We're oh so close to the end of this, but first...Design Considerations. Back in the day, this was an important topic for some people, I suppose. Everyone who picked up a fistful of dice dreamed of creating their own RPG someday, so stuff like this was fun to read.
So, obviously comics were the primary resource for the game's inspiration. The powers were designed to enable players to emulate the comic books they read, and the characteristics were selected to give more opportunities to differentiate the heroes from the average people around them. The basic rule of thumb was that a 5-point bonus to STR or an additional die of damage was twice as powerful as the die before it. I'm not sure how that's supposed to work, though; 6D6 damage isn't twice as powerful as 5D6, after all. Maybe they just didn't word it the way they meant to.
Finally, there's a section on changing the game. Designing new powers is an obvious way. While the powers listed in this book are pretty comprehensive, and with Advantages and Limitations almost any comic-book trick can be duplicated, there are still a few things that GMs and players might want to do that really aren't covered. So, GMs might design new powers to compensate for those gaps. The rule is that 50 points in a power is pretty good, while 100 points is wonderful. I would say 'excessive' myself.
The idea is to build powers around the 1D6 per 5 pts. principle, and that powers should be more open-ended to allow for variations and nuances. If you don't think the power should be all that common, boost its minimum cost. Finally, any offense should have a corresponding defense that is much cheaper to buy.
Other ways to change the game (much simpler than just creating new powers) are to start with a higher point base. A 200-point base plus Disadvantages will create a much tougher character than a 100-point base, so this is more for the higher-powered heroes like the JLA or the Avengers. Of course, people have been converting those teams to Champions pretty much since the game was invented. I've seen Superman write-ups built on 2,000 points. Even Batman is over 1,000 points in some of the more ridiculous versions. You couldn't even do Iron Man with these rules without giving him gobs of points to cover all the things in his armor. So, higher base points will give tougher characters, but they still won't match up with the true heavy-hitters of the genre. And that's okay. The most popular characters were usually the mid-level characters like the Teen Titans or the X-Men, so that's what most people would consider playing. That, and Batman clones. Because everyone wanted to be Batman.
Finally, there's an option to just ditch Endurance costs altogether; all powers are automatically at 0 END without any cost breaks. Well, it's an option, and considering just how much END gets used in these earlier editions, it's not a terrible one. 4th edition changed the END cost from 1 per 5 pts. to 1 per 10, which made the END usage much more manageable, and characters weren't dropping from exhaustion fifteen seconds into a fight. In this edition, the 0 END option might be helpful, although it will ensure that fights will be much harder-hitting, since no one will be worried about conserving END.
Well, this entry is wordier than the page I'm reviewing. Yes, that's all there is on this page; the bottom half of the page is reserved for a very nice drawing of an Iron Man clone. So, we've now covered all the rules of the game. What's left? Sample characters, of course. And oh my, these are classics of the Champions game. I think they've all made it through every edition of the game thus far. I might be wrong about some of them, but there are definitely a few that have lasted forty-four years now. We'll start on them next time. Until then, may your dice ever roll true.
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