Opal

Heroes could make their calling pay legally: bounties, reward money, PI work, high profile security, bodyguarding.
 
They could liscence themselves out to toymakers, movie studios (featuring Incrediperson as themselves), ghost writers, video games, etc....

I can picture some superheroes live-streaming their adventures. Some villains too (like Foxbat).

In my old champions campaign, since so many mutants were the result of environmental contamination, the EPA was given jurisdiction over superbeings...

Fluer (d'Moustarde/ de Ypres)
 
Fluer was named for the poppies that famously sprang up in the fields after WWI, by parents who had both served and been exposed to mustard gas.  She was their only child that made it to term.
In WWII, she served as a nurse, like her mother before her.  
In her 30s she realized she wasn't aging. Afraid she'd be dissected or worse if discovered she faked her death and assumed the fabricated  identity of her own daughter. She figured she'd do that every other decade forever...
But times changed quickly and such tricks became harder and harder, she slid deeper into the criminal underworld trying to keep her secret and was finally recruited by Versailles.
Fluer doesn't age, is virtually immune to poison and disease, and recovers from injuries, even loss of limbs in a matter of hours or days, without scarring.  She can emit almost any organic chemical that is liquid or gas at body temperature at will, but in amounts sufficient to affect only a small radius around her.  But, she can expand the area by hijacking the biology of local plants ahead of time, causing whole fields to suddenly bloom and emmit the chemical of her choice.  Thus, though a mutant, she prefers to pass herself off as a wielder of nature-magic. 
In her cover IDs, Fluer appears to be a homely, gawky young woman of 18 or 20.  Masked and wearing a tight super-suit, though, she pulls off a femme-fetale look.
Though she came to villainy reluctantly, Fluer is a cynical, world-weary old woman (she's over 100) and resigned to her role.
 

Fluer (d'Moustarde/ de Ypres)
 
Fluer was named for the poppies that famously sprang up in the fields after WWI, by parents who had both served and been exposed to mustard gas.  She was their only child that made it to term.
In WWII, she served as a nurse, like her mother before her.  
In her 30s she realized she wasn't aging. Afraid she'd be dissected or worse if discovered she faked her death and assumed the fabricated  identity of her own daughter. She figured she'd do that every other decade forever...
But times changed quickly and such tricks became harder and harder, she slid deeper into the criminal underworld trying to keep her secret and was finally recruited by Versailles.
Fluer doesn't age, is virtually immune to poison and disease, and recovers from injuries, even loss of limbs in a matter of hours or days, without scarring.  She can emit almost any organic chemical that is liquid or gas at body temperature at will, but in amounts sufficient to affect only a small radius around her.  But, she can expand the area by hijacking the biology of local plants ahead of time, causing whole fields to suddenly bloom and emmit the chemical of her choice.  Thus, though a mutant, she prefers to pass herself off as a wielder of nature-magic. 
In her cover IDs, Fluer appears to be a homely, gawky young woman of 18 or 20.  Masked and wearing a tight super-suit, though, she pulls off a femme-fetale look.
Though she came to villainy reluctantly, Fluer is a cynical, world-weary old woman (she's over 100) and resigned to her role.
 

I have to agree. Might've been better if hardened defenses didn't stop them. They were essentially limited damage.
 
But I did like putting normal piercing points on a villain's EB to make it  lethal.

3rd had "piercing points" that could make a normal attack deadlier to low-DEF targets 🤷‍♂️

5th edition worked pretty well as it was.
 
So did 4th.
 
Don't see the need.
 
I suspect giving up EC for Unified would hurt characters who had any common limitations on their ECs, relative to other frameworks and bricks... points did still matter in 5th...

5th edition worked pretty well as it was.
 
So did 4th.
 
Don't see the need.
 
I suspect giving up EC for Unified would hurt characters who had any common limitations on their ECs, relative to other frameworks and bricks... points did still matter in 5th...

You could just be totally anachronistic and sanitize it like it was still the early days of political correctness...
 
Yeoperson
Yeopersun  (to avoid "son," as also masculine, I kid you not)
 
If you have multiple races in the setting 
Yeobeing 
 
Or like D&D did with Lizardmen
Yeofolk
 
Or not-draconian-we-swear
Yeoborn
 
You could work from Freeman the same ways as above, or to Dune-ish Fremen, which still contains "men", so hey, Fremyn could be fun.
 
