Power Ratings for Champions / Hero System Characters

How balanced are the characters in your game relative to each other? What's that? You say they are all 250 points, so they must be in balance? Maybe, maybe not.

Fuzion (no rude noises please) has a concept called "The Rule of X" which gives a method of limiting how powerful a character is by specifying a number that may not be exceeded by the sum of a few numbers on the character sheet. Basically, the GM decides upon the 'X' for his campaign, then the character's "Largest Physical Attack + Reflex + Skill in that attack" may not exceed that number, nor may "Hits/5 + Dexterity + Defensive Skill". For Fuzion, this work pretty well, but Fuzion is a simpler game system than Hero.

So, what I've done is come up with a formula for calculating what I call a P-Rating. This is a single number that indicates how powerful, in a combat sense, your character is. The basic formula is a little complicated (well, actually, it's just long), but the number it yields seems to be pretty accurate (when comparing characters to each other).

Here's the deal: All key combat values are weighted based on typical cost to increase them. Multiply each combat value by the weight multiplier then add all modified values together. Divide this total by 15. The resulting number is the character's P-Rating.

Note: For characters who's primary focus is mental powers, substitute ECV for both OCV and DCV.

Examples. The 3 superhero examples below are based on 250 point characters with exactly 180 points spent on purely combat related abilities (this is slightly lower power than would be typical for a 100+Disads Champions game). The Talented Normal is a typical 125 point Justice, Inc. character. The Base Normal is a 0 point character.

Using P-Ratings.

As a GM, your usage of P-Rating would be to set a P-Rating for your campaign. Once set, the players may build their characters as they see fit (within the boundaries of the basic Hero System rules of course) with the additional restriction that the character's P-Rating may not exceed the P-Rating for the campaign.

When using P-Ratings, I recommend setting very few other point restricitions on character creation. In particular, don't bother with Active Point limits (personally, I never liked them anyway) as the P-Rating is a more accurate presentation of a character's total combat effectiveness.

P-Rating for various campaign types

Listed below are suggested P-Rating for various campaign types (based on the trype of campaigns that I personally run). Of course, the best way to determine the appropriate P-Rating for your own campaign would be to build some sample characters based on your expectations, calculate the P-Ratings for them, then average the P-Ratings together.