Champions RPG

[MarkAHart]

I think better and worse are subjective terms. Both M&M and Champions accomplish the same goal: filling up X amount of hours of superhero goodness per game session. It just comes down to what style of play you prefer. If you are someone who loves uber-crunchy rules, loves to constantly tinker with numbers, and likes grinding out tactical combats then Champions is your game. If you are looking for a slightly lighter rules system which focus a little more on free-form play rather then exact limits with quicker, less tactical, combats then M&M is your game. And then there are lighter games still like Marvel Superheroes, Capes, Truth & Justice, etc.

Very well said, and a nice coda on a rules debate...

 

[Krolik]

With regards to Mutants & Masterminds, as a d20-based system are there any broad brush comments you can make to give me a flavour of how it works given that I've a good knowledge of D&D?

I didn't notice anyone mentioning it but you should think about the M&M Beginner's Guide. It's available in print for $7.95 and as a PDF download for $4.00. The 32 page full-color book will walk you through the basics of the system, you then play a solo adventure, and then get to interact with other characters in an expanded adventure. It really is the perfect book for people just wanting to get an idea about the system and it is wonderfully priced.

 

[Fedifensor]

You're telling us how easily a guy like Daredevil can ratchet his damage up. Why, with a 20 STR and Offensive Strike, he's doing 8d6 right there! Even without a weapon, he's hitting like a jackhammer. Now, what folks are saying in return is that Daredevil's fists don't hit like jackhammers. He can't punch down a brick wall bare-handed.

Go to any number of martial arts exhibitions around the country, and you'll see guys breaking bricks in half - without superpowers. Not to mention that this is a genre where a man can throw a shield, knock out three goons, then catch that shield again - all without anything more than intensive training. I bet if you search through enough Daredevil comics, you'll find him breaking through a brick wall (maybe using his special senses to find the weak spot). Batman has probably done the same.

And if you're fighting anyone that's ever appeared in an official Champions supplement, you have a problem if you can't take out brick walls, because the median defense is tougher than a brick wall, and characters don't stray far from the median.

I don't know why you keep going back to the "characters don't stray far from the median". There are more 'steps' in the typical Champions range of 7d6 to 14d6 (14 counting +1/2d6, or 21 if you include the +1 option from Ultimate Brick). In a typical PL 10 game of M&M, the damage range available to characters is less than 14 steps. So I'm not getting where M&M has the advantage. Sure, a lucky roll could have a street thug drop anyone without Impervious defenses in M&M...but I see that as a weakness of the system, not a strength.

Contrast that to an actual superteam's adventures. Does every villain have a force field or some degree of invulnerability? When the Master of Evil attack, is there someone the Black Knight can deck with a lucky left hook?

There are many villains that have low enough defenses to be stunned with a lucky roll. I remember one time when a martial artist did over 40 STUN with an 8d6 attack - enough to punch through the bad guy's defenses and stun him.

Also remember that defenses aren't always force fields or invulnerability - take a look at "Combat Luck" in the 5E book. It helps prevent one-shotting the bad guy...how many comics do you read where the hero faces his archnemesis, and drops him with a single swing?

BkMamba did a nice little breakdown where he pointed that for all the diverse archetypes represented in the Champions supergroup, they are pretty darn homogeneous, and that's by necessity.

They're as diverse as M&M characters. Moreso, actually, since its a more complex system. The downside is the extra time it takes to generate characters, but I feel it's worth it. If you prefer a simpler system that runs faster, then HERO probably isn't for you. But saying that you can't reflect the superhero genre properly with Champions is simply untrue.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

Go to any number of martial arts exhibitions around the country, and you'll see guys breaking bricks in half - without superpowers. Not to mention that this is a genre where a man can throw a shield, knock out three goons, then catch that shield again - all without anything more than intensive training. I bet if you search through enough Daredevil comics, you'll find him breaking through a brick wall (maybe using his special senses to find the weak spot).

Off the top of my head I can't recall Daredevil breaking a brick wall with his hands, but in one of the early Elektra appearances (Daredevil #179 in fact) after she tricks Daredevil into getting his foot stuck in a bear trap she kicks a brick wall down on top of him to trap him further while she goes after Ben ulrich.

Earlier on (in that same issue) he saves ulrich while hes being harrassed in a gym by beating some thugs with a barbell that weighed 400 pounds. Later in that same fight he tosses the barbell at a corrupt mayoral candidate. So yeah Daredevil is actually pretty strong for just a martial artist. Him doing 8d6 damage to someone with a punch or a kick isnt entirely unrealistic (in the scope of the comics that is )

 

[JoeGKushner]

In terms of damage output versus defenses, it all falls down to do you want to emulate the genre or have some consistency in mechanics.

Watching JLU season 2, Patriot Act, we see an enemy of Superman's power level tear through about seven (Green Arrow, Stars, Stripes, Grimson Avengers, Speedy, Shinny Knight, Vigilante) fairly 'normal' supers.