I've read novels were the used Freeholder and shortened it to "Holder" that seemed to flow pretty naturally. 
 
You could make up a word with no etymology, at all, too.
Wir'rin
Voldhn
Quaeoi
Nye 
 
 

In Old English, the word 'mann' just meant human being or person.  A male was 'wer' (from which we get werewolf) and a female was wif (from which we get wife).  So you could just call them Yeomann, with the extra letter n to designate it as gender neutral.

5th edition worked pretty well as it was.
 
So did 4th.
 
Don't see the need.
 
I suspect giving up EC for Unified would hurt characters who had any common limitations on their ECs, relative to other frameworks and bricks... points did still matter in 5th...

5th edition worked pretty well as it was.
 
So did 4th.
 
Don't see the need.
 
I suspect giving up EC for Unified would hurt characters who had any common limitations on their ECs, relative to other frameworks and bricks... points did still matter in 5th...

5th edition worked pretty well as it was.
 
So did 4th.
 
Don't see the need.
 
I suspect giving up EC for Unified would hurt characters who had any common limitations on their ECs, relative to other frameworks and bricks... points did still matter in 5th...

With any D&D adaptation, you gotta check the spells... 
'Obviously' he was using Telekinesis.
 
Cute that they used Witch Bolt for Sith Lightning... I've seen players make that connection, before...
....except, canonically, Vader can't use it.
 
 

Well there was The Mustache and Russian Beard in /The Tick/, the 90s animated series, that is.
 
 

In some ways I wish I still was. But the "heart" of the group did not wish to participate in games with lethal consequences any more, and without the "heart" the rest of the group drifted away. Soon after 9-11 happened, and I became the angry emotional one. We remained in contact somewhat, but then I moved to Los Angeles. That was the end of my face to face gaming. Only since 2014 or 5 that I started gaming again on Roll20.

I once ended a session by having the PCs find a letter that contained vital information.  They had spent the whole session looking for it, felt good they had found it, and one Player transcribed the letter as they were certain it had more clues than were obvious.

The next session they formed a plan to act on their new information & I had a NPC interject to remind them of an important thing they were overlooking (I didn't want to waste a session with them going down a blind alley).  They insisted that *wasn't* info that they had.  I insisted it was in the letter they had just worked so hard to get.  The players all looked at me in silence & the one who had transcribed that letter held up her notebook page & proved that info *wasn't* among the info they had gotten from the letter last session.
 
Knowing I had screwed up & left out a vital point, I (rather lamely) had the NPC declare there was "a hidden fold" in the letter that contained the information.
 
The Players all laughed for about 10 min at my weak save & from that point on if I ever tacked something on to an ongoing info dump someone would mention that "there must have been a fold".
 
This has been a running joke now for 25 years.  I married one of them.  The woman with the notebook was our Maid of Honor.  In the years since I've gotten christmas cards that say "Merry Christmas! and a >obvious fold in the card< "Happy New Year".  I texted my wife 4 things to pick up at the store a couple weeks ago, then remembered something else 10 min later & got a text back "was there a fold?"
 
I try to take it with good humor......

The review I read of Champions that spurred me to actually buy the game mentioned STN/BOD prominently, pointing out that it was routine for fights to end in KO, but possible for a character to be conscious & dying - quite impossible in the D&D of the day.
 
Once I saw it, I was taken both with the way phases felt like panels straight from a comic book (or story board), and with the way the SPD chart let some characters be much faster than others without overwhelmingly tilting combat in their favor. 
 
(and, of course, by the system of Powers & Special Effects... and adv/lim & disad)
 
That other games don't have such features is just a testament to the dysfunction of the RPG market, where the only game you really compete against is D&D, and you can't be part of the market if you're too different from D&D...😞

I'm a capri-sun and freddy mercury is in tardigrade

The review I read of Champions that spurred me to actually buy the game mentioned STN/BOD prominently, pointing out that it was routine for fights to end in KO, but possible for a character to be conscious & dying - quite impossible in the D&D of the day.
 
Once I saw it, I was taken both with the way phases felt like panels straight from a comic book (or story board), and with the way the SPD chart let some characters be much faster than others without overwhelmingly tilting combat in their favor. 
 
