Converting Mutants and Masterminds into ICONS

Someone else (not me!) wrote a guide to converting M&M characters into ICONS. They wrote this about second edition M&M, and first edition ICONS.

Now, the best way to handle this is to conceptualize the character and write it fresh in ICONS. But the conversion guide was written for second edition M&M, and third is now out, and, well, I have a nit-picky view of the world. So, in a fine example of the tech writing art, I decided to update it, without bothering to check whether it gave good results originally.

I reproduce it here, but with a bunch of caveats:

• First, a numerical conversion like this isn't a good idea.
• Second, I didn't write this originally: I only updated some sections to reflect third edition M&M, and I didn't even check those (beyond running a couple of numbers).
• Third, apparently the characters generated by this are wayyyy out of scale.

Still, with apologies for not giving credit to the original author, I put it here to make it easier to find. The original post was at http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?757183-ICONS-Assembled-Some-Questions&p=19041807#post19041807

The conversion is for 2nd edition M&M. I've taken a stab at a third edition-ICONS Assembled version because someone will want it...but a better choice is knowing both systems and converting by "feel" rather than by numbers. A much better choice.

My opinion only: in general, I feel like in ICONS a level of 8 in something is best in the world. When you get to level 9 and 10, you're talking best in the universe/century/millennia kind of territory. Nobody should ever be saying, "Oh, my character has only level 8 in this." A character with level 8 in a power can take on and succeed against a character with level 10. (Of course, the opposite is also true: it depends on the powers involved, and the lower-power-level characters might need to team up.) The Troll, for example, is an epic villain. With a Damage Resistance of 9, he is tough to beat: players have to team up or use his qualities...and if they have a character with Mental Blast, he falls apart.

Please remember that I didn't write the original, of which vast swathes remain. I only updated it.

The following will look ugly; I don't know if you can even do tables here.

General conversions: powers and abilities

First number is M&M 3rd edition, the second is ICONS Assembled. Convert against this chart and you'll still have only a rough guideline that needs to be adjusted.

M&M	ICONS Attribute	ICONS Power
<-1	1*
-1	2
0	3	0
1-2	4	1
3-5	5	2-3
6-7	6	4
8-9	7	5
10-14	8	6-7
15-18	9	8-9
>18	10*	10*
* Maybe a candidate for a Quality as well.

So, those abilities...

Prowess

This is the M&M Fighting ability. If you really care about the powered/non-powered thing, consider using Martial Arts to achieve Prowess levels higher than 6 with non-powered humans. Remember also to add in advantages and skills that enhance melee attack bonus. What you're looking at is how good the character is at his/her best. You might want to do this last, after looking at skills

Coordination

Use the average of the agility and dexterity plus any ranged attack bonus and defense bonus feats rolls to determine the number used for conversion. You can improve ranged attacks with the Power or Weapons specialties. Again remember that non-powered humans can be boosted with the Power or Weapons specialties.

Strength

This is converted from the M&M Strength ability. Consider superstrength and your heavy load lifting ability when determining Strength; ICONS doesn't distinguish between lifting and fighting.

Intellect

Convert the Intelligence ability.

Awareness

Use the average of the Perception and Insight skill totals. Yeah, technically Insight should be Will based, and you can do it if you want, but I've seen better effects averaging them. Except when I don't.

Willpower

Use the average of your Will Save and Presence and compare it to the Stats and Powers Chart.

Skills to Specialties

When determining Specialties, determine what your character is really good at: those are the things that might be specialties. In ICONS there are no requirements to have a specialty in order to do something: any shmoe can try Medicine (as first aid). Yeah, skill monkeys are still difficult, but since you can say "Science" and mean all of them, it's not quite as painful.

In both systems, the skill/specialty rank adds to the character's ability, so consider comparing the sum in both cases to see if you need a specialty at all. If your doctor in M&M has INT 10 and Medicine 5 just so he can be a doctor, consider putting the doctor bit in a Quality and leaving it out of the Specialties entirely. Your character will probably need fewer specialties because the ICONS specialties are looser. (The ICONS version will get fewer specialties, as well.)

Remember that most of the fighting skills are absorbed into Prowess and Coordination, above. You can still add them as Martial Arts, Wrestling, or Power specialties, but consider whether you need to.

But, assuming the skill ranks are seriously different from the ability...

