Hero System Review Tuesday: "The Ultimate Vehicle"

This book was written by Bob Greenwade (who the hell is that?) and Steve Long. This is both an accusation and assignment of blame.

I saved this one for last because this one is quite possibly the worst book put out for the entire 5th Edition, which is irritating because it's one of the most necessary. It is the only truly unplayable book ever released for 5th Edition, and possibly the worst thing ever put out under the Champions/Hero System title.

The book is full of baffling headscratchers that make it practically unusable. My favorite is how practically every single jet vehicle has an enormous -1¾ limit to represent they have a damaging effect when their movement power is in use (jet planes burn things behind them).

Something having a damaging effect has a limitation on it? It's like a "limitation" one of the deviously sadistic minmaxing "Knights of the Dinner Table" crew would come up with, simultaneously saving points and doing damage. Heck, I have no idea where they coughed up the outrageous -1¾ figure because in the superhero genre book, doing property damage under you when you use your earth-movement powers is a miniscule -¼ if it's a limit at all, and I don't think it is. I've always been of the opinion that if someone else has to pay the cost of something, it's not a limitation. Call it a limitation version of the "tragedy of the commons."

By the way, destroyers and submarines only have a "mere" -¾ limitation for their damage-dealing screws and propellers. While manatee-killing is a very real problem facing our oceans, I somehow doubt your player characters will be inconvenienced at the -¾ level by the occasional contact with "Nature's Speedbumps." By the way, in a perfect example of how limitations in this supplement were assigned by throwing darts at a wall, airplanes with the very serious problem of stall velocity only have that as a -¼ limitation (which affects turn mode, requires constant movement, and can be a disaster in the event of Drains) and requiring a takeoff and landing is a -1.

It's also insane what they choose to give a limitation. I can't literally think of any occasion damaging exhaust is a problem, but I can think of one big limitation on planes: someone smashes or gums up a wing the whole thing goes out of control and flies like a filing cabinet. No Restrainable-esque limitation for that, though! Restrainable is, incidentally, a -½ limit, so stall velocity is a lot more damaging and gives you back a lot less. Good going, Bob Greenwade.

This reminds me of an old aviation joke. The job of a propeller is to keep the pilot cool. Turn it off, and watch him sweat.

It gets worse. The character sheet for the M1A1 Abrams tank has a DEF of 20. Now, stop and think about that. That means that on the balance, a 100 Active Point Energy Blast, or STR 100 character, will not do any damage at all. Hell, even Grond, the Champions Universe's Brand X answer to the ultrastrong Incredible Hulk, has STR 90. Considering the point value for above average, powerful superheroes is 70-90 Active Points in a power, that means a single M1A1 tank can easily shrug off an entire party of higher power player characters. Considering RPG-7 rounds, which do 4d6 Killing damage, can mangle a tank on a straight-shot, this is a little amazing.

To quote Jason Sartin: "saying this book should be burned is an insult to fire."

Oh yeah: elevators, missiles and torpedoes are built as vehicles. What?

Personally, I always thought having to pay points to have headlights and an FM radio was really pushing it, so you can imagine how delighted I was to see that an Anchor (an anchor!) actually is something boats have to pay points for! Really!

You need to charge players to have elevators and anchors? I'm actually surprised the book doesn't make you pay for bathrooms. Things necessary to the normal functioning of a vehicle aren't worth points.

I expect better from published materials than this amateur hour stuff. This book is typical of where new players go insane with the Hero System, and I mean literally insane because it is nothing short of a mental illness: they figure they have to pay points for everything, and I mean everything.

I remember once a player wanted to play a fish themed aquatic hero that tasted bad. You know how there are some fishes that taste bad and predators automatically spit them back out? He went crazy with how to represent something so trivial, including Mind Control with Persistent.

I was like…"For the love of God, Brian…Mind Control? Really? If we really, really, really want to make this something other than a zero-point feature, like red hair, we can buy it is as a low level perk, like the Fuzion did. Sure, it was a bad game and an unworthy heir to Champions, but at least it handled stupid stuff like this pretty well."

One player of mine wondered if he had to pay points for another player character as a Follower or Contact.

Another thought he might have to pay points to be a dark-skinned character because he was then pretty much immune to sunburn.

