5E is a Superhero Game

The better I get at designing characters, the more I realize that 5E is a fantasy superhero game. The infinite use attack cantrips that scale with levels. The focus on casters and magic powers feels like different types of superheroes. I find myself building characters based on "low-level attack options" and planning how these characters will scale with level.

Even the classes feel more like "superhero archetypes" than traditional classes. This isn't even the same genre as a lot of B/X and OSR fantasy games at all; the classes can be seen as base archetypes of superheroes and the branching subtypes within that archetype.

Part of me wonders if this whole genre wouldn't be better served by dedicated superhero rules.

Take a pile of points, buy what you want and design what you want, unlimited freedom and choices.

Fantasy Champions 4th Edition

We did that back in our end days with B/X; we converted everything over to Champions 4th edition and had a lot of fun. D&D 4 reminded me of that "fantasy superhero" game we ran, and you could say 4E leaned in hard on the superhero genre. With Champions, we could design "AoE" sword swipes for our fighters, magic stun missiles for our mages, healing for our clerics, force wall shield spells, and ranged AoE entangle spells for druids. It was a very imaginative and awesomely fun game. It was a heck of a lot of work too.

While it may have been a lot of work, everything was balanced. Since power design and the interactions between point-buy and different powers were balanced, we could come up with anything and be reasonably sure it would work well with whatever else we designed and came up with. Even high-ability score characters were balanced since those were purchased with the points to buy powers, and everything worked incredibly well together. A character of X points was balanced with a monster of X points.

You can do this with the legacy 4th Edition Champions book, but it is, at its heart, a superhero game, and you will need to do more work to get the game you want. There are more focused solutions today, which get you started much faster.

Fantasy Hero Complete (Stand Alone)

The Fantasy Hero Complete book does this; it eliminates the need for a library of Champions 6th Edition books and tries to give a one-book answer to the superhero-fantasy genre. Granted, a lot of the conversions really feel like they have been square-pegged into round holes, but the one-book system works, and if you want to try your hand at freeform power and character design in a fantasy setting, this is the place to start.

I would steer clear of the full Champion's 6th Edition library - to start - since those are a lot of books, and it is too easy to get distracted by superheroes. It is better to have a book that focuses on the most common fantasy superhero tropes and start small since you will have a lot of work to do. And another suggestion is to start small, just a rogue or fighter type, and get used to the scale of attacks and combat before you get lost in power design and magic characters. I would start with low fantasy and work my way up to the total superheroic high fantasy.

And to make your life easier, use the Champions 4th Edition combat roll, 11 + OCV - DCV or less on a 3d6. The math is the same and more straightforward.

No Classes

One of the most liberating things about Fantasy Hero is you break free from classes. Do you want to be a fighting werewolf druid archer? Sure! Want to be a warlock paladin unholy smite teleporter in plate armor with a power that charges up your dark sword? Sure! Want to just point-buy as you gain experience and be a "highly skilled person" with no powers? Sure! Want to design all sorts of fantastic 3-hex front arc swipe damage plus fire effect magic melee powers? Sure!

For a referee, without a lot of predesigned foes, this game is a tough one to referee. Many of your fights will mirror superhero fights, with one-on-one battles with interesting but powerful foes taking center stage. Some fights will be over quickly because the foes will have no defense against some attacks. You will be using a lot of generic "mook" style characters just to speed up play, but that really isn't any different from other games.

Some people need classes; I get it. Sometimes I sit there and wrestle with what a game gives me versus what I could do if the game cut me free with a complete character design system. There are also times when I just can't create the character I want in a system and give up on it entirely.

Fantasy Hero (Expansion Book)

This book does have a few drawbacks, in that it is not a complete "Champions" book per-se, and you need a grasp on the Champions system to get going quickly - or you will be confused by many concepts. If you want to pay more and go all in, the excellent Fantasy Hero 6th Edition is available, but you will need the base system I and II rulebooks, along with the bestiary and grimoire books.

But you are talking about the difference between a single $30 book and a $170 book collection (current Amazon prices). My suggestion, get the single book - even though it has flaws - and see if you like the system before buying a ton of books. You get more, plus better and more complete resources in the entire set, but I still like the smaller, cheaper, more-focused book for getting started.

