Even if we’re not in the UK, Nightvale can have a day.
Read (manga): Go With the Clouds North-by-Northwest vol 6 (Aki Irie): Nobody was expecting that! Also, instead of LiljaxKei, we get Japan.
Written (game design): 198:
FIXING CHAMPIONS
Before I tried to improve D&D, I was working on improving Hero, so some
of this may seem familiar. Most of it will seem stupid, of course. But
things I want to do:
Make points bigger. If we keep 1d6 Blast/HA as the fundamental unit,
make it cost 2 points instead of 5. Maybe even 1, but that might
be too chonky. This may be very unpopular with people who like to
calculate to fractions of a point.
Along with that, instead of an active points value that can be
whatever arbitrary value, buy powers in ranks, like M&M. This makes
adjustment powers easier, and adjustment in general easy enough to use
more generally (you’re underwater, knock two ranks off your fire
powers). Cost per rank could be done in 1+Adv/1+Dis like existing Hero,
or a simpler method where advantages just move the cost per rank up or
down by one, and go into 1/2, 1/3, etc below 1.
Apply this to characteristics too. It was the 80s, nobody had a better
idea how to define characters than D&D’s model of numbers that give
benefits or penalties at certain points according to a table lookup, but
we can do better now.
Now that 6E has ditched figured stats, we can get rid of characteristics
that are just pre-defined skill levels (Int, Dex, Con, parts of Pre
and Ego). Make them actual skill levels, let the player pick what
skills go in them. The characteristics that have effect rolls (Str,
Pre for presence attacks, make Ego analogous for mental attacks),
or that don’t have rolls (OCV, PD, Stun, etc) can stay.
Except End, which is unnecessary. Use Stun for major fatigue, ignore
minor fatigue or abstract it into post-12 antirecovery. (Also get rid of
post-12 recovery, it just makes fights drag on. Adjust other values to
make fights take a reasonable amount of time.)
Con rolls don’t come up much, and it would be easy to say that you’re
stunned if you take more than X% of your Stun in one hit, so maybe Con
can go too, or be combined with Stun and Body in some way.
Do we need both Stun and Body? Again, it’s the D&D model, derived from the
wargame model where the difference between being able to withstand 3 or
5 volleys of grapeshot was an essential stat for your unit. Hero isn’t
nearly as life-or-death, even in the non-Champions games, but there are
still murders. Maybe we can combine them and Con all together into one
characteristic, which again you can buy with limitations if you really
think you should have a disproportionate amount of one vs the others.
Regardless of how we implement this, there shouldn’t be different
mechanics for killing attacks or other kinds of attacks.
1d6 of damage costs 2 points, but 1d6 of Strength costs like 3 or 4,
because it gives you so much more than just punching.
Combine PD and ED into just plain Def. If you have a special effect that
should give you more Def against certain attacks, buy it with a
limitation like you would anything else.
Get rid of Spd entirely: no paying character points to get to play more
of the game! Multiaction rules are where it’s at.
Complications don’t give a wodge of points up front that you hope (or
fear) are justified by how often it actually comes up, they give XP when
they do come up in play. This may or may not be the only way to get XP.
Strictly mechanical advantages (Susceptibility, Vulnerability) may be
exempt from this.
Remove the 11+OCV-3d6-DCV thing for attack rolls. Possibly OCV+3d
vs DCV+10, although that opens the door to target numbers for skills,
and as previously established, I don’t like that since it usually
gets handwaved instead of being used in any consisten or rigorous
way, so why bother? It might be okay if we give characters a “DCV”
for every domain so rolls are rarely uncontested, but it might not.
Needs more thought.
Stun being the total of the dice and Body being the number of dice plus
the number of 6s minus the number of 1s is elegant, and
I can’t deny that rolling a million dice is fun for the person doing it,
but waiting on them to add those dice up in two different ways
is much less fun for the rest of the table. Can we somehow make
success rolls also determine the effect? Like, Stun is 3 per die, plus 1
per die for every 6 that’s showing on the success roll? Does this remove
more total fun than it adds? The can of worms that is rich dice
mechanics was already cracked open by counting Body.
Like the fantasy thing, I want to move away from individual 5′ squares
for movement and positioning, and have zones instead. Full move gets you
to an adjacent zone, half move gets you somewhere inside your own zone.
Super movement can get you multiple zones away. Within a zone, you might
be engaged with one or more people, in which case their no-range powers
can affect you. Otherwise they need a power with range of same zone, or
with 1 or more zones of range.
Possibly instead of buying X zones of this movement mode and Y zones of
that one, you should buy the maximum number of zones you can
move, and then adders for each movement mode. Most of the utility of
Flight comes with its minimum cost, after all. If a mode has less
movement than the max, its adder gets a limitation.