This is where you can go literally insane with a system like Champions – if you're wondering if being a lightskinned redhead is a disadvantage or advantage or start paying points for boat anchors, you have literally lost perspective and gone totally mad, a full-on mental disorder. The Vehicles guide totally embraces that madness. It's like the Necronomicon for the simultaneously clueless and anal-retentive.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, no other book used the rules in the Vehicle Guide (someone correct me if I'm wrong and the fantasy books did – I didn't read them and really, neither did anybody else). Nobody else gave an insane (-1¾) power break to every single jet vehicle. Nobody else treated elevators and anchors as things you have to pay points for. The Vehicle Guide is isolated from the rest of the entire system in a way that makes me think of the court orders on registered sex offenders.

There's a howler on practically every page. The "flying carpet as a vehicle" idea was, um, interesting, especially for something that is pretty much a textbook example of an OAF at most. Let me know when you can roll up and carry with you your Volkswagen beetle, though.

On that note, the book also broke the 11th Commandment of the Hero System: thou shalt not build suits of power armor as vehicles! I could see powergamers the world over lick their chops hungrily at this ugly, broken, heretofore nonexistent precedent. That's the part that baffles me...despite it being a book on Vehicles, it's a little unclear on what counts as an actual vehicle at all.

I feel a little guilty going after elevators, flying carpets and suits of power armor built as vehicles because though it was a misfire of an idea, and one that might have been responsible for the big change in 6th Edition where it's impossible for a vehicle to have a vehicle, nonetheless it had the guts to think outside the box. It was a misfire, but a spectacular misfire. When you go off the beaten path, sometimes you find new things never seen before. On the other hand, what happened here was this book went so far off the beaten path it got so lost that Jimmy Hoffa couldn't find it.

Another one of my favorite bits was how every modern fighter plane had both electronic countermeasures (bought as a Suppress) and electronic counter-countermeasures, which is bought as a Suppress for Suppress. When I explained this to my game table, there was an awkward moment because my players assumed I was joking and then realized I wasn't. One of the most pursued and pointless chimeras of the Hero System is figuring out the "correct" way to build something, but if everyone you explain how you built something responds with a "wait, seriously?" you're probably not doing it right.

Anyway, as even a casual Tom Clancy war porn reader would tell you, the pace of avionics development is so extreme countermeasures useful in one decade are out of date and nearly useless the next, though the book treats countermeasures as an absolute set number for every vehicle. They mumble something in the back about how this is probably not a good idea, but no guidelines are presented.

There are moments where I seriously wonder if the guy that wrote this ever actually played any tabletop games ever in their lives. The "missile lock is bought as a Detect" gave me that feeling in that it makes characters aware of something incredibly obvious, especially if you're playing on a map, which by the way, 5th Edition Champions assumes you are.

Imagine this at your game table.

GM: (moves enemy planes onto the game map) "Captain Rick, just when you think you're in the clear, your radar screen flashes with the red of hostile MiG fighter planes. You can see them screaming through the air at you and their muzzles flash."

GM: "Roll your Missile Lock Detect."

PLAYER: (rolls dice) "7."

GM: "You get missile lock from the enemy planes."

PLAYER: "…Really? Gee whiz, I never would have guessed, almighty GM. That was 5 points well-spent. Can I roll Combat Piloting or do I need a Detect (Ground) so I don't hit it?"

GM: "Yeah, yuck it up, smartass. They're heading right for you."

PLAYER: "Hey, you know missiles are vehicles now, right? You *DID* put them on the initiative chart…right?"

GM: (grumbles, as he rifles through his papers and places missile tokens on the map)

PLAYER: (watching) "Well, I'm sure glad I rolled that all-important Detect. By the way, I'm using my electronic countermeasures."

GM: "They use their electronic counter-countermeasures."

PLAYER: "I use my electronic counter-countermeasures."

GM: "Alright, I got a 36 on one and a 42 on the second and…damn it, what subtracts from what again?"

PLAYER: "I'm not sure. By the way, I spend my next phase doing a flyby so I hit a MiG with my Killing Attack exhaust."

GM: "Good thing for you no manatees can fly, or that limitation would *really* sting right about now...."

See what I mean when I say this is unplayable?

In conclusion, authors of the Ultimate Vehicle, Bob "Who?" Greenwade and Steven "I should know better" Long, I hate your product more than any other book ever released for any system ever, and that includes that World of Darkness splatbook "Gypsies" that gave a real-world ethnic group superpowers.

