Hello patrons! I may need to put a “Part 1” on this, someday, since there’s a lot to talk about with this system. Champions was probably my second serious RPG system after D&D, and I got into it DEEP when I was high school.
I had a conversation with a friend today about some of my “wishlist items” for Champions, since the system hasn’t had a real revision in a long time. The sixth edition dates back to 2019, and it was an improvement over 5th edition, but there’s a lot of issues that have been around for this game system since the 80’s.
A brief aside: Before I get too far into this, Champions greatly suffers from not having any form of player currency, no “bennies” or “hero points.” I feel like the game would greatly benefit from adopting some form of player currency.
One of the big things about Champions that I’ve never really liked is the way it handles “Complications.” These are defining character flaws that never really felt that impactful or defining. If your superhero was an android or robot, for example, you could take the “Requires repair instead of medical care” physical complication. If your hero has a secret ID, they can use that as a social complication.
However, that’s usually where those complications began and ended. It was intended for the Gamemaster to bring in and involve the player in complications during the game. The players had absolutely zero incentive to do anything with their complications beyond listing them on the character sheet. In practice, players tended to choose complications that wouldn’t end up being an issue, and Gamemasters largely ignored the complications in order to present the adventure they’d prepared for the group.
The above is exacerbated by the requirement for players to select more than one complication. Most often, players have at least four or five, with some having as many as up to ten. That’s a lot to remember, and I question how much of it is actually meaningful at the table. For example, it was simple to add a “Hunted” complication where a particular enemy wanted to make your hero’s life difficult. You could make it a little less problematic by making the hunter only “watching” you instead. These were given a die roll to indicate the frequency with which they’d show up… but that was dependent on the GM remembering to do this.
How would I change this?
First, I would cut down on the noise.
My suggestion would be for a player to pick up to five, maximum complications. Then, they should designate one of these complications as their “defining complication.” The defining complication is the one that’s going to be the most impactful one during that game session (see below) or campaign or story arc.
A brief aside: I’m thinking that this could and should change as the character goes through a campaign. Possibly one way to go would be for the player to select their superhero’s defining complication at the beginning of each session so it doesn’t have to be the same thing every time.
Using Complications
I’d put the responsibility for using complications in the hands of a player. If you’re Hunted by VIPER (a bad guy HYDRA-like organization), you could invoke it once per session, get a hero point for doing so, and add 1d6 VIPER agents to the bad guys in the next combat.
For a defining complication, I’d like this to be scaling. If being Hunted by VIPER was your defining complication (similar to how Daredevil is Hunted by the Hand or Shang-Chi is hunted by the Ten Rings), then you could gain up to 3 hero points, increasing the danger accordingly.
It might look something like this; I invoke my complication (let’s say Secret ID), which then means I can’t just go into the bank and withdraw some money that I need. Instead, I have to dress as Peter Parker, go into the bank, and get drawn into a long conversation about my ailing aunt, which makes me late for the meeting with SHIELD. I get a hero point for bringing it into the game, so there’s incentive for me, as a player, to invoke it… and the GM doesn’t have to spend brainpower trying to remember that my Secret ID is a thing I want to bring up!
YMMV
In the future, I may talk about Pushing, a mechanic where superheroes in Champions gained extra power at the cost of exhaustion. Thanks for reading, patrons!