Champions

The Champions RPG has been produced by the Mega-Hero Games (figures) and Wonder-R. Talsorian Games. Ain't that super?

Confessions of a Recovering Champions Munchkin

Submitted by Kiz

Long, long ago, I played in a Champions 3rd Ed campaign, and I created one of my favorite Champs characters, the impossibly strong, nigh-invulnerable extradimensional being I called "The Tamer." When I would explain how The Tamer had a STR above 100, 3/4 damage reduction against all attacks, and a huge variety of powers, all for less than 300 points, well... I didn't want people to think I was a _powergamer_, so I'd explain...

The Tamer was based off of an old hole in the rules that let you buy a power at 1/3 cost if it drew off of an energy battery but contributed nothing to it. And lo-and-behold, every one of that character's powers had that limitation, save one. A 1d6 energy blast that had the advantage that it contributed MORE than its energy cost to that same endurance battery. 1024x it's energy cost, in fact. :-) So the Tamer's stats were tremendous and disgusting- he could defeat 600-1000 point villains with ease.

But it was all justified, you see- that's the sort of campaign it was, and ALL of the characters were horrible rules-screws.

Let me relate the biggest battle I ever used The Tamer in, and I think you'll see why we HAD to do that, just to survive in the campaign...

The GM's villains were powerful. Really, really powerful. One of them alone could blow through a reasonable team of champions characters and never even break a sweat. We kept phasing out characters and replacing them with even nastier combat monsters, in a desperate attempt to reach parity with the GM's beloved villains.

We fought foes like "Shapeshifter" who had 20 levels of growth and shrinking in some sort of pool. Once, we almost defeated him, but he flew away with 30" of flight, leaving all of us in the dust.

I was really annoyed- so I spent MY xp on a new power. It was 60" or so of flight with 2 charges and a burnout roll, and enough miscellaneous disadvantages that I basically had a one-use "afterburner from heck" power. The GM approved it without question. That should tell you something.

The GM's favorite villain was "Firestar", the battlesuit powered leader of the villains. His stats were secret, of course, but we were sure that the GM was adding new powers to it whenever Firestar turned out to need them.

But we finally beat him... It was a battle (and yeah, every adventure was basically a fight- we played Champs as more of a wargame than anything else) with his whole team, and after kicking our butts for awhile, Firestar told the rest of his team to take off with their stolen treasure while he held all of us back. That was the GM's big mistake.

After several pointless rounds of trying to pound Firestar, we broke out the new powers the GM had approved a session or two ago.

Our psychic seized Firestar with str 100 telekinesis and pinned him to the ground. Our "Batman" clone threw himself upon the now-motionless foe, trying a powerful "move-through" maneuver to try and hurt him. We shook our heads in disgust when the GM announced that he bounced off harmlessly; he wasn't rolling enough dice to even penetrate the villain's armor. But he gave me an idea.

The "move-through" bases its damage on how fast you're going when you hit the target. It's a really innaccurate attack, but against a pinned foe, it's hard to miss.

I triggered that darn 60" of flight, and dive-bombed the bozo.

Oh, the glee on our faces as we totalled up the dice we would have to roll for damage! 44d6, if I recall correctly. Then we invoked a rule about inflicting ADDITIONAL damage if the target was being pushed into a wall, pumping it up to around 60d6!

_I_ didn't have enough dice. No one did. Every player got to roll all of their d6 and contribute. And we rolled well, indeed- one player rolled about 20 dice and got 12 sixes...

I think we did about 80 body and 300 stun. The impact made a crater 16" deep into the battlefield, and my incredibly tough character was injured and nearly knocked out by taking just 1/4 of the damage himself. We clapped, we cheered, we high-fived. We were sure that Firestar, at last, was toast.

The GM did some math... and announced that Firestar was still conscious. The sheer outrage on our faces must've been evident, because he hurridly added, "But he IS stunned!"

Then we got mad. My character was at the bottom of this hole with Firestar, and I resolved that I was gonna clobber the guy again. Our rules lawyer pointed out rules indicating that if any of the 80 or so points of Body damage had gotten through, then Firestar's suit had to be damaged, and he couldn't use any powers that depended on his battlesuit.

The GM hedged, and announced that Firestar was going to turn desolid and flee through the ground.

I told the GM "I grab the sucker and crush him!" I showed him my character sheet, where I had spent quite a few points buying the "Affects Desolid" advantage for my STRENGTH of 120. The GM boggled. I explained that The Tamer's body was so dense, nothing could pass through it, not even desolid foes.

The GM started flipping through the rulebooks. I told him, "Look- if you want, I'll just capture the guy and turn him over to the police and he can escape later. But if he doesn't give up, right now, I'm going to KILL HIM."

I'm sure at that point we looked like we might kill the GM, too. He got the message.

So Firestar gave up and was trundled off to jail. We had finally triumphed.

