with flat-text versions of these, deliver a set of Hail Hydra pajamas to every CDU/CSU member of the Bundestag, make microbreweries legal in Missouri, find the grave of Dean <name withheld> and have it buried in 15,000 kilograms of chicken manure salted with cadmium-113 11/2-, and send a cubic mile of cheesecorn to Martinsville Indiana with a note saying "Love, Colonel Zurgznart".