By the way, I was just as confused by the name Bob Greenwade (who the hell is that?), until I did a google search and discovered this book is his only published RPG work except for some Haymaker! fanzine articles. On his personal page on Haymaker! he's humbly self described as having a "genius-level IQ," which considering "The Ultimate Vehicle," I *really* doubt. The worse a game designer, the greater and more insane tendency to make extravagant claims about themselves. Remember when the creator of SenZar said he could punch ten times in a second and had a nothing short of superhuman weightlifting bench?

(Note: Pardon the lateness of this review, which didn't come on a Tuesday.)

Hero System Review Tuesday: "Conquerors, Killers and Crooks"

Maybe you're one of those that doesn't like the Champions Universe. You'd rather create your own, or say, set the game in your favorite comics world like the Marvel Universe.

I said the same thing myself. Don't worry, you'll set a game in the Champions Universe eventually. You will!

Either you'll realize it's insanely labor intensive to write out six or seven character sheets every single game and you find yourself wishing for support so you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time, or you'll get deep into the game world the more books you buy and realize you're left out of the fun with bad guys like Ankylosaur, Shrinker and Foxbat.

It's literally impossible for anyone that calls themselves a GM to read Champions, Killers and Crooks and not come up with five million ideas for your own group.

That brings me to the single most sterling recommendation for Conquerors, Killers and Crooks: because a roleplaying game is all about player characters, a Champions superhero setting is pretty much defined by who the villains are. Which leads to a very unusual situation in RPGs, where the villain book is the only really "required" sourcebook for an entire setting! If you want to set a game in the Champions Universe, this is the only one you really truly need for that Champions feel – the Champions Universe book itself and the Champions setting book are more or less optional, just for the completist. If you're on a budget, this is the book you need.

I love this book. I can't recommend it enough. It's useful for developing something a GM should have, which is an intuition about what makes someone dangerous and lethal and what makes for a cakewalk fight, something you may not have if you make your own bad guys from the beginning. For that reason it's good to peruse even if you don't intend to use the Champions Universe. One of the single most difficult and unpredictable things about a superhero game is the ability to determine challenge.

In general, this is a book you can "trust." If it says a villain is super-deadly and requires a team to fight, he probably does. A bad guy's DEX and CON ratings usually "feel" right. I've seen some dumb-ass, useless and unusable bad guy character sheets by energetic, prolific amateurs like Sam Bell where nobody's PD or ED was ever above 3 and if a DEX was 20, they must be a Dexmonkey King of the Ninja or something.

Best of all, Conquerors Killers and Crooks seems to be the one place that avoids the magic fetish everyone else writing in this cosmos seems to have. Magic villains are no more or less represented than any other kind of bad guy, like mutants or aliens. Color me surprised to see there was an American Indian character, Warbow, that (shocking for this edition) didn't have Shaman Ancestor Powers! It may be the case that a lot of these baddies were created before Champions was all-magic in the 5th Edition, so they're grandfathered in, in something close to their original forms. I'd hate to imagine what they'd be like if created just for this edition. Danish politician Fiacho would probably get his powers from the EPCOT version of Viking magic like every other asshole.

Come to think of it, the 5th Edition Dr. Destroyer does look a little like Sauron, doesn't he?

Hero System Review Tuesday: "Champions Universe"

Do you like magic?

Well, apparently, so do Steven S. Long and Darren Watts, the people that brought the Champions Universe into the 21st Century.

Magic is (seriously!) responsible for all superpowers, even mutants and accidental origin types (say what?).

Atlantis is full of magic, and so are the Champions Universe's Mole Men equivalent race, who also use magic. The main martial artist NPC uses magic swords (possibly +3 Shocking Burst Vorpal, but let me check the DMG tables again). The other dimensions are filled with magic and the book even points out only mages are suited for interdimensional travel – which is weird because the most famous other dimensions in "real" comics are "alternate universes" and the Negative Zone. Depending on the sourcebook, there are more magic bad guys than any other origin. There's even a city full of magic, Vibora Bay – especially irritating in that it broke the Champions Universe's long-time prohibition against fictional, DC style American cities.

Almost every single hero outside of America gets their magic powers from the region's local magic folktale, representing the EPCOT version of that world culture. If you think this means the continent of Africa is packed with soul brothers with tribal lion-command powers, you'd be right.

Magic, magic, magic. I think Julius Schwartz is getting chafed from all the 360's he's doing in his grave.

This blew my mind. This was where I realized things were out of control. Just in case you think I was exaggerating above.