(and, of course, by the system of Powers & Special Effects... and adv/lim & disad)
 
That other games don't have such features is just a testament to the dysfunction of the RPG market, where the only game you really compete against is D&D, and you can't be part of the market if you're too different from D&D...😞

I made a point earlier, well, maybe I didn't. 
In combat, what's going on is usually unambiguous, people are attempting to sove a problem through violence.  The stakes could be life & death, acquiring/denying an objective, escape/capture, establishing dominance, or even just sparing. 
 
In a social a interaction, people are probably talking, maybe dancing or furtively signaling or something, but the purpose of the interaction, the stakes and approaches, aren't nearly so clear or consistent. 
 
And, while most RPGs give you fairly detailed combat, they often give you only binary checks for social "skills."
 
But it's not like you can create a compelling vision of a high stakes conversation from some non-actors talking "in character."  
You don't expect players to duke it out in a combat, you model the combat abilities of the character, abstractly, instead.  
But it's very common to say "just RP it!"
 
In Hero, you can build powers quite precisely to concept. There are both combat and non-combat powers, and some that might be used for either.
 
Then you get to skills, and they're uncustomizeable and do their thing or not on the basis of one roll.  And there's tons of em.
 
 

I made a point earlier, well, maybe I didn't. 
In combat, what's going on is usually unambiguous, people are attempting to sove a problem through violence.  The stakes could be life & death, acquiring/denying an objective, escape/capture, establishing dominance, or even just sparing. 
 
In a social a interaction, people are probably talking, maybe dancing or furtively signaling or something, but the purpose of the interaction, the stakes and approaches, aren't nearly so clear or consistent. 
 
And, while most RPGs give you fairly detailed combat, they often give you only binary checks for social "skills."
 
But it's not like you can create a compelling vision of a high stakes conversation from some non-actors talking "in character."  
You don't expect players to duke it out in a combat, you model the combat abilities of the character, abstractly, instead.  
But it's very common to say "just RP it!"
 
In Hero, you can build powers quite precisely to concept. There are both combat and non-combat powers, and some that might be used for either.
 
Then you get to skills, and they're uncustomizeable and do their thing or not on the basis of one roll.  And there's tons of em.
 
 

This is going to be a long one. 
 
A Roleplaying Game to me, consists of three elements: Good players, good roleplay, and a good game. We will not discuss the element of good players, because that is highly subjective and completely based on local conditions.
 
Roleplay
 
So let’s talk about role-play then. Of the GM’s I have played with, very few were good at encouraging “immersive”, or “deep” roleplay. Very few of us are professional, or even good actors. Save Matt Mercer‘s group of Hollywood professionals, that have set crushingly high expectations for gaming groups since Critical Roll started, most of us muddle through by setting up a framework for a personality in our heads and that framework is as elastic or rigid as our imagination can create.  Allowances should be made in this department for the various levels of comfort, as well as skill of the participants, as was said before, we aren’t professionals. 
 
In the case of the immersive roleplay, much thought was given to constructing that personality and making that framework as solid in one’s mind as they could, using one’s observations of other people, movies, and literature, to be able to respond to the external outputs the game in an internally consistent fashion. This was far beyond the “funny voice” level, and would produce a sensation of sitting in the back seat of one’s skull, watching the game while the character took the wheel. It’s rare, but when it happens, it was deeply satisfying. I have heard that the writers of novels often experience this sort of thing, where the character takes over the writing.  Of the GM’s that I have played with, Carl Rigney was one of the few that actively encouraged this. There were a couple of others, but I have also run across GM’s who discouraged this, or have had players in the games that were deeply uncomfortable, so allowances had to be made. I however still would approach constructing character personality frameworks in the same way, but with less detail, and some distance in those situations. But I still consider roleplay to be very important. 
 