This version is an expansion of the core universal rules of Champions 6th Edition, so it is not a standalone book. People love this version over the smaller complete book, so it is an excellent upgrade if you go all in. It is easy to get overwhelmed with the five-book set versus the all-in-one book.

If you adopt the system, this is the way to go. Otherwise, dip your toe in with a single book.

Versus 5E?

You lose a huge player base, but no one is changing the rules on you anymore. You will never worry about your class getting nerfed. You will not worry about never having the right power or the powers not working the way you want. You won't worry about having to multiclass and do one-level dips. You won't worry about the unknown, shadow groups, ignored surveys, and inexperienced game designers hired by companies messing up your favorite game.

Don't laugh; it happens all the time.

Just look at 4E.

I feel one of the drawbacks to Champions is your character is initially very complex - there are a lot of numbers. But that complexity stays constant and increases very slowly over time. It feels like the same complexity of a level 6-8th 5E character, and then the complexity increases slowly as the 5E character continues on a steeper curve. The numbers are always "right there" and work the same way compared to 5E's interlocking layers of rules and special conditions.

Instead of wasting time and money modding the 5E rules to get them playing exactly how you want, you will be the "game designer" and have a game that is 100% yours. You will not have guidelines or safety rails, so whatever you want will be yours, and you are free to design and pick powers at will. For some, this will be amazing; for others, this will be a nightmare.

You like GURPS better, too, as the games are similar - where GURPS is more of a traditional RPG with point-buy elements; the Hero System is entirely point-buy-free for all. What I like about Champions over 5E is while there are a ton of numbers and powers, they are all in front of you, and you know what each of them does and what they are for. The rules all work the same way, attacks versus defenses, damage types and defenses versus them, and a unified power level and system.

While I am improving at designing 5E characters, it still takes considerable time. I weigh that against my solo playing, so the requirement to "play with others" goes away. The complexity of the 5E rules and characters is the factor here.

Do I play a game with a high complexity of characters and rules that gives me a small set of options?

Or do I play a game with a high complexity of characters only that gives me complete control?

Versus OSR?

No comparison. B/X and OSR games are less of a superhero game and more a "dungeon sim" game. Modern fantasy roleplaying is a superhero movie with thees, thous, and fancy tunics. B/X and the OSR don't do the modern-style of infinite blast-y cantrip superpower-style of play you get with 5E.

5E's design goals are these extremely narrow and curated class designs for experiences the designers intend you to have. Break the system, and the game gets out of balance. It is still a superhero game, but one where the company tightly controls the superheroes you can play. They control the powers, how you advance, and what your character ultimately becomes. When multiclassing exploits come up, they revise or create more attractive options.

With superhero games, you try to use a point limit and a set of powers to simulate a fantasy character. The limits are your imagination, and the rules do their best to balance the choices against each other. You are free to create the hero you want, with the powers you want, defenses, attacks, unique movements, and everything else. Your endgame is the one you control - not some "designer committee" that thinks they know better than you.

And honestly, it feels way easier to play a fantasy game these days with a game that does a better job simulating the genre than a narrow and limited-archetype game design such as 5E.

It is not that I dislike 5E; I have been around enough to know the type of game they are making and their choices to deliver on the promise. But if you change the game, you can do much more in the genre. And for some, that may be a fantastic experience worth having.

Retrospective: Autoduel Champions

I seriously don't know if many people remember this one. I need to set this one up historically.

Champions was still in the multiple softcover books, pre 3rd Edition as I remember (I could be wrong, my Champions knowledge that far back is sketchy). So this was the superhero game of the time.

Car Wars was still the three plastic pocket boxes of Car Wars, Sunday Drivers, and Truck Stop. Deluxe Car Wars has not been released.

Abd the year was 1983. Thriller. The US invasion of Grenada. SDI. Return of the Jedi. McNuggets. Minivans. The release of the Famicom/NES in Japan (US was 1985). The last big year for the Atari 2600.

So the two companies making Champions and Car Wars get together and produce a book that does three things:

1. Add Car Wars to Champions
2. Add Helicopter Rules to Car Wars
3. Add Superpowers to Car Wars

I know...what do helicopters have to do with this? I guess if superheroes fly, then Car Wars needs to fly. Let us break down each rules section and how it worked, and how we used it in our games. Strap yourself in.