To summarize: "magic makes mutants and power armor work because of the Nazis."

Say what? By the way, this insane page is contradicted by the fact that later on they talk about how technology is relatively higher in the Champions Universe earth because of superheroic inventors. It's like even the book realizes how Medichlorians-level terrible an idea this is and rejects the idea like a viral infection mere pages later.

By the way, if the idea was to bring Champions in with the meta-setting, it choked there, too. There must have been at least as much magic during their Brand-X Conan or Middle Earth age in the meta-setting, and yet I'm betting there were no mutant powers and powered armor then. Maybe it's because there were no Nazis.

I know comics have wizardry involved from time to time but…how many super-mages are there in "real" superhero comics? I mean, can we do a head count here? Guys, this is disproportionate representation.

I play superhero roleplaying games because I've had about a bellyful of fairy-and-dragon fantasy games. I have great memories of running D&D games for my friends in middle school, but if I never run another D&D game again as long as I live it'd be too soon.

Despite the obvious raging boner the creators have for magic, the book is a pretty useful introductory guide to the Champions Universe, and explains what "Hunted: PSI, 8-" on character sheets actually means. It provides an introduction for newbies, and is a great place to start. I'd recommend it, but if you can get it by borrowing it once from your GM for a weekend so you know who ARGENT is, that'd be the best course of action. A lot of it is filler, naturally: a lot of the world setting is about characters that aren't important. Who the heck was Beowulf or MicroMax? The only character from the Justice Sentinels that stands out to me was Diamond, and that's because he was obviously inspired by the Thing.

One thing this book has going for it, though: that may be the awesomest cover of any roleplaying game product ever. They did George Perez in all the right ways!

Champions (Hero System 5th Edition) Product Review Tuesday: Aaron Allston's "Champions: Superpowered Roleplaying"

Better late than never, right?

I'm proud to introduce a regular feature – Champions Review Tuesdays, which focus on the old 5th Edition, which is overrepresented in my collection. Every Tuesday I'll get another one up like clockwork of another Champions (Hero System) product.

Seriously, the necessity for reviews of this type dawned on me when I realized the quality of Hero System productions swung around so wildly that some books were must-haves and others were terrible to the point of absolute uselessness. I also realized that most of the webrpg reviews were done by sycophantic fanboys incapable of providing useful or thoughtful information.

Champions: Superpowered Roleplaying (By Aaron Allston)

When I first got this book I thought it was pretty friggin' useless, and a rip-off for the dough I forked over.

For heaven's sake, I already know how superheroes work, what a "brick" and an "energy projector" character are. I had a basic sense of how the genre worked, like the difference between a Master Villain (say, Doctor Doom) and a Henchman Villain (say, Whirlwind, Tigershark or the Wrecking Crew), defining characteristics of the Silver Age and Bronze Age, and things like skintight costumes and what a superteam government liason does. All of which, by the way, are explained in the book. I'm not joking – there's a whole page on how superhero costumes work. Take a look so you don't think I'm lying:

It felt like they were trying to explain superheroes to people on another planet where there were no superheroes. The book also suffers from things like an attempt to explain romance and comedy in superhero comics, which feels like word-count padding and filler, probably because it is.

Since then, though, I've played with enough people that don't "get" superheroes…and I've been on Champions Online, a game theoretically about superheroes ruined by a playerbase that instead creates furry weirdness like rainbow winged wolf-women and vampire faggotry for the no-longer-cool-or-relevant World of Darkness.

It was then that it dawned on me. The Champions Sourcebook is actually necessary because some people actually don't get superheroes and all this has to be spelled out for them.

It sounds weird, I know, but it reminds me of an anecdote told about Joe Orlando, a guy that was principally a horror and EC comics guy who transitioned into superheroes with great difficulty.

Joe Orlando once wrote a memo where he asked a plotter, "why does the Thing have to smash through a wall? Can't he use a door?"

To which the exhausted writer responded, "look, Joe, you either get this stuff or you don't."

It gets even more interesting when you consider that because Champions has been around for such a long time, there are people that play Champions and don't read superhero comics at all, just like there are people that play D&D and don't read fantasy novels. The Champions Universe started off as a store-brand version of Marvel Comics but acquired a life of its own. To an old school comics fan like me, it's inconceivable, and a perverse reversal of the natural order, that someone could be more familiar with Mechanon than Ultron or Doctor Destroyer over Doctor Doom. It reminds me of people that think Drow are really in world myth, instead of being a creation of Gary Gygax.

