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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmadsen" data-source="post: 339387" data-attributes="member: 1645">Streamlining Hero (Recap)Champions has many great ideas, but few of them require the kind of complexity the system's known for.  I have a few fixes I'd hoped to see in Fifth Edition.  Deriving these fixes might not seem simple, but the end-user doesn't have to follow the derivation; it's the end result that's simple.Stats and Figured StatsChampions' stats -- and its figured stats in particular -- are needlessly complicated.  Who's the genius who thought we should round stat values for bonuses?  So now every character is full of stats like 13, 18, 23, etc.  Changing the rounding rules, a trivial change, would lead to efficient characters having nice, round stats: 10, 15, 20, etc., not 8, 13, 18, etc.Many of the figured characteristics are stat/5, but some aren't:PD = Str/5ED = Con/5Spd = 1 + Dex/10Rec = Str/5 + Con/5End = 2 x ConStun = Body + Str/2 + Con/2OCV = Dex/3DCV = Dex/3ECV = Ego/3(Also, skills use stat/5 for bonuses.)If we change those to use stat/5 in all cases, we don't even need any stats beyond 5, 10, 15, 20, etc.  For instance:PD = Str/5ED = Con/5Spd = Dex/5Rec = Str/5 + Con/5End = 2 x Con = 10 x Con/5Stun = Body + Str/2 + Con/2 (OK, this one needs some work...)OCV = Dex/5DCV = Dex/5ECV = Ego/5Moving Spd from 1 + Dex/10 to Dex/5 keeps the norm at 2, and can keep the "human max" at 4.  Dropping OCV and DCV to Dex/5 puts them in line with Dex-based skills, and doesn't change the game in any material way; it just makes Dex a wee bit less of an uber-stat (perhaps offsetting any higher Spd stats).(Aside: Champions' Spd stat has always been too granular at the low end for such an all-important value.  Going from 2 (human normal) to 4 (human max) doubles your combat effectiveness.  If you're already at "human max", it's still awfully tempting to spend another 10 points (out of 250) to go from 4 to 5 (or even 6) for another 25% to 50% increase in attacks (and moves) per turn.  There's no reason Spd has to start at 2.  We could define average to be 4 or 6 just as easily.) Once we've established that we only need stats that are multiples of 5, we can divide those original stat values by 5, making them the same as the figured stats we'd like to get to; we can eliminate the arithmetic.  We could have Str, Dex, Con, etc. scores of 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. instead of 5, 10, 15, 20 -- or 3, 8, 13, 18.  And figured stats might look like:PD = StrED = ConSpd = DexRec = Str + ConEnd = 10 x ConStun = 5 x Body + 5 x Str/2 + 5 x Con/2 (OK, this one needs some work...)OCV = DexDCV = DexECV = EgoThen, if we decide to subsume multiple related stats under one heading (more like Tri-Stat, but not so extreme), we might get something like:Body -- Str, Con, Body; separate Super-Strength power for pure lifting and punchingDex -- DexMind -- IntSoul -- Ego, Pre; separate Attractive talent for comeliness, Intimidation skill for Presence AttacksPD = Body ED = Body Spd = DexRec = 2 x Body End = 10 x Body Stun = 10 x Body OCV = DexDCV = DexECV = Soul -- or  Mind?With no adjustments, a level of Body would cost the sum of five points of Str, Con, and (old-school) Body: 5 x (1 + 2 + 2) = 25.  A level of Dex would cost 5 x 3 = 15.  A level of Mind or Int would cost 5 x 1 = 5.  A level of Soul would cost 5 x (2 + 1) = 15.We'd probably adjust them though.  Given the genre, I'd have no problem dropping the cost of a level of Body to 20 points, and, given its history as the uber-stat, I'd have no problem bumping Dex to 20 points.  A larger change would be to shift ECV away from Ego (now Soul) to Int (now Mind), and to use Ego (Soul) for psychic toughness, to parallel the Strength/Agility dichotomy of the physical stats.  Then we might price both Mind and Soul at 10 points per level.In this way, we could have a much simpler Champions stat system, one a bit like Tri-Stat (without going "too far"), that changes almost nothing about the underlying system -- or just a few bits that we'd like to change.Power ModifiersAnother example of a simple streamlining measure -- one that sounds oh-so-complicated but isn't -- would be to handle advantages and limitations as base-2 logarithms. What does that mean? A +1 advantage would double price (same as now), and a -1 limitation would halve price (same as now) -- but you could add and subtract your advantages and disadvantages the way every newbie thinks you should be able to.If everyone's already looking up power prices on a chart or whipping out a calculator, is it a problem that +1/4 now means x1.2 instead of x1.25, and +1/2 means x1.4 instead of x1.5?It's a small price to pay for being able to take an existing power, add an advantage or limitation, and not have to "unroll" all the previous math. A book of powers could list each complicated power with dozens of advantages and limitation as having just one final price. Making the whole thing NND (+1) would double that price. Making it all an OAF (-1) would halve that price.</blockquote>

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