If the skill is less than 6 in M&M, don't even consider buying a specialty unless the character is meant to be an idiot savant

Skill, M&M	Specialty in ICONS
6-10	Specialist
11-20	Expert
>20	Master

Yes, I think the rules allow you to have an ICONS character with rank 10 in something and a Master specialty, but why? Remember scale. If that level of expertise is important, maybe you need to re-scale your game.

Advantages

ICONS doesn't even have advantages. Most of them are going to be roleplaying handwavy things. If you want the GM to use them as plot hooks and make a big deal of them, maybe they could be a Quality. Something like Fearless, consider if you want to be fearless. If you really, really want it—if it's at the core of your character concept—then consider something like Resistance: Fear effects. But really, that's probably better done as a stunt if you have a Quality that somehow alludes to it. There's a different feel between a character with the Quality "Man without fear" and someone with Resistance 5: Fear effects.

Powers

Pick what ever powers fit your character and use the chart for the ranks. You should pick the powers that best representation of your hero and leave the rarely used or less used powers for using power stunts.

In doing conversions from other systems, I've noticed that there's a difference in feel between a power or ability that's mimicking something a normal person could do, and something that's just plain super. When you convert damage or strength, you have guns to compare against. Mind Control, not so much. Because of this, super super powers might be converted as if they were a lower rank but I have no idea how much.
If a power can have a specific limitation, consider a Limit for it. If the limitation affects multiple powers or the whole character, maybe it's a Quality.

In M&M a character can have a lot of powers in an array for relatively little cost; there's no equivalent to arrays (or Multipowers, for the Hero Games players). In that case, consider Magic or Gadgets or Cosmic Power. All three allow you to pluck powers from out of a hat or utility belt for the cost of a test. Or have a Quality that generates many determination points that you can use for stunts.

Qualities

Here you can tie up a few of the loose ends like complications and advantages that might not fit into ICONS. There are only three of them now, so look for things that can be advantages and limitations.

Determination

In my experience, Determination points are more powerful than Hero points, though that will depend on the GM. It also applies only to player characters.

Benchmark it!

Consider the scale you're working at. It doesn't matter if the conversions aren't appropriate for the original game, what's important is that they work relative to the current game. Batman has different abilities depending on whether he's in Detective comics or Justice League.

This goes along with scale. Look at the benchmarks for both games. If your M&M character could not lift a building but your ICONS ability says you can, drop the ICONS strength level down.

Now take it out for a test drive. Tweak it.

But really, I think you'd be better off starting with the idea and working from the ground up.

Today's Power: Make Evil Duplicates

Something like the power to touch someone and make an evil duplicate is clearly in the realm of "the GM says it, and it happens" variety. It feels so Silver Age to me. But as a GM myself, I gotta wonder: can you do this with the rules?

As I say, it's probably better to make it GM Fiat, and that's what I'd recommend, but we're exploring. And maybe we'll end up with something that players can use.

I'll need to use Great Power to make this work; I have to do some fiddling with Extras and Limits.

We start with a description. The bad guy touches the hero with his Ebon Rod of Xorex and poof, a duplicate instantly springs up, except he or she is Eeeeevil, and ready to fight the hero to the Comics Code Approved unconsciousness. We don't need to do this an infinite number of times; four or five evil duplicates should be sufficient, and the bad guy can only duplicate a person only once per battle. (Or once per adventure; that sounds equally Silver Age.)

One possibility is Servant. The problem with Servant (as it always seems to be) is that the created servants have no mental abilities. You can't really make an evil duplicate, though you can make a robot duplicate. I could invent an extra for that, but I have wonky rules for myself for creating extras. For this kind of thing, I don't want to handwave it away and say, "Oh, there's an extra on that."

Power Mimicry might be another way to go: Power Mimicry, Extra: Affects Others, Limit: Extra Only.  That turns someone already of evil mind into a copy of the hero's powers, but it doesn't quite feel like an evil duplicate. It's an evil mimic, sure, but it's not quite a duplicate. Plus you have to add on some other extras, like Mental Duplication, Specialty Duplication, Transformation (limited to their form). And to make sure it works, it has to be Power Mimicry 10.

Except that one of the terms of the power is that if you're knocked out, the mimicry stops. It doesn't sound like you can handle multiple people, unless you invent an extra to do that. I'm not comfortable with that extra, either. (Though for people like The Composite Superman or the Super-Skrull, it might be just the extra we want.)