Of course, he broke out of prison the very next session, but hey- we had to take our victories where we could find 'em.

"Don't mess with me, I'm a Cheerleader!"

Submitted by Cynthia Hahn - House Rookhaven

It was my first gaming session in three years, and my first in college. It was also my first experience with Champions.

I had been accepted as a last minute addition to a long-established gaming group. The GM, having mercy on the newbie who looked horrified at all the tables, charts, and math, handed me a premade character. After glancing over it for a few seconds, I agreed to play it.

Cue opening scene: Actually the middle of a prolonged combat (this was Champions, after all), the session opened in classic comic-book fashion. The massive fight was taking place in the lobby of a Federal Reserve Bank. The heroes were getting their clocks cleaned by the villain team, whose mentalist was standing in the center of the room, de-solid. None of them had a power that could hurt him.

Into this fiasco bounces a cheerleader. Fifteen years old, if that (I was fifteen at the time, it worked for me). She's still wearing her cheerleading uniform from school.

The villains immediately say, "Look, a hostage!". The heroes whine, "Oh no, a hostage..." The oblivious cheerleader glances around, walks up to the mentalist (who, being focused on his attacks had not seen her enter), smiles cheerily, and taps him on the non-existent shoulder. "Excuse me!"

He's so startled, he solidifies. Cheerleader pulls back her fist, and punches him through three brick walls. (Only true power - STR 100.)

Mis Spoken

Submitted by Matthew Cary

A few years ago I was running my Champions group through a published adventure. The heros were trying to defend the earth from a mind-bogglingly powerful race of psychic vampires. They had hitched a ride on the space shuttle only to get caputed by the aliens.

At the critical moment of the game, the super intelligent scientist character is all tied up and is brought before the alien high commander. Now the hero is one of those true-blue, square-jawed hero types and the alien is a slimy tenticled, bug eyed monster right out of Space-Man Spiff. As the character is brought before the alien, I start to really get into roleplaying the thing and launch into a long speech about how the alien horde will vanquish mankind, eat out brains, destroy our planet, and about how the humans will have no chance because they are stupid, slow, smelly, incompetent, bad at math, etc, etc.

When the alien finally finishes, the player (in character) put on his most defiant face and says in his most determined tone:

"You overestimate us!!"

The entire game just stopped for almost a half hour while everyone present rolled on the ground. It took us ten minutes before anyone could tell the poor guy what he said that was so funny!

ULTRAMAN

Submitted by Sidney Kuhn

We were playing a Champions Super hero game and I decided to run a Super Man wanta be. Of course he had to puff up his chest and give the evil dooers a chance to surrender before he acted. This proved to be a real handicap in a number of combat situations but that's not the story I will relate here.

Ultra Man responded to a robbery in progress at a local bank and landed in his beautiful suit with his red underoos on the outside (Just like his hero - SUPERMAN). Announced to all present that he would deal with these villans. (Took pose for appropriate camra shots but no camramen were present - RATS!)

Unknown to Ultra Man, another super hero had taken over the body of the super villan at the bank door.

Ultra Man took aim at the nearest evil dooer and flew straight at the door. His plan was simple. Crash into this villan and then give the others a chance to surrender.

I rolled three ones on my attack roll. OOOOPPPSSSS!

The GM ruled that Untra Man had crashed into the steel reinforced concreat column next to the door and made a perminent impression on it.

So much for grand entrances.

"Um, Aren't You Supposed to Fight THEM?"

Submitted by Necromancer13c

The best fight I ever saw in a Champions consisted of seven players, seven villians and a lot of confusion. First, some background:

Our normal mode of transportation in cases of extreme emergency was to form a circle around the psychic/sorceress of the party and have us all teleport with her to the scene. The villians we were fighting were our (at the time) arch-nemeses called the Magnificent Seven.

Not long after the fight starts (the Mag 7 are robbing the local Federal Reserve) the psychic/sorceress gets flattened by two of the villians. My character, who was married to the psychic, got Enraged and belts one of the villians into another one. The one I hit went out but the one HE ran into immediately went Enraged because his buddy was hurt and came after me. I was promptly smeared all over the room.

On the other side of the room one of our party members named Scorpion smacks one of the villians, while he was stunned and from behind, and lays him out. The hero standing right behind her (named Champion) goes Berzerk because he saw a "dishonorable attack" and flattens Scorpion. Someone else in the party, remembering that Champion recovers from his Berzerk about as often as politicians tell the truth, begins fighting him before he can harm anyone else on the team.

In the end the villians stood around watching us pound the snot out of EACH OTHER instead of them. When one of us was left standing (the detective with sonic powers and no defenses) they sadly shook their heads, took their loot and left. On the way out one of them was overheard as saying "Best damned fight I ever saw." to which his buddy replied "Yeah, but I sorta wanted to be IN it!"