Suddenly I understood why, for example, the superteam in this book, the Champions, had powers, vehicles and bases that were so very generic: they're supposed to be that way, to work as "examples" of how you build, say, a Batman type hero, a brick-type invulnerable hero, a power armor hero, an energy projector, and so on. This is especially important and meaningful because the purpose of examples is to show what the system can do.

In an unusually prescient move that shows these people actually play their own game, there was even a Worf-type alien hero. I have almost never been in a group and not had at least one person not want to be a "today is a good day to die" Worf guy. They even give him a Phys Lim to represent unfamiliarity with earth culture. It's like the characters were created with a "how to do this" list in hand. If you're a newbie and aren't sure how to do something, this can be very, very helpful.

If you're an overworked dog of a man like I am, you can do what I do: steal the Champions' V-Jet and use it for whatever superhero team jet's in your own game (all superheroes need a jet, right?), borrow the stats for their wisecracking HAL 9000 AI computer and use it for the one in your superhero base (all superheroes have one of those, too). I hate to interpret designer intent, but I believe that's literally what they're there for, people!

That reminds me. Where the book really shines are the crunchy game bits, and there are a lot of them. The templates are huge packets that make superhero comics easier. They include game bits that are absolutely indispensable: team communicators. Comic book technology like blaster pistols, rocket packs, and character sheets for generic evil minions. Speaking from experience as a GM in a labor-intensive system who believes in working smarter, not harder, that evil minion sheet in back has literally been the henchman sheet for dozens of very different baddies.

The templates are a lifesaver because there's no reason to reinvent the wheel with basic character concepts like the Earth Control Hero, Growing Hero, Scientist, or Martial Artist. When you become a GM, these will be your best friend. Many of them even have things you didn't think of. My favorite was the Multipower for telekinesis heroes, which had Darkness (representing whirling local dust and debris to make a blinding smokescreen). I hadn't thought of that, but that's just cool.

There is also a no-frills Batmobile type supercar, and at least five types of bases: urban base, space base, and an underwater base complete with computers, all with pretty common options. If you think this will save you work, you'd be right. File off the serial numbers and you can pretty much Xerox this and hand them out to characters "right out of the box."

My advice? If you know superheroes, skip the flavor text in front and then go right to the crunchy bits, which you can then file the serial numbers off. I really hate to do "time is money" comparisons, but let's get cold and logical about this: how much would you pay to save yourself hours of unnecessary work? Seriously, let's attach a dollar amount to GM labor. If you say you'd pay anything from from $5-$20 an hour to save you the equivalent amount of work, this book will still pay itself off eventually if you run a campaign longer than a few weeks.

The optional rules are interesting, although they conform with intuition. For instance, the rules on the "Fastball Special" are basically what you'd expect: a character does a Move-Through maneuver based on the velocity of the inches of throwing. You can probably guess that's how it would work if you've ever been a GM for Champions for any length of time, but it's nice to have that in writing. The Directed Knockback rules measure what happens when knockback is used to hit one character into another: namely a second attack roll against a target in the path of the knockback, which gives damage based on inches of Knockback on a 1" = 1d6 basis. This is such an intuitive way to handle it that I'm not entirely sure this even counts as a new rule.

When building characters I always turn to the Vulnerability Frequency tables. How often do cold attacks come up in your average superhero world, anyway? Mental powers? Again, good to have it in writing. Though I notice there is a slight Marvel emphasis on a lot of these tables. For instance, Cold/Ice powers are judged as uncommon, and fire and heat powers as very common. That's one big difference between the Marvel and DC Universes: Marvel has tons of fire people and relatively few ice characters, while DC has tons of ice people and relatively few fire people.

Finally, in back there are some great classic villains for a variety of campaigns, in addition to the famous Utr – er, I mean, Mechanon. Green Dragon, a villainous kung fu expert, is a great character because he can with very few alterations be retweaked into the character sheet for literally dozens of "costumed athlete" martial arts types with very little effort.

It's at this point I ought to admit a prejudice I have that colors my appreciation of the book. I don't like "genre toolbox" supplements that give you an overview of a genre or milieu so you can create your own setting with them. Universal systems, or games like Champions that play-act at being universal systems, are pretty much plagued with books of this type. The non-crunchy parts of these kinds of books are irritating to read because as I said, they waste your time telling you things you already know.