Okay; so let's try the other obvious power: Duplication.  If you want to duplicate four heroes, you need Duplication 4, Extra: Instant, Extra: Affects Others, Limit: Extra Only. Let's add another Extra/Limit pair: Extra: Multiple targets; Limit: Only one copy of each. That feels to me more like what we want. What about the evil self part of the description?

How about a Secondary Effect, either Mind Control or Emotion Control? It could be Emotion Control that only instils a hatred of the original person, or we could go for full-on Mind Control. (Or we make it GM's Fiat) So that would be Extra: Secondary Effect (Emotion Control), Limit: Only hatred of the original, Limit: Situational--Only duplicates created by the Ebon Rod of Xorex.

What if we add another modifier onto the Duplication, which somehow makes the duplicate vulnerable to mind control from the holder of the Ebon Rod? I'd probably make it an Extra, because it's an advantage to the wielder.  (You don't need it: The duplicate is an NPC character, and if the GM wants it mind controlled, it's mind controlled, darn it.)

If we go Emotion Control, we leave open the interesting possibility that people who aren't the target can get through to the evil duplicate. Maybe that's a loved one or a teammate, but someone convinces the evil duplicate to trash the holder of the Ebon Rod.

With Mind Control, you don't have that, he's just evil. His Qualities might be in opposition to any good ones. The add-on looks like this: Extra: Secondary Effect (Mind Control), Limit: Situational--Only duplicates created by Ebon Rod of Xorex.

If you're mindful that players might want this strange brew, maybe you should add this to the Duplication: Extra: Duplicate susceptible to mind control from holder of the Ebon Rod. If only NPCs are going to use this mix, you don't need to. NPCs do whatever you as GM tell them to do. But if players are going to use it...

You know what? Mind Control or Emotion Control are just bogs to get trapped in.  By analogy with the whole Marked Thrall limit, we're going to create an Extra that's only necessary because we threw Affects Others into the mix: Extra: Duplicate has opposite moral orientation than original.

Now the power looks like this, where X is the number of heroes we have to deal with.

Duplication X; Extra: Instant; Extra: Affects Others; Extra: Duplicate is moral opposite of target; Extra: Multiple targets; Limit: Only one duplicate per battle per person; Limit: Source (Ebon Rod of Xorex); Limit: Extras only

That's four extras and three limits, so a player could actually have the Ebon Rod of Xorex as a tool for the cost of two powers....

I'd also let a player spend a determination point or advantage to weaken the last limit; by using a strength or coordination maneuver, they could get the villain to touch himself with the Ebon Rod, and they'd have a good copy of the villain to fight on their side....

If you want, you can eliminate the Instant extra and in fact make it sloooow. (Maybe the duplicate is actually a clone grown in a vat somewhere.) Then the evil duplicate is let loose in society to wreak havoc on Our Hero's personal life. Which the duplicate knows all about, because it's comic book cloning.

A Place For Your Players

It seems to me, and I seem to be late in life coming to this, that there has to be a place for your players in your campaign world. This could mean niche protection (making sure that each player is unique), but I am thinking right now about campaign worlds and histories.

A problem I have with a lot of published settings and home brew settings (mine included) is that all the cool stuff has happened to other people. There doesn't seem to be anything for the PCs to do that's big or important. As creators, we're so interested in filling in the blanks that we fill in every bit of space, like the artist in Tim Powers' Drawing of the Dark.

When some awesomely awful threat comes up, you don't want the players to say, "Hey, let the analogue of the Avengers or the JLA handle it."

One way that you can handle it is scope: yeah, the Avengers protect the world, but the players have Hell's Kitchen! That's fine if that's what the players want, but if you occasionally want to throw in some world-destroying monster, you have to expect the PCs to hand off the ball. "Hey, this Cthulhoid thing just showed up, and I've got you on speed dial for just such an emergency. How soon can you get here?" And, in fact, you can spin a whole evening out of the holding action while they're waiting for the experts to arrive. ("Nobody said it could duplicate itself! Why didn't Professor Wyrd send along notes?") If you're usually happy playing at that level, that's great.

Another kind of scope is concentrating on only one particular kind of threat; I ran a campaign where the heroes were all involved in the mystical side, and someone else in the group ran the campaign where the heroes were "regular" heroes. (I believe we even had a crossover.)

Another way to handle it is by having the PCs be the first or greatest superheroes. They get the threats no one else can handle because they are the Justice League or Avengers analogue. You can have heroes who are the greatest or you can have them simply be the first heroes that ever appeared.

Closely related to that are that the PCs are legacy heroes who have been called to step up and replace the big guns.