Champions: Car Wars

This section created rules for Car Wars cars and combat inside the Champions game. All the movement was done on hex grids, the damage scales adjusted, and the weapon stats converted over to the Champions scale. This was our first look at Hero system, and a lot of this was so alien and strange to us we ignored it until we started playing Champions years later.

One notable change from Car Wars in this section was the use of non-ablative armor on the cars, versus Car Wars' ablative armor. This concept would later show up in the Car Wars supplement Deathtrack as the metal armor rules.

These rules were surprisingly Max Max meets 007, and I could see a lot of Champions players scream with delight at being able to finally have armed and armored cars in their games. This must have been a huge thing for Champions players at the time, I mean, those still not playing Car Wars all weekend at the hobby store. Everyone played Car Wars in our neighborhood. We played D&D and the number one question during the game was, "When are we playing Car Wars?"

Car Wars: Helicopters

This section introduced totally broken helicopters into Car Wars, and these were later cleaned up in Deluxe Car Wars. The weight allowances on these flying beasts was so high you could stack hundreds of points of armor on them, and your only option for fighting these flying takes was to shoot the flimsy rotors off and watch the armored flying safes fall to the ground, take hundreds of points of damage in a collision with the ground, and watch the passengers crawl out unscathed because the damage from plummeting thousands of feet from the sky did not penetrate the insides.

We never really designed out choppers that way. We could, but they weren't fun. We stuck to faster, lighter armored and armed choppers that mirrored car designs - which we in fact a lot more deadly because of their acceleration and mobility on the battlefield. A chopper that can fly and has double or triple the acceleration of a ground vehicle gives you a whole lot more options when fighting in an urban environment. I am just going to hover low over this tall building where you can't see me, wait until you take a course of action, and circle around to your weak spot at my leisure.

Very few arena cars had decent top armor when this came out, and even fewer could shoot straight up (or a map with a slant range long enough) so it made chopper versus car battles like turkey shoots unless you custom designed cars to fight choppers.

Still, we thought these rules enough were cool to use in our games, and we had a lot of fun with these massive sky behemoths. When Deluxe Car Wars came out, our massive week-long 100 car arena and helicopter battles were all but over, so we never really got to enjoy the revised helicopter rules in DCW.

Car Wars: Superpowers

Now I owe an article on this one, but we used the original Traveller RPG as our rules for our Car Wars RPG. The skill ratings were extremely similar. Both systems were 2d6 roll-high. The format for characters means we could quickly roll them up, spend the 30 starting skill points in Car Wars, and have a character quick - or hundreds of them.

This superpowers system in Autoduel Champions was our superpower system for years, at least until Marvel Super Heroes came out. This worked very well, scaled nicely with the Car Wars rules, and gave us these cool Traveller superpowers that worked very well with our houseruled system. You could rate various superheroes easily, give them armor that defended against the types of weapons they could buy flight, energy blasts, super speed, running, stretchy limbs, and other powers with a quick and easy system that fit well within our Car Wars and Traveller framework.

When Marvel Super Heroes came along, Car Wars and Traveller fell by the wayside, and the superheroes (sadly) took over our games. At least in Car Wars with superheroes, there are equalizers against the massive powers of superheroes and villains. Your combat car could even the odds, and the average person could fight a superhero. Heck, they could be a superhero with a car like that and great skills.

The End of an Era

And then that era was over as the Marvel and DC pen-and-paper games came in, blew out the power level of our games with cosmic energies, and all of a sudden the average person was a nobody again.

There was no great equalizer.

Superheroes were again, the "chosen ones."

Of all the things I don't like about the modern superhero movie and myth, it is this denial of the power of the average person in comparison to the hero on the screen. We wait for superheroes and strong figures to come and save us from ourselves. Back when I went to college, we were taught the power of collective action. If a manufacturer was selling weapons to oppressive regimes, and this company also made consumer goods - like refrigerators - than our community agreed to not buy those consumer goods. We recycled because we knew if millions of us did, it would make an impact. We divested in countries with horrible human rights abuses. If enough of us did together and all as one, we would make a difference.

We were all superheroes back then.

