Doc Democracy

One more thing One of the things that I remember doing badly when we first started playing Champions was disadvantages. Because teh rules said we HAD to balance all of our points with disadvantages and experience and that we could use up to 150 points of disads, that's exactly what we did. We spent 250 points and found 150 points of disadvantages whether or not they were in character or not. And we had some pretty screwed up characters because of it. As we got more used to the game and the ideas within the game we found it easier to describe disadvantages that actually rounded the characters and embedded them into the campaign. My advice is don't sweat the disadvantages on the first few characters. Give them a few that definitely seem to fit the character - hunteds are often easy - as are psychological disads such as heroic and code against killing. But if you can't think of enough then don't worry too much about it - you might get ideas when the characters are in play.

Here we are talking about villains the players love to hate and you want to call me a jerk for presenting a SPD 12 villain. Really makes the place feel welcome. As Lucian pointed out (thank you ) The whole point of a challenge to the players is giving them something they have to think about. With lots of opponents or very powerful opponents there are standard tactics. They'd never faced someone with such a high speed and had to develop a whole new set of tactics to deal with him. They did that and got the experience for it. And the satisfaction of beating the man. Sorry you think I'm a jerk GM, good job you don't have to play in my games, huh?

The villain all my players feared was based on Deathstroke from the Teen Titans - I called him Contract. I loved the idea of the mercenary villain and the players are aware that if they encounter the villain he will focus on his task rather than on beating the crap out of them so they aren't desperate to beat him - just to frustrate his intentions. His main weapon is SPD 12. My games are essentially SPD 5-6 and the first few times he faced the whole group he wiped the floor with them. He was built on 500 points compared to the teams five 250 pt heroes with about 50-75 pts experience. Eventually they learned they HAD to work as a team to beat him - they HAD to make sure they acted on EVERY phase to stop him recovering and taunting on the phases none of them moved. Even then they've had problems. I think it was said before - players hate intelligent villains. None of his abilities are as good as the players except the SPD and it makes ALL the difference. It was Contract that was paid to humiliate the heroes and rather than do it personally he constructed robots designed to take advantage of each hero. For 150 points each robot beat its hero 1 to 1 and then Contract appeared to defeat the robots - obviously with the press nearby.

See, that's another good idea - and it mixes things up a bit. Only problem is that you'd need to get a Marvel or DC set of cards to keep in the spirit of things...

Yeah - pretty much the same but with the underlying structure determined by the chart. Like I said it was reading the thread that triggered the idea - I've never really considered changing it before and I definitely didn't want to do anything that would involve more dice rolling! To make things simple, and coz gamers love 'stuff' to play with, I intend to use this rule and give the players with higher speed combatants tokens (those coloured glass bead maybe) which they can cash in any time they want to make an extra action. Makes the added actions a bit more active.

I've been reading proposals for changing the intiative system in Champions evers since I first joined the mailing list years and years ago. I've never given them much attention as I happen to think that the speed chart is one of the features of Hero. Anyway - it was when I was reading Geoff's post (I think) that I had an idea of my own. He was asking for an ideal system where in a SPD 4 v SPD 3 fight the extra phase of the SPD 4 person was randomised. What about it being allocated instead?? My idea is that the main phases of a fight are dictated by the slowest SPD combatant. So in the instance of a SPD 3 versus SPD 4 both combatants would act on phases 4, 8 and 12. The SPD 4 character would however be able to use his extra phase any time after phase 3 (the earliest allowed in SPD 4). That gives the higher speed character the chance to utilise his higher speed profitably and more unpredictably. I would also limit actions to once per segment. That would seem, on limited reflection I grant, a decent way to shake things up without losing the flavour and structure granted by the chart.