It's possible that you could go the route that both Base Raiders and Necessary Evil have gone, and all the heroes disappeared before the campaign started. (Base Raiders made the villains disappear, too.) The PCs can't call anyone in, because they are all that's left.

The intermediate is that the PCs are the B-team. They handle their own stuff, but when the heavy hitters are off-planet or are incapacitated, the PCs get called in. It's a nice way to spend most of your games on city- or country-wide threats, but occasionally throw in some cosmic ones.

Another way to occasionally throw in something big is the secret history. For whatever reason, they can never tell anyone, so they have to handle it themselves.

On a meta level, don't create so damn much history when world-building. Those neat things, let the players encounter them. Make sure that the NPC heroes are no longer useful or are busy.

Sorry

Life got crazy. Will post soon. 

Have some Champions

Hmm. I did not do all the characters in the Big Blue Book. Probably me shooting off my mouth before doing the work.

Still, I did do some of them, so they're all here in one document. I'm unlikely to be touching any more Champions stuff, but it's not impossible.

Some Hero Games Conversions to ICONS Assembled

An updated version in PDF (Updated because of (1) math errors and (2) my understanding of powers always evolves.)

It occurs to me that you can use whatever kind of conversion method you want. As long as you're consistent, at least the characters will be scaled to each other.

Converting from Champions

Okay, let's get this out of the way first: I think the best way to convert a Champions character to ICONS Assembled is to start with a couple of notes about the character (strong; generates ice and shapes it; berserker hatred of killers) and build the character from the ground up. You'll get something that works in the context of the game you're actually playing, and you won't sweat about how big you should buy that 0 END 6D6 NND (not vs. people in knitwear or slogan T-Shirts).

Nonetheless, +Fabrício César Franco asked how it might be done, and I gave some ideas, and then I had another idea, and I have now spent several days converting characters from the Big Blue Book. I haven't done but one combat to test them, but after I have (if I ever do), I'll come back and change this text.

Some caveats:

• This method assumes point-buy because it's clearly not random. That's fine if you're the GM and you're converting stuff, because you can just do whatever: there's no real point limit on you. If you're a player, well, then you have to think about the point limit that the GM has set. That might mean shaving all sorts of things, or buying extra things because the character turns out to be mind-bogglingly cheap. It's your life. 
• This method produces a ballpark kind of character that you're still going to have to tweak. For instance, if you look at a character with resistant defenses in Champions, an assault rifle does about 2d6+1 killing, so 12 rPD is going to make your character immune to guns. It will take Resistant Damage 5 to do the same in ICONS and maybe you don't want to spend the points there.
• Make liberal use of the benchmarks in both games. If a character has 60 TK, is that equivalent to ICONS Telekinesis 8? I don't think so. If something has 15 rPD in Champions, it will stop a bullet from an assault rifle, but a straight numeric conversion to ICONS won't give you that result. Look at what the power is supposed to be able to achieve, and benchmarks are one way of doing it.
• There are pretty obvious breakpoints in character stats in Champions. Lots of characters tend to be DEX 21, 23, or 26. They're all going to end up as Coordination 5. You might have to adjust that.
• There are lots of details in Champions that aren't in ICONS, so things get left on the floor.
• This method calls for square roots. Everything gets rounded, and you played Hero System, for goodness' sake, so you shouldn't be afraid. You can manage just by remembering the squares from one to ten   (1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100). Maybe I'll put a convenient chart below to help.

Now that's out of the way, let's get into the method. I'll do Spidermonkey from the Asesinos at the end of each part and we'll end up with a conversion.

Converting Champions to ICONS Assembled

 What's the character's basic concept? That will be your touchstone, and you'd start with it anyway if you were doing this conversion in my preferred way.

Spidermonkey is an intelligent mentalist spider monkey who hates humans. What else is there to say?

Characteristics to Abilities

Champions has fourteen characteristics; ICONS has six abilities. How to convert them?

With square roots, of course. Take the square root of each characteristic and use that as your starting point. ICONS doesn't do any "this is more useful so it costs more" stuff, so just use the final characteristic. We'll do Prowess last, so don't rush into it.

Strength is pretty straightforward. Unless Ability Boost fits the concept, Strength converts to Strength.

Spidermonkey is Strength 13, which is pretty close to 16. She'll be Strength 4. That's pretty strong for a spider monkey. (A baboon or a chimp, I could see it.)

Coordination is the square root of Dexterity.