Today, I feel we have been trained well by Hollywood to simply wait for the next savior. Let's not individually make a difference in anything, we can just have some "figurehead leader" do it for us. If someone is worried about carbon footprint, for example, do they shop that way? Do they demand Amazon give them information on a product's carbon footprint and shop for lower alternatives? Do they live that way and make informed choices? Do they make a small difference in their lives and urge others to do the same?

Nah, let's just wait for someone or some slogan that makes us feel good about ourselves. Even if the plan does not work or the person will never accomplish the goal let's fight for it like it is the end of the world. The superhero. In essence, I feel the superhero myth has become mass-market collectivism, a false corporatized feeling of doing good sold to us like junk food. You see this in the Marvel and DC movies, those heroes never inspire the people of those worlds to help save themselves, nor could the people of those worlds ever hope to.

Champions Allows Talented Normals

This is likely due to Champions allowing normal people some chance against superheroes. There is this model in the Hero System where everyone uses the same character generation rules, so theoretically a highly-trained super agent could equal the power of a superhero. They wouldn't have all the damage resistances, powers, and immunities - but at least those points could be put to work in some way that could best a hero's powers with skills, abilities, and training.

And Autoduel Champions leveled the playing field further. Combat cars out of Car Wars could help even the odds against those with extraordinary powers. With the Marvel Super Heroes and DC Heroes games, I get the feeling normal people and even highly trained agents are still inferior to heroes with powers. This power level only seems to get worse as time goes on and the superheroes get stronger and stronger.

There is an article waiting here, as in Champions feels more grounded in power level, character design, and scope. This game also does not have the power of brand names, so your heroes are the most important in the world instead of the trademarked ones.

Blinded by the Marquee Lights

Looking back and seeing the organic system we came up with, and how equal that made each side, versus the later official games, makes me wonder if we didn't make a mistake in abandoning what we had back then. Both the Marvel Super Heroes and DC Heroes games felt like they intentionally weakened the balance between the average person and superheroes. If you played an average person, or even your own creation, you were a nobody compared to Batman or Wolverine.

And our Car Wars superhero game became more of a super-heroic soap opera past that point as we switched to those systems, and the grim and gritty life on the street, and the average person along with it, faded from importance. The balance was gone. There was no equal to these modern gods.

And after that we gave up on our characters and played with the copyrighted IP characters of Marvel and DC. The superheroes each year only got more and more powerful, both in powers and in our imaginations. Like a Lovecraftian monster, our humanity and ability to affect change was crushed by the people in the spandex tights.

Looking back at this game, as broken and as of an era as it was, makes me wonder what we lost when we fell in love with the hype. I get this feeling our game, our campaign, and the world in a larger sense.

Some interesting feelings today for a book very few likely remember.

Planned Systems vs. DIY Systems

Some pen-and-paper games lay out everything for you and make your choices for your character as you level. You get a level, and the system says you get X and Y powers, ability scores, and hits. These are planned systems, and some good examples of them are:

• d20, Pathfinder, and D&D
• Basic Fantasy and Labyrinth Lord
• Fantasy Age and Dragon Age
• Most class-based systems
• Most MMOs

Some pen-and-paper games are DIY (do it yourself) games, and often these give you a number of "character development points" to use anyway you would like to improve your character. Some examples of this type of game include:

• Savage Worlds
• Legend and Runequest
• GURPS and Champions
• Mongoose's Traveller
• Star Frontiers and many of the TSR Boxed Games
• Most classless systems

And some fall in the middle:

• Fantasy Flight's Star Wars System

Planned systems are great for newcomers, because it is a lot easier to say "you get this and that" when you level instead of spending time sorting through the rules and the book asking the question "is this a good choice" over and over again. Believe us, we have been there, and you practically have to teach every new player the complete set of rules when they first level up with a DIY system. Otherwise, how would they know what is good?

Planned games protect new players from making bad choices, and balance the game based on prebuilt and predictable "endgame" builds.

We prefer DIY systems, because we like making our own choices when we progress characters, and we are more experienced players who know what we want when we build characters. Some planned systems have elements of choice (skill points and multiclassing), but a true DIY system foregoes classes and balances the game around skills and task resolution. Personally, when I level a character, I don't like feeling limited to the choices the game makes for me, especially if that wasn't the direction my character was going in during the last adventure.

