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As someone who came back to the Hero System after a very long break, I often suffer from decision paralysis when spending my experience points. I try to spend experience to boost my effectiveness while also staying true to my character concept, but I freely admit I've made some terrible design choices along the way. Fortunately, my Champions GM is rather accepting about character redesigns and will even suggest design improvements. I like not having to suffer forevermore for one bad idea I had during character design. However, I have no idea how common or uncommon this experience is in the greater HERO system community. Since there are no level or class constraints in HERO system to guide us, do you or your players also struggle with how best to spend experience points? Do you horde them up until you can afford a big ticket item or do you spend them as you get them? Once spent, are the points forever set in stone, or can you concede design defeat and try again at your new point total? I've mostly spent my points as I get them, with the occasional saving for a big ticket item, but with lenient redesigns I also frequently find myself judging my character on his current utility. Are my attacks and defenses up to the campaign standards/limits? Is there a new power, perk, or skill that would both fit my character concept and help the team? For example, I recently added a group-flight power, but I haven't gotten to use it yet. If my fellow players continue to demonstrate self-sufficiency with travel powers, I know I will consider these points wasted, and I'll want to better spend them elsewhere. Does this kind of dynamic happen in your games too?

I am planning on moving 20-30 years from 1 campaign to seed a new one, and have original characters show up at times. Potentially characters from 20-30 years ago will be played along new characters and so I have been giving some thought to experience points for this 20-30 year period. I was wondering if others had done this, had thought about it, had guidelines they had used in the past for dramatic time advance and 'blanket' EPs to fill in the period. My initial thoughts: A large portion of the EPs will go to knowledge, professional and 'day-to-day' work skills. It should vary from individual to individual - EPs already do when players switch between characters at different times - so _some_ variation is to be expected and is accepted. How much should it 'swing'? I don't think that the EP gain should be based on any particular Characteristics. The rate will be nothing akin to full-on adventuring as will not have been intense and the threat is likely to have been a lot lower. I would not expect there to be EPs for good role-playing, as I am not looking to 'play' the intervening period - though once a structure/total time and rough events 'along the way' have been worked out I will encourage players to create a story to cover the period. I would consider bonus points being available for good role-play in the writing of this. I had considered that the EP gain will reduce over the period as day-to-day existence reveals less that is unknown to the character - therefore less of an 'experience'. I had thought something around 3-4 points a year with a small variation (perhaps based on 3d6), with some of the points being assigned by the GM, certain disadvantages should also be targeted to be bought off - afterall, how long can one person remain 'young, innocent & naive'? Cheers for any thoughts.