So this is why I take a dim view of “genre emulation”. Most of you that discuss Champions are enamored of the Silver Age of Comics. The silver edge got its flavor due to the restrictions of the comics code authority. The code of the hero was just an in world justification for the restrictions imposed by the Comics Code. In the previous Golden Age, the influence of the pulps were still omnipresent, with Justice dealt from the barrel of a .45. As goes The Shadow, so went Batman. The exception was Superman. His writers, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, understood that having a powerful character like that killing his enemies, would look unacceptably oppressive. So Superman was kinder in his actions than the rest of the superheroes of the Golden Age. That was a reflection of his personality, not the genre. Comics themselves are a medium not a genre. There used to be many genres in comics, such as westerns, war, horror, comedy, romance, as well as superheroes. The comics code was blanketed over all of them. The attitude at the time was that comics were for juveniles, and should not include things outside of what would build good moral character. Horror comics withered and after the early 70’s vanished. The other genres in comics faded away as well, leaving just superheroes for the most part. At that time I was reading mostly wore comics, such as G. I. Combat, Weird War, and Sergeant Fury reprints, and most of them were entertaining in the same way Combat! Or Rat Patrol were, sanitized for television. I didn’t read a lot of superheroes consistently, but would pick up the occasional Spiderman, or Fantastic Four. By then I had started reading my parents paperbacks, and enjoying pulpy Alistair McLean novels.
 
But what the Code did was to blunt Batman’s vengeance, and turned him from a two gun vigilante, to a gun control advocate. He’s still the most popular  comic book character even today, and is single handedly keeping DC comics afloat, but the change the code brought to him is also still with us. The Code also changed other heroes, or eliminated some (especially those that took injections or pills to activate their powers). Code also applied to the villains as their threats became more abstracted, or goofy. The edges had been filed off. There was no spice any more. 
 
Now I talked about, in another thread, how Stan Lee felt so strongly about a story about drug abuse in an issue of Spiderman that he ran it without the approval of the Comics Code Authority, and the logo did not appear on the cover. That did not kill the comics code. The comics code faded for another reason and that was the direct market. Once dedicated comic book stores appeared insufficient numbers to support a market, other publishers appeared. These are the days of Pacific Comics, Comico, First, Eclipse, and others, that produced books of near equal quality to those of the big two, often with the same artists, who given a chance to flex their muscles, produced very pulp flavored stories. The Big two continued to produce their work in the same fashion, but also took advantage of the direct market, when DC took a chance on a couple of projects that ended the silver age: The Dark Knight Returns, and The Watchmen. 

As I said before, comics is a medium, and these changes in comics not only gave rise to other publishers, but also other genres returned to the shelves. Image Comics appeared as the result of disagreements between Artists and Marvel comics. Gritty violent, and Sexy, comics returned to how they were before the code. This coincided with when a lot of found and played Champions. It’s how our local games went from sort of Silver Age to what came after. 
 
So, I put out this history lesson to illustrate comics are a medium, and a so is a game system. I am of the opinion that genre emulation is the responsibility of the GM, and not the game system per se. A game narrowly tailored to emulate Chris Claremont X-Men, or Marv Wolfman Teen Titans, would be kind of limited outside of those narrow definitions. I personally chafe at comics code limitations imposed on my characters and it is one of the reasons why I walked away from comic book style games and return to fantasy or 80s movie action. Putting outside limitations, through the Meta of the game, above the game world and environment presented, makes building that personality framework a lot more difficult due to its impact on suspension of disbelief. Cops shoot to kill, homeowners shoot to kill and my super cannot? If there is a good inworld, plausible, reason I can go with that. But there are other Meta reasons that will make things difficult to remain in character, and cause some to tune out. The Prime Directive in Star Trek is supposed to limit the actions of the Federation, but even with that in place, Kirk still did what he thought was correct, and Picard deferred to it more. This shows a difference in personality. Now, in current year Universal Systems, and Toolkits don’t seem to be popular with the new gamers. So I agree with producing limited versions of Hero to cover specific genres, but having mandatory, specific,  disads, or complications above what the world offers is 
I feel, to limiting. Leave that to the GM to negotiate with the players. Genre conventions I believe should be more suggestions and ideas, rather than hard rules.
 
The Game
 
 Champions was described as the Super roleplaying game. I still think the game aspect is very important, at least to me. I discovered Champions at a wargaming convention (Origins) in 1981 when it was released. I was an avid Tabletop gamer, and after games of General Quarters, and Mustangs & Messerschmitts, I was told by a friend to go check out this game about Superheroes. The rest we all know. What made subsequent games of Champions so compelling was how elegant the system was. It was a tactical, small unit wargame for superheroes! A normal wargame is a rather (supposedly) a rational, and analytical affair, with the occasional bruised ego causing tempers to flair. Roleplay gives context and stakes to the conflict, adding a usually safe emotional element to it. That is what made  Champions and most other Roleplaying games that came after so compelling.  The challenge of a good tactical puzzle for me, with the emotional turmoil for my character is irresistible. It was addicting, and why I eschewed other Roleplaying games ( unless I was paid: see Cyberpunk), until I moved to L. A. and involuntarily dropped the hobby for a while.
 