I have been running Champions for a group of 12-15 year olds at the local church roleplay club. They have had no problems dealing with the mechanics of Champions in gameplay but they are completely overwhelmed about character creation - too much to think about. My advice is to work on the rules yourself and ask the players what they want to play. The most difficult part is in asking the right questions. I get all my players to right down (in story form) what they want their character to be able to do and then go away and design all the characters myself. This takes away the intimidation some players feel about the system and takes away the potential of players, who know more about the system, abusing your lack of knowledge. I then expect to make several re-writes of each character as, during play, players are likely to say "But my hero SHOULD be able to do THAT!" and if I agree then it's time for a re-write - asking them what ability they want to lose - or to make less powerful to allow for the new ability to be added. Essentially the system is no more than rolling 3D6 for task rolls and a variable number of D6 for effects. Players have to keep track of Endurance, Stun and Body. It's easy to play, the complexity is all in the background and provides you with all kinds of options that may make you, like the rest of us here, convinced that the benefits far outweigh the costs. Good luck and remember the best piece of advice you've been given is to come back and keep asking questions.

Not sure if it's what you were thinking of but there was the Dungeon Hero webpage that converted AD&D to Hero: http://www.planetx.org/~joed/gaming/dh.html

In the Decipher Lord of the Rings game they recommend that you decide whether small scale opponents are one hit opponents or perhaps 2 or 3 hit opponents. This way there is less bookwork and heroes can cut their way through swathes of opponents. If a three hit mook gets hit by a good hit then the GM can decide that they go down immediately. This is a decent system and avoids considerations of BODY/Armour/Recovery and CDG. Personally the balance between armour use on non-armour use in Fantasy Hero was one of my major plus points for the system. There was a real choice to be made and while wearing armour made it harder to hurt you it made you less mobile, easier to hit and more likely to get tired. (Those encumbrance rules HURT!)

Entangle was MY first thought as well but I'd have gone for a recoverable charge - finding appropriate stick! :-) Another thought might be suppress bite attack with a destroyable OAF - the GM can decide how long it lasts depending on the materials to hand and so the damage it takes from the beast in question.

I think you have to focus on results rather than on abilities. If your max attack is 12D6 and max defences are 30 then such an average attack versus that defence does 12 STUN. You can then estimate the length of the fights. If you allow an increase in attacks with no increase in defences then you have the average damage increased to 19 STUN. The question is whether you increase opponents stats along with the PCs. If you don't then the opponents attacks do less damage and take more from the PCs - existing opponents become easy to defeat - not a bad result and you can move the campaign onto new villains and new challenges. [Obviously the embarrassed villains go away and spend XP of their own and come back to haunt the heroes at a later date].

Just a thought, and probably not a good one as I sit in my office wishing I wasn't at work! Where I grew up a slot machine was called a one-armed bandit or more often a puggy. I was thinking that if you made the character a Scot he might think of himself as a one-armed bandit and use the code-name Puggy as a self-deprecating reminder. As the pug is a dog commonly associated with the Orient there are resonances...

Invulnerability/desolid - new thoughts I've been knocking an idea about in my head for some time and wrote it down for the first time in a discussion on the Usenet today. I thought I'd try ti out here as a more suitable place to get it knocked into (or out of!) shape. I have always been a bit disatisfied with desolid as a power. It is one of the on/off powers in Champions as opposed to others that have more gradual effects. Then there is the problem of using it to model invulnerabilities - it means that the person is vulnerable to affects desolid advantaged attacks and they have to buy affect physical world. There is something wrong. I've been thinking of a different way of buying desolid. I've not thought it through completely - that's why I'm talking to you guys. My idea is that you buy desolid iin stages like everything else. You'd buy 10D6 desolid and this would allow you to avoid damage and walk through walls. If you were walking through a DEF 6 structure then you'd move 4" per phase (10 - 6 = 4). If you were attacked then you'd ignore 10D6 of the attack - so Grond's 16D6 punch would deliver 6D6 damage. Conversely if you attacked you'd reduce your damage by 10D6 as well. This would mostly avoid the need for affects desolid style powers and affects physical world advantages. If you were looking to purchase a invulnerability style power - either because you are so quick you avoid most of the damage or because you are so resilient the damage doesn't affect you then you buy the 10D6 as normal but instead of being able to walk through walls you get to utilise your attacks without ignoring the 10D6. Opinions? Personally I'd be inclined to use this and remove desolid and damage reduction from my campaign.