The worst part is when toolbox books of this type take a view that genre simulation is the absolute top priority, and if simulation is the priority, things end up becoming parodies of themselves because they never break new ground.

The best and most interesting things ever done with superheroes, and with anything else for that matter, are the ones that "break the rules." The FF didn't have secret identities, for example, which was a pretty ironclad comics rule until then.

Because genre simulation is paramount, the books give frankly horrible and embarrassing advice I can't see any real GM taking. Typical of this is a section on fads and creating fad-themed superheroes with disco and skateboarding themed powers. Does it occur to anyone else that maybe accurately simulating the genre is ultimately not as important as not being retarded? Because having disco and skateboard themed characters sounds pretty retarded to me.

This gets even worse with other Hero System products. My favorite is another toolkit book, Pulp Hero which gave the most dysfunctional advice imaginable on handling race and sex. When it came to women, it said that "because pulps like Adventure made an effort to portray females as smart, strong and sensible, there are many examples to fall back on when creating as many heroines and capable female NPCs as you like."

Okay, fine, but later on, they discuss racism, and give three possible options for a game master and group, all of which are equally insane: the first is setting a game in the 1920s and ignoring racism and sexism as existing in society entirely (!); the second is making all characters white and male to "accurately simulate the pulps," (!) and the third is a "compromise" (their words) possibility where "Oriental" is used instead of "Asian" and "if there is a nonwhite player character, there should be only one."

What blows my mind about this is not how horrible the advice is (pretending racism and sexism didn't exist in the 1920s, or requiring players to make all-white male heroes?) but it never even occurs to them that maybe it's possible to create smart and capable racial minority heroes, or even an all-minority party, even if there is no precedent for that in the pulps themselves? In other words, the reason women heroes can be smart and not useless is only because Adventure magazine did it!

Another reason I don't like books of this type is that they take a backwards approach to how, in practice, the creation of settings work. They start with making someone ask big questions that in practice most people creating a setting, roleplaying game masters or otherwise, don't answer immediately, like what the status of superhumans and the law is, or the history of superheroes.

In a homebrew game, it's a very rare game master that has everything fleshed out from day one. Thinking about the history of superhumans isn't the first thing you should be thinking about when starting a game or a setting. I understand different GMs work in different ways, but is starting with a chapter like "Timeline" about the history of the entire world really the way most GMs do things? Is that even the most helpful way to think?

Hero System (Champions) 6th Edition Review

Champions, aka the Hero System, is my favorite tabletop role-playing game of all time, and so I grabbed the new edition, updated my running game to use it, and never looked back. Other superhero games are great, but none seemed as worthwhile as Champions. A majority of my long-lasting RPGs have been Champions games.

Like a lot of things I like, the Hero System is neither beginner or newbie-friendly...but while it looks difficult, the rules have such internal consistency that it's possible to understand how several rules work if you understand one. Character creation is infinitely customizable; there's never a danger of two characters looking alike.

My typical reaction to most of the changes in 6TH Edition was, “well, it’s about damn time!”

One thing that I’ve yet to see receive any praise as long, long overdue was the system for Long-Term END Loss. This is one of those so-called “Optional” rules, like the Dive for Cover maneuver, that in my experience, are ultimately not-so-optional because they fill a need and can be used almost every story. If a hero flies to South America, how tired are they by the time they get there? How exhausted are they by the cross over the desert? I have no idea why a system with this utility took this long to add.

What I find most impressive, and kind of creepy, is that an overwhelming number of the changes made are things that I personally used in my game on a haphazard basis. For instance, I used something quite similar to the Long-Term END Loss system for a while, and speaking of perfect timing…the very day before I got the book, a player asked if he could get an “all or nothing” limit on his Increased Density. At the time, I ruled that unless it was a huge amount, all or nothing is a -0 limitation. Imagine my shock to see that very ruling, with my exact language, in print! It was things like this that led me to believe this is a revision done by people that actually play the game.

The distinction between the Barrier and Entangle struck me as genius, since it was always unclear to me where Entangle’s ability to create barriers ended and Force Wall began. Further, the solution to Absorption – to list it as points to absorb instead of rolled dice – was exactly the kind of elegant, outside the box solution I hoped to see more of in this revision.