The problem I have with most modern RPG systems, is that many of them have minimalist rules, and push combat into theater of the mind, and I have a big problem with that. I used to be involved in MUD’s, MUCK, and MUSHs. Some of them expressly had no native combat system. In those, conflicts had to be resolved through group consensus. Fights were posted has elaborately written poses, and the target either agreed with the pose, or nulled it with an equal or greater elaborate pose as written. It was a realm where the rule of cool, or most forceful ego won. It was deeply unsatisfying, especially in a realm where most people thought the spotlight was on them. It led to a lot of conflict and scenarios would detonate due to arguments. Probably due to my war gaming background, anything that wins due to the rule of cool, is going to piss me off.
 
Less of a problem, but still a large problem, is that combats in theater of the mind situations, can be subject to a large Assumption clash. If two of us are imagining a conflict in a vaguely defined environment then differences between how we imagine that environment will cause problems or lead to dissatisfaction.
 
Even differences in life experiences will lead to problems. “They” have no experience with firearms and their assumptions are based on movies and television. I, however, have a massive gun collection, and have trained as armed security for an armored car company, so arguments will arise. Conversely, if “They” who is a HEMA enthusiast, versus me, who waved a foam sword at friends once or twice, will also lead to assumption clash, unless I automatically defer to them. This is why reasonably detailed tactical rules, to me are so important to reduce assumption clash as long as things are not too abstracted. It’s the level of abstraction, that modern rule systems favor, that caused me problems, when they ignore ranges, cover, concealment, distances one can run over time, Reasonable CEP for ranged weapons over whatever ranges, visibility, lighting conditions, melee weapons, melee skills of each opponent, etc. This is why , tactically I am finding Cyberpunk Red lacking, when compared to Cyberpunk 2020, where I had a hand in researching, testing, and tuning the combat and hit location rules for. When I thought that WW2 rules were a bit lacking, I spent the money to acquire the Uniforms and weapons of WW2 participants, and headed out into the woods with like minded participants to figure out how it looked and how it felt. I was not in shape enough to take full advantage, but I got a good idea of what it was like and how it felt to be in the field, and how the weapons worked, of various types, and various periods, from WW1 to the present. My experience kind of back handed the rule of cool. It also precluded the assumptions of a few game designers, and left me unsatisfied with most modern, and “collaborative storytelling” systems. It denied me plausible, believable , escapism. 
 
Another "dislike" are Narrative control system outside of dice. Action Point, Hero Points, ect.. This pulls me out of immersion, and often  is reflected by a "rule of Cool situation.  It changes the scenery, or the universe and bends it towards the player, which I find objectionable as the environment is the universe the characters inhabit, and using an authorial meta to change it, just feels wrong.
 
We all have slightly different ideas and reasons for gaming, and it is fine that we pursue them. But in talking about Hero and Champions, without the Speed Chart, hex grid, and separated special effects from damage, it’s not Champions. It still needs that wargame framework underneath the roleplay to keep it solid. 5e and the resurgent war hammer have shown that maps and minis are still quite popular. 
 
Strict Genre emulation and embracing modern minimalism, I think would be a mistake to impose on Hero. Genre presented as a book is one thing but I think the big error of Champions Now was imposing one GMs house rules and genre enforcement onto the entire  rule book was why it missed the mark, at least for me. Taking a route like “Powered by Hero” but hiding the mechanics more is probably the correct path.  
 
I rambled, but at least I didn’t rant… much. 
 

One thing in notice in RPG discussions is that there's different schools of thought about whether a game "supports" something.  Maybe just different bars.
 
Does a game support a playstyle or a genre or a tone or character archetype?
 
For some, it's 'yes" only if the system mechanics are hard-coded to force that style, tightly emulate only that genre, or have a single-choice-point option that neatly encapsulates that archetype.
 
Or, it could be 'yes' if the system gives you tools & options that you can use in that style, or to create a campaign in that genre, or a character that matches your vision of that archetype.
 
For others, It's 'yes' if the game doesn't completely block you from playing that archetype or in that style or genre, even if doing so will put you at a stark mechanical disadvantage.