If my warlock spent most of the last session socializing and roleplaying, why should he advance in "warlock power" at the end of the night? Shouldn't something reflect his learned ability in socializing and people skills due to this experience?

With a planned system, it is difficult to reflect those experiences and often you end up a better warlock and just as bad as a talker as you started. Warlocks aren't talkers, are they? That's a bard! So do I have to take a bard level now? Great, hand me a lute and paint it black.

With a DIY system, I put some skill points in a social skill reflecting what I did that night, and I am done. How did I get those XPs? Shouldn't those reflect my experiences? My warlock powers don't increase because I didn't use them, but who cares? If this campaign is all about talking, I am all setup for the next game with a little better oratory skills under my belt for next time, and I am happy. If next time we have a swashbuckling adventure I may pick up a sword skill or two.

Does it matter I am not progressing along a game designer's pre-planned class advancement track? Something the company spends countless hours balancing and tweaking to get "one" advancement experience perfect? No, it doesn't. My "advancement track" is the adventures I go on, and if I end up more of a glib, sword swinging practitioner of dark magic than a pure 100% power-level don-nothing-else factory-stamped-out warlock I don't care. My guy is my guy, and the adventures he went on made up the skills and powers he collected along the way.

DIY systems focus on organic advancement and balance the game on skill rolls and task difficulty.

DIY systems don't really have predicable "endgame" character builds, you just become very good at doing the things you do the most. You may end up the world's best talker, but if that is what you enjoy having your character do at the table, that is a good thing since your character advancement reflects what you are doing when you play.

Planned systems also tend to have these "pre-balanced" endgames, where the fighter will always have X attacks at Y to-hit, and be able to do Z damage a turn. Since the game designer "planned" this out, relative character power between classes is easy to calculate, and the "end game" monsters are easier to balance, Well, they should be, but a lot of planned systems typically don't take a lot of factors and exploits into consideration at the higher end (conditions, initiative, and turn denial powers) and things fall out of balance easily.

This is why a lot of competitive multiplayer online games are (or end up being) planned systems. You saw this in World of Warcraft's evolution, a lot of DIY systems were dropped to put characters in predictable, damage-and-healing-output-known envelopes. PVP and PVE balance in these games equals challenge and fun - at the cost of letting you level up your character how you choose to play.

D&D 4 was like this for us, at the high end the game fell apart for us because of the amount of stuns and other powers that rendered foes unable to act during a turn, and also our characters felt like they were getting competitively weaker versus the monsters they faced. The end-game tactics broke down into: go first, deny the enemy his turn, load it up with conditions, and beat on it with "whatever power you have" until it succumbs. The game wanted to be battle chess (which it was for us at low levels), but the high-end game did not work - at least for us.

With a DIY system, the endgame can be calculated if you do a little math, but the end-result is typically a flatter power level. The numbers usually don't get way out of balance, as the system is usually balanced around task resolution. Better skills can lead to a higher DPS and damage output in a DIY system, since you are hitting more and you may have access to special combat moves and abilities you purchased with your points. The Star Wars RPG by Fantasy Flight does a good job with talents and making those unlock higher levels of combat power, so there can be a calculated "end game build" with a DIY system - it just takes a little more design and forethought.

What character advancement system you like is of course, up to you. There are times when "I don't want to think" and I appreciate the simplicity of a planned system. I still like Fantasy AGE a lot, and I feel it is a great, stepped and balanced design that does a better job at planned advancement than most d20 based games. It is a more modern design with a hybrid "choice plus planned advancement" that I like, and it is a fun and simple model and great for new players. One problem with this model is that if the game designer doesn't think of a role, it is not viable - such as Dragon Age vs. Fantasy Age and the rogue archer issue.

We still like DIY advancement systems for our games, since it fits our play style better. We run wide and diverse games, and they don't always fit into the box of a planned class box that easily. For us, what happens at the table that night is how the characters advance, and if the players want to go sword swinging and combat one night, they can reward themselves with those skills at the end of the night and get a little better. If all we do is roleplay and socialize with NPCs, that is what is rewarded at the end of the night. It fits how we play and gives us a better sense of satisfaction when players figure out rewards, and it also reflects how we play and what happens around our table a little better than a planned system could ever account for.