Champions

[coyote6]

The Speed chart also gets some grief from newbies.

And some veterans. The Speed chart just bugs me, nowadays, as well as a few other things. Enough so that I've decided that while I'd love to play in a Hero/Champions campaign, I'd rather try GMing for Mutants & Masterminds. However, Hero is still a fine system.

Hero -- which is the proper name for the system that started as Champions -- is like most games: not as bad as some say, and not as good as others say.

The "math" involved in character creation is addition, subtraction, multiplication, & division -- the last two involving fractions (e.g., 1.25, 1.5). That's it; no square roots, no powers, no derivatives or integrals. It's just that there can be a lot *more* of that arithmetic than in other games (D&D, Vampire, etc.). For some people, that's a problem; they don't like math, aren't good at it, etc. For others, it's nothing.

(Me, I'm in the "it's nothing" camp. I used to work on characters in high school, during class, and double-check PCs point totals in my head. It wasn't until I helped people with math classes that I really understood that some people just don't juggle numbers that well.)

Try it. You might love it, you might hate it. It's hard to know 'til you've tried, right?

 

[Shard O'Glase]

I love the system but I still use houserules to speed up combat, some of which are now mentioned in Hero5 as possible ways to speed up combat.

The biggie for me is 3 things.

1 ocv/dcv mechanic uses subtraction not breathtakingly difficult to figure out, but late at night wehn I frequently game it gets tough. I make the DCV+11 be the target number for your ocv+3d6 roll.

2. Damage for normal attacks is either dice x3, x3.5, x4. You roll 3d6 to hit, and 1 extra die on the xtra die 1-2=x3, 3-4=x3.5,5-6=x4. You write out on your character sheet the 3 results(also ork it out for haymakers, move bys and move throughs).

3. defense your armomr/ff whatever for PD/ED/mental defense total must end in either 0 or 5.

Only #1 of these I feel the need to do at the non-supered level, no one is throwing around enough dice for me to worry about it much. If I ever ran a high powered fantasy game I might implement #2, but not #3 there aren't enough points to spend and purchased armor doesn't come that way.

 

[Wolv0rine]

I suggest that you take one of sample characters out the book, tweak it as you see fit, change the character's name and then have your friend run you through a few practice combats.

Okay, I'm breaking one of my own rules here, and posting before I've finished reading the entire thread... BUT... as a new Champions player, trying to learn the rules (very few of which you need to know, with a decent GM, from a players POV)... whatever you do, do NOT follow the above advice (unless I'm misreasding the advice, and the poster meant this only as a way to get used to gameplay in a practice setting). The characters in most of the books are actually incorrectly built (poor editing on older editions was rampant in NPCs). Take inspiration from them, take ideas on how to build certain powers you might like, but don't take for granted that most of the NPCs are well-created, because they usually aren't.

That said, IMHO there will never in the history of man be a RPG even half as good at Supers as Champions is. It's the Be All and End All of it's genre. And that is coming from a person who literally cannot do math higher than simple addition without a calculator (side effect of mild cerebral palsey). To be honest, I tend to enjoy making Champions characters as much as I enjoy playing the game, because it's an exercise in creative mental gymnastics... how can I make this power (or set of powers) in the cheapest way, while retaining as many of it's facets as I want, keeping the power and character true to it's concept, and doing it all in a way the GM will accept into the game without a coniption.
As far as learning the game, learn the character creation rules first anf foremost. Learn them as well as you can in the time you have, inside and out, because that's the knowledge that will help you. The actual game-play rules, you will probably not be expected to know much of, and the GM takes care of so much anyway. Look at everything, and it's insurmountable, but that's only an illusion.

Good luck!

 

[nHammer]

If Foxbat is considered one of the Hero iconics for this contest, my money is on Hero. Foxbat rules.

No he's not one of them....but Foxbat is really cool and I'm glad they revised him for the new edition.

 

[Utrecht]

Well I just found out that we are not playing Super Heroes. We are playing ordinary humans. The GM has 4 set types that we wants us to play and I am going to be a Military Cryptographer. There are no super powers, no magic, and no futuristic technology. It is going to be based in the year 2003. So now I have to come up with an average human Military Cryptographer. My brother is in the Army so I wonder if he would have any good ideas....

First and foremost, I have to say that I have enjoyed Champions every time that I have played it. That being said, why is he using the Hero system for this??????

Champios/Hero is really good with 4 color smash them up action - not so good for more realistic type campaigns - I am wondering why he is not using something else like: Spycraft, d20 modern or even Gurps...... Square peg and round hole......

 

[Shard O'Glase]

No he's not one of them....but Foxbat is really cool and I'm glad they revised him for the new edition.

I haven't picked up the hero5 champions suplement yet,(way too much to uy, and so little time) but I'm glad to hear they revised him. Do they have his henchmen that came out in the groups book for 4th edition. His team had perhaps the best backstory for a villan team in the history of comics/rpgs.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

First and foremost, I have to say that I have enjoyed Champions every time that I have played it. That being said, why is he using the Hero system for this??????

Champios/Hero is really good with 4 color smash them up action - not so good for more realistic type campaigns - I am wondering why he is not using something else like: Spycraft, d20 modern or even Gurps...... Square peg and round hole......

I disagree I think it does a great job of handling modern non-supers games, and fantasy games, and obviously supers games. I haven't used it yet for sci-fi, but I don't see why it would fail there.

 

[Galfridus]

The characters in most of the books are actually incorrectly built (poor editing on older editions was rampant in NPCs).

This, gladly, is no longer true as of 5th Edition. NPCs are, at long last, properly and even cleverly constructed.

 

[Wolv0rine]

This, gladly, is no longer true as of 5th Edition. NPCs are, at long last, properly and even cleverly constructed.

I've read on the Hero forums that they put a lot of effort into this (as it has been a nettle in the snouts of Heros fans from day one), but I haven't gotten the FREd yet, so haven't been able to see for myself.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

A note there are no characters in FRED. The characters are in the setting books. I haven't got the setting book for champions yet, though I really want to get I jsut haven't gotten aorund to it yet.