Champions 4th Edition Campaign

[gaara6666]

Roll call my friend. Answer to arms as your hero gravitas!

[Daedalus]

Daedelus, if Mon doesn't work for you, offer up a different day. Can't say if we can accommodate, but if you don't try, we can't help. It's up to the players mostly. Just ask and we'll see whether everyone can agree on it.

Tuesdays or Saturdays work for me. And man, I forgot how over complicated the system was.

[gaara6666]

I'm good with either although I'll prefer Saturday. Vodokar has built up a TON of extensions and plug and play stuff to make it much much simpler. Check out his links in the thread

[vodokar]

We will continue with having our first meet and greet on mon 15. Once we have all the players assembled, we can discuss whether we want to move our actual play days to either tuesdays or saturdays or stay on mondays. Any is good for me. It is up to the majority decision of the players.

I have some good news for the players.

One of the main reasons that I wanted to play Champions at this time was because my son is 16 and I may only have a couple of years left to spend some good quality time with him. We have always loved playing games together and he loves superheroes, so this seemed perfect.

As such, I wanted to make sure he got to play the type of character he wanted to play and have most fun with. So, rather than being incredibly strict with character build rules and point limits when I was building his character, I decided to build the character he really wanted to play and then simply increase the balance of the game to fit that.

I'm not going to go into any details on what his character is as I want to leave that as a surprise during play. However, I want to ensure that everyone here has an equal opportunity to shine in the game. Thus, I am going to be awarding an extra 75 character build points for you all to work with.

Yes, that is right. You will have 175 + 150 from disadvantages = 325 points.

My strong suggestion is to not use these extra points to add any new powers or abilities necessarily, but to use them to strengthen your existing offensive and defensive capabilities in a balanced manner so that you will be able to withstand stronger enemies and dish it out back to them.

As we are frontloading the power of our characters as more veteran superheroes rather than starting them as weaker newbies, I will not be awarding much or any experience points during the campaign. You will have opportunities to retrofit if you don't like the choices you make out the gate, but, we will be sticking fairly closely to the power levels that we set initially. So, make your veteran superhero as you see him or her fully formed in your dreams that you would like to play for the campaign.

[vodokar]

Tuesdays or Saturdays work for me. And man, I forgot how over complicated the system was.

As stated in post # 91, we will do our best to accommodate you. Our ongoing play day will be up to a vote of the players, with me abstaining.

Champions is "quirky", but hey, we all like old quirky games, right? Not to worry. Most things I can streamline thru the magic of Fantasy Grounds programming. Those things that I can't, if the rule is just too "quirky" to make the game fun, then it get's ousted for something that is quicker and easier to deal with.

A perfect example of this is the rule for pulling your punches. We are superheroes. We don't go around using our maximum punch or energy blast trying to kill people. Giving a penalty to someone trying to reduce their power in order not to kill someone and having a chance of failing to do so and accidently killing them anyway, just seems "quirky".

We are not going to do that. If you have a 10d6 energy blast and only want to use 3d6 of it, because you think that's all that mook can handle without getting killed, or because you want to save on endurance use, then go right ahead. No penalty. No chance of blowing the role and killing the dude by accident. No flipping thru the book trying to figure out what that penalty was. It's streamlined and makes more sense, thus, more fun.

The burden is still on the player to access his targets wisely and decide what power level to use so as not to kill their target. But, there will be no obstacle in trying to implement that decision.

We'll adhere to the rules as written as much as possible, but, we are all experienced gamers here. We know "no fun" when we see's it.

Having said that. Champions is actually a wonderful system for superheroes. There is a reason it has stood the test of time. It's the D&D of superhero games.

[gaara6666]

Well I'll definitely need to update gravitas then in FG...

[vodokar]

If anyone wants to get a headstart on entering their character into the ruleset, I will have my server up all day and thru the night tonight. Feel free to log on.

[Spin-Man]

I have my character concept pretty well hammered out at this point: my character is neither creative nor especially bright, but he's dedicated to being a good guy and he's way tougher than nails. I don't know if I can set up his abilities as a power framework to save some points, but all I basically did was jack up his stats and buy armor.

***

Tony never thought of himself as a hero, but when he saw that bank robber pointing his gun at the woman in the front of the line, he knew exactly what to do: get in the way. He was as surprised as the bank robber when the shot ricocheted harmlessly off his chest. Later, he made sure to tell the authorities that the bullet had simply missed; he didn’t want that kind of attention. The thug saw, of course, and so did the woman, but nobody else needed to know. Not even his brother. Especially not his brother.

Tony and Bobby were as thick as thieves when they were little, but Tony grew up thick and Bobby grew up a thief. Tony is happy to work for their uncle’s construction company doing whatever job comes up. He knows some of the jobs aren’t completely on the up and up, but he pays his taxes and puts in an honest day’s work for honest pay. Bobby is on the payroll, too, but he doesn’t even know how to get to most of the job sites. The biggest impact he has on the business is getting in the way, and Uncle Joe is always happy to send Tony to go clean up his little brother’s messes.

Now Tony has powers. He doesn’t know how long he’s had them, but he has good reason to believe they can be traced back to one of his uncle’s shadier job sites. Sometimes, men from the corporation still come by to check on everyone’s health and ask about any unusual events. Obviously, they’re not just showing professional courtesy. The last thing Tony wants is for them to find out how strong he is. Heck, even he doesn’t know how strong he is, just that he doesn’t use a jack anymore when he needs to get under the car. The only person who he talks to about it is Maria, the girl he met at the bank that fateful day. They’ve been seeing a lot of each other lately, and he worries that eventually she’ll have to meet his family. For now, they have something nice, and she is helping him figure out how he can do some good in the world. Tony has always tried to be a good Samaritan, but now he can do a lot more than just get someone’s car running or carry someone’s groceries.

***

The Good Samaritan wears a simple uniform: sand-colored with a thick blue stripe along the collarbone, and blue gloves, boots, belt, and cape. He wears a cowl to cover most of his face, but it has no symbol or adornments on it. He stands just over 6 feet tall, with a powerful build. If he has powers other than strength or toughness, he has yet to show them publicly. He has the bearing of a Man of Action, and tries to solve problems head-on, usually with his fists.

[gaara6666]

A good heart and a good head on your shoulders is what is needed to be a true blue hero Spin-man. A kind of guy who jumps in when there is danger can live to regret his actions later than if he never took action to help at all. He sounds like a great addition.

[vodokar]

Spinman, I did find 5 points of skills that I could deduct due to some skills being free everyman. I put the 5 points saved into giving you a hook punch to complete your boxing style. You bought all of your powers straight up, which is expensive. You might be able to save some if we look at using a power framework. I'll play around with it and see if I can squeeze some free points out of it.