Another definite improvement was the unlocking of characteristics. On the plus side, the unlocking of characteristics means that combat doesn’t stop for 2 minutes while everybody figures out how their SPD is lowered by a Drained DEX. This is actually genius, since Drain DEX and CON are the single most common Drains. In addition to speeding things up, the unlocking allows greater character customizability. When I saw this change, the first character I immediately thought of was Marvel Comics’ the Thing: a guy that is big and rocky and slow, but who is very skilled and experienced at scraps and fighting. He’d definitely have a low-DEX and a high OCV.

This actually reduces the importance of super-crucial attributes like CON and DEX, which depending on their value, can make a character playable or unplayable. The single most common mistake that beginning players make is to have a low CON, which means every attribute derived from that stat is pretty low too.

The switch from inches to meters was an interesting one, but I’m not sure what it really changes. It does make me wonder, though. When I game, I usually do it with maps. A combat without a map, for me, is absolutely unthinkable – combat, to my mind, needs maps in order to be clear. Is it a common experience for people in other groups to play without maps? Is that the reason for the change?


What I find interesting is that most critiques I have of the 6th Edition can also be applied to 5th. The reason is, I’m just disappointed that the new edition didn’t go far enough in solving very basic problems with the Hero System.

1. Hey goober…where are the superguys?

When are they going to stop pretending this isn’t mostly a superhero game?

The Hero System started out as Champions and is first and foremost about superhero gaming. I have no idea why this is even contentious at all. The assumption of superhero gaming is built into almost every element of the system: two different damage types, knockback, END costs for everything, the way only high ability scores impact skills, the unreal damage done by Martial Arts damage, the fundamental durability of living things, down to the very names of powers themselves, like “Telepathy,” and the fundamental notion of powers as something distinct from skills and characteristics. There are a million little examples, even in the current edition: for instance, the fact that Barriers are not assumed to be opaque unless otherwise stated, is a perfect example of thinking that is so idiosyncratically superheroic. De-emphasizing the game’s superhero roots so it’s trying to be GURPS is downright confusing from nearly every angle, especially since the game only really works as-is for superheroes and needs patching and optional rules for nearly everything else.

The Hero System is like Starbucks: sure, it’s great they offer salads and organic juices, but at the end of the day, their business is selling coffee. I figured if anything would cure the Hero System of this tragic delusion, it would be a giant push by a giant, superpopular MMORPG that even goes by the game’s original name of “Champions.” The people that prepared 6th Edition didn’t even change the name of the RPG back to Champions, so connection can be seen. Essentially, the people preparing 6th Edition squandered the highest visibility that Champions has ever received and ever will receive! With the push from the top-selling computer game that uses an abridged version of its mechanics, Champions could have been able to reach a wider audience than roleplaying games usually get. As the “Hero System,” it’s only bought by the usual suspects. EPIC FAIL.

2. Adjustment Powers.

The Achilles Heel of the system is and always has been Adjustment Powers. If anything called for a revision it would be them, and it’s interesting how the section on Adjustment Powers in 6th Edition bloated out to a whopping three times larger than any other power category. The worst is that a crucial element of how they work remains undefined: how many points are required to lower or raise a Power? How much does a single unit (damage point, etc.) cost in active points? I usually solve this with a house rule: record the cost of each individual unit. For instance, an 8d6 Blast with Armor-Piercing would cost 8 points (7.5 rounded up) to lower per damage class. This is something so crucial to quick resolution of how these powers work, but it’s not even on the character sheet!

3. Mental Powers.

One of the first lines that Hero System zealots will parrot at you as a strength of the game is how you buy game mechanics first, and define what something is afterward. And to the game’s credit, it does work that way…except, y’know, for Mental Powers, which are treated separately, on an island from nearly the entire rest of the system. They have different rules for perceptibility, line of sight, and competing rolls…all because they have a distinct and uniting special effect. They even use a totally different characteristic to determine hitting! And there are two different versions of a power depending on whether it is mental or not: Images or Mental Illusions. A more elegant system would have brought them together by now. Something like the “attack vs. EGO,” “Invisible Power Effects” and “No Range Modifier” power advantages from 5th Edition were a step in the right direction.

