Champions RPG

[pawsplay]

You can always build characters with extra reserves that Cost END and have Increased END cost. A lot of genre things can be built for Champions that usually aren't. Also, it's likely, Spidey has a lot of Combat Luck or something similar.

The removal of fate from the game is only somewhat related to the matter at hand: the ability to create characters who function at a specified level, when an attempt is made to be consistent.

I do like Hero Points and such... I was a M&M 1e player for a while, as a matter of fact. And I'm a big Dc Heroes 3e fan.

 

[Felon]

I am adopting my point of view because we are talking about a game system not comic books. As I have said several times now Spidey surviving such a thing in a comic is WRITER's FIAT - the writer decides that Spidey only gets three small slashes on his arm.

Well, in so much as events in comic stories aren't played out with dice rolls, it's all pretty much at the writer's discretion. Of course, most games don't allow for "partial dodges", although in Champions terms, Spidey could roll with the hit.

In Champions Wolverine is looking at having around a 4d6 AP HKA. That is 14 Body Damage on average. That is major damage to a character like Spidey who probably only has around a 15 Body total. .

Sure, like I said, heroes without resistant defenses are dead meat in Champions. A big deviation from the game and the genre it's supposedly representing.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Sure, like I said, heroes without resistant defenses are dead meat in Champions. A big deviation from the game and the genre it's supposedly representing.

But part of that depends on the GM running with the genre.

For example, in my old campaign, one of the players was a very confident martial artists with pretty high body (something like 18), super high dex (35 or so) and a lotta combat levels. No resistance defense.

For about 85% of the time, he rarely took body damage when he was hit by people spreading their EB or conscussion grenades or when suffering flash damage and taking a huge reduction in fighting ability.

One session he got hit with a grenade. It made pretty good RPGing as he was critically injured and almost dead. But it's hard to kill someone with 18 body as they have to go to -18

I let him buy up some resistant ed/pd as a bullet proof costume after that to help compensate and showcase his 'maturity' that even his MA skills might not always be enough to save the day.

It's easy to kill players as the GM but doing so usually involves acting outside the genre too. For example, most of the X-Men could be killed by a sniper yet no one's done that because it would be boring writing. "Yeah, I killed Cyclops, Pysloche, Storm, etc... hell, even got Colossus while he was in human form."

 

[buzz]

HERO DOES have the Luck power which can get you similar results to "action points," but admittedly, like any other power, you have to pay for it to gain the benefit.

The basic Luck mechanic is also in the hands of the GM, not the player. I.e., it's the GM who calls for Luck rolls. The book also advises that the GM can disregard Luck rolls if they so choose.

I'm not sure if the "Other Ways of Using Luck" in the Power description are optional or can be chosen by the player at the start of a session. I'd thought they were the former.

All in all, I prefer simply giving the players HAPs and making their effects sacrosanct. IMO, that's much more in line with M&M's Hero Points and most of the other dramatic editing mechanics I've seen.