That's not a game I'd have wanted to be a player in.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

An invaluable suppliment for any supers game in a system as flexible as M&M or Champions are the Marvel & DC omnibus stat books- Marvel Universe and Who's Who, as I recall- they put hard numbers on the abilities of the various characters. Top speeds, Maximum press, etc.

While initially released in individual comic forms, I believe both series are also published as trade paperbacks.

Then you can gauge what your PCs are aiming for, set your campaign's power levels, and so forth, with reasonable accuracy.

(AFAIK, no other superhero comic publisher does anything similar.)

As for Champions vs M&M...my personal take on the 2 systems is that M&M is slightly less flexible but has an extremely streamlined PC generation system which makes it easier for a newbie to pick up, while the marginally more flexible HERO system takes forever to generate a PC, and can generate a lot of fear in the math-phobic. However, once you get past PC generation, the play is pretty similar.

And while those are 2 of my favorite systems, I wouldn't neccessarily use them for every supers campaign I'd like to run. For instance, if I wanted to run a WW2 campaign, I'd go right for Godlike. Not as flexible a system, to be sure, but the depth of the research those guys did for the setting is so impressive, it would take me more time to convert stuff to M&M or HERO than its worth.

 

[Glyfair]

As a complete aside, does anyone remember the map that came in the various Champions box sets?

We used to refer to it as the "Nexus." We were discussing how this one street intersection seemed to show up regularly in games, and in every campaign world. We decided that it was a "nexus of all realities" and would refer to it as such (as in "get out the nexus").

We had the maps from Space Gamer, IIRC, that connected (another intersection map that connected to a map on a waterfront. We also had Chessex battlemats. However, the nexus saw the bulk of the use. In fact, Champions is why I prefer hexes to squares to this day.

 

[pawsplay]

That wide range is possible because lower Damage is functional in M&M but is not in Champions. That does not make Champions a bad game in any way. It just means that in M&M players who want their characters to only do +5 or +6 like Hawkeye do not need to feel completely overshadowed by characters doing +12, +13, or +14.

Instead, Iron Man's player can feel overshadowed by bow-wielding Hawkeyes. Because, in M&M, it's relatively easy to hit, and relatively easy to do damage, within a certain PL, characters are less distinguished in types of fights they can win. That can be a feature. but it also means there are no nearly invulnerable or nearly unhittable characters; Spider-Man is all but outside what M&M allows unless you juke the PLs and put people on unequal footing.

PLs are to put everyone on equal footing, which is NOT genre. They work pretty well for X-Men type games, with multiple characters who tend to be roughly on the same playing field, not so well for JLA where each characters is an acknowledged master in a particular area.

 

[BkMamba]

Spider-Man is all but outside what M&M allows unless you juke the PLs and put people on unequal footing.

There are so many possible ways of making Spider-man virtually unhittable that it is hardly even worth mentioning. Just like Champions M&M bases Powers off of special effects. But you can start with the basics:

Spider-man: PL 10 8 Toughness 12 Defense. That right there means that a roll of 22 is needed to hit Spider-man. Against all the Mooks Spider-man usually fights that generally means a natural 20 roll is needed to hit him - and no Critical Hit benefit is gained from that roll. Then, even after one of them hits Spidey, he still has a chance to "roll away" from the Damage with a Toughness Save. So an "unhittable" result is not just the fact that a Miss was rolled but also that a Toughness Save was made.

Now we add some Feats: Defensive Attack and 2 Ranks of Improved Defense. Defensive Attack allows Spidey to shift 5 points of Attack into Defense. Against Mooks and bruisers like Rhino, Lizard, etc, who are not difficult to hit, Spider-man does not need all of his Attack so raising his Defense to 27 is beneficial for him.

The two Ranks of Improved Defense allow Spidey to "dodge" for a value of 30. All those panels where you see Spider-man doing nothing but jumping out of the way of an attack are generally him dodging. And again, if hit you still have the fact that Spidey can "roll away" from the Damage with a Toughness Save.

Now we get into the creative parts. You can buy a Power like Displacement to represent that Spider-man's insessent hopping around during automatically gives you a 50% chance of being missed due to his acrobatics actions. You can buy Deflect to a Free or Reaction to represent the Spider Sense's ability to instantly give Spidey a chance to avoid Damage. And there are other things which can be purchased as well.

The things you build into a character are what give them the special abilities you see in the comics. If you do not give Spider-man the Skills, Feats, and Powers which make his agility shine then it will not.

 

[BkMamba]

We had the maps from Space Gamer, IIRC, that connected (another intersection map that connected to a map on a waterfront.

I have those maps as well, and still use them. I do not remember if they were from Space Gamer or Different Worlds though.

One thing that I really miss today is that there are no gaming magazines directed toward superhero games and gaming. I would love to be able to go and buy a magazine each month which had M&M, Champions, Wild Talents, GURPS Supers, Heroes Unlimited, and other superhero systems information in it. I miss the innocense of the early days of gaming.