4. Movement Powers.

No matter how you slice it, movement powers in Champions are so distanced from any real-world measurement of speed, to the point where I’m not even sure what a movement value really means, even in comparative terms. With lots of supergames, it’s pretty clear. In DC Heroes, if you have 10 APs of Superspeed, you can move the distance of 10 APs per round (which has a real-world distance). In Mutants and Masterminds, a Speed of 4 indicates the ability to move at 250 miles per hour. To figure out something as crucial as real-world speed requires a calculation that isn’t even a part of the regular system. This is a really big problem because the distance a character can move in a given time is one of the few occasions where knowledge of a long-term result outside of combat is more important than in-combat, “on map” results. Finally, there are so many variables, noncombat multiples, SPD, and inches – sorry, meters – of movement that the characteristics are meaningless.

5. Create any hero! Except the ones that the rules don’t like.

It is a bug that is desperately spun as a feature that in the Hero System it’s really hard to instantly kill or transform anything despite the fact that tons of fictional characters and devices have these ability. This is an example of the system telling fiction and the players how the world works instead of the other way around. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a GM, I know some things just shouldn’t be available as gamebreakers. But even if something is too abusive or powerful to allow player characters to have, a way should exist to create it where it can exist under GM control. Another example of the rules making awkward a concept that is intellectually easy to grasp would be characters that are just plain immune to something. I hardly see how having a PC or NPC that is just plain immune to fire, radiation or electricity is so game-destroyingly broken that there is just no way to do it under the normal use of the character creation rules. The Immunity power in Mutants & Masterminds did this very classily and elegantly and didn’t require insane uses of active points.

6. As before, Mimics, Shapechangers and “photographic reflexes” characters remain awkward to represent.

I always thought one of the reasons that Shapechanger and Mimic character concepts were a base archetype in the main Mutants & Masterminds book was a direct diss to their greatest competition – that this game can create with such ludicrous ease what is so awkward and difficult in the Hero System. Sure, in Champions there is a way to have Muscle Mimics and Shapechangers, but still. In practice, “on the ground,” they’re downright unplayable, especially for new players, since it involves a VPP, and designing powers is not always possible off the cuff. Even the most fervent Hero System partisan must admit that character creation is not the quickest thing in the world to do. Because skills can’t be placed in VPPs, and for good reason, the Muscle Mimic or photographic reflexes character remains the one power set that Champions just can’t reproduce under normal circumstances. This is a direct example of the rules and system interfering in character concepts that are very common in fiction.

As a Champions GM, I had to discourage a new player – naively under the delusion the game can live up to its promise and do anything she imagined - from creating a power-mimic character. I hated to do it. I hated to tell a player “no,” especially to a character concept so very basic to comics…but better to do that, than having her spend 5-10 minutes every combat assigning and building points for new powers, while a more experienced player stood over her shoulder and helped her figure it out. Does that sound like fun to anybody else? I had an epiphany when I realized that a VPP is suggested as a solution for any area the system can’t do well. To those that say the VPP solution to mimics works just fine, I ask you this: when was the last time you saw a Mimic character in your Champions game?


7. Lots of people are math-illiterate. The question is, what are you going to do about it?

I’m a mathy sort of guy; I took Calculus I and II in college and I was a “mathlete” in High School. I have periodically worked as a math tutor. I’ve often been alarmed at a world where most people are math-illiterate and seemingly proud of it, where even counting change is difficult for many. I don’t find the very basic elementary school math the Hero System requires to really be a problem at all. However, a stock critique of the Hero System is that it requires a lot of number-crunching, and it is an absolutely undeniable fact that character creation does take longer in this game than others. This critique keeps on popping up over and over and over and over. If so many people keep on saying it, if so many people bring it up, shouldn’t the people that design the game take the hint, realize there may be a problem, and do something about it? Maybe do something so character creation doesn’t take so damn long? So adjustment powers have an effect that results in quicker resolution? So figuring out your character’s actual speed in a meaningful real-world measurement doesn’t require an unintuitive calculation? So it’s possible to play a mimic or shapechanger for anyone but advanced players?

At the end of the day, that’s the biggest problem I’ve got with the 6th Edition: because it can’t acknowledge there might be something to the critiques, it doesn’t feel the need to do anything about them. Tweaking the cost of adjustment powers and their adders doesn’t change the basic problems. It really feels like the people that wrote 6th Edition didn’t think there were any basic problems with the game. Hero System fanboys and advertising copy go on about how “any hero is possible,” but game designers should know better than to drink the Kool-Aid, and strive to repair the real deficiencies that exist. The original Champions was not handed down on golden plates by archangels. Basic, fundamental things about it can and should be fixed. That’s the review of the 6th Edition Hero System in a nutshell: it didn’t go far enough.