Spidermonkey's Dexterity is 23, so she'll be Coordination 5. Because I know that Shrinking grants a certain difficulty to be hit, I will keep in mind that I might want to drop Coordination to 4 or even 3 during the Tweaking stage.

Intellect is the square root of Intelligence.

Spidermonkey is a smart monkey, but is she a genius monkey? We'll just convert straight. The square root of 20 is 4.47, so we'll round it down to Int 4.

Awareness is usually the same as the square root of Intelligence unless the character has lots and lots of levels dedicated to noticing things.

Willpower is the square root of the better of Ego or Presence, because Willpower in ICONS determines your ability to impress people. If you have to choose (you have a high EGO low PRE schlub), use that concept and keep in mind that you might have to add something like "Unimpressive" to a quality.

This problem does not come up with Spidermonkey: her EGO is 20, her PRE is 10. Now, the square root of 20 is 4, as we showed above, but she is a mentalist monkey, so I'll bump that to Willpower 5.

Prowess is handled by looking at levels and comparing the character's OCV to what you think it should be relative to a similar character in ICONS. Remember that a trained soldier is only Prowess 4.

Spidermonkey's OCV is 8, so her Prowess could be the same as her converted DEX (5), but despite that the picture shows her with a knife, she has no hand-to-hand levels. Plus she's going to get something added from the Shrinking. Let's call her Prowess 3, and let whatever bonuses she gets from Shrinking be the rest. When we're done, I hope she'll be Prowess 5 with bonuses, but I wouldn't be unhappy with 4.

So our tentative abilities for Spidermonkey are: Prowess 3, Coordination 5, Strength 4, Intellect 4, Awareness 4, Willpower 5. 26 points. If we have to shave a bit, we can knock a bit off Coordination and Strength.

Skills to Specialties

Champions has far more skills than ICONS has specialties. Take a look down the list. Ignore anything with a skill roll of 12-; it's just an application of the ability, and they already have it (unless the ability governing it is terrible).

A higher skill might call for a specialty (unless the ability governing it is wonderful). Mentally group the remainder and see how many you can compress into a few ICONS specialties.

Here's a rough and partial guide for translating those really high skills. Use the concept as your touchstone, and don't include the specialty if you don't have to.

• Acrobatics, Breakfall, Climbing, and Contortionist are all covered by the Athletics specialty.
• Background skills often turn into the appropriate kind of specialty (Business, Medicine, Law, Art, et cetera).
• Combat Driving is covered by the Driving specialty.
• Combat Pilot is covered by the Pilot specialty.
• Interrogation, Persuasion, and Seduction might be the Psychiatry specialty.
• Criminology, Deduction, and Conversation or Interrogation I would cover with the Investigation specialty.
• Computer programming, Cryptography, Demolitions, Electronics, Mechanics, Security Systems, and Systems Operation, are all covered by the Technology specialty. I'd probably include Weaponsmith here too if the character is good at fixing and maintaining every type of weapon.
• If the character knows fewer languages than his or her Intellect, make a note about the languages somewhere and move on. If the character knows more languages, well, consider buying the Linguistics specialty. Frankly, unless the character is about languages and not being able to talk to someone is going to be a plot point, I wouldn't worry at all.
• Lockpicking and Sleight of Hand are covered under Sleight of Hand.
• Disguise, Mimicry, Ventriloquist, Oratory and maybe High Society are different types of Performance.
• Paramedic and Forensic Medicine are under the Medicine specialty (along with PS: Doctor).
• Science skills turn into Science specialty.
• Stealth and Concealment are the Stealth specialty.
• Streetwise is something I often ignore: it might turn into a general criminal quality or it might be the Law specialty.
• Tactics is probably represented best by the Military specialty.
• Weaponsmith is a weapons specialty if the character specializes in a type of weapon.

Martial Arts in Champions is more about doing damage; I use the Strike power to represent a +1 to damage. Out of an obscure sense of fairness, I usually buy it to one level less than Strength, though I suppose it could be rank 1 if you needed the points.

Levels to Specialties or whatever

Different levels turn into different things. Levels with a specific power or powers turn into Power (name it) specialty.

Hand-to-hand levels turns into Prowess or maybe the Martial Arts or Wrestling specialties.

Thank goodness that Spidermonkey doesn't have many skills. I see that she has Acrobatics and Breakfall; that's enough for an Athletics specialty. There are three languages, but someone with Intellect 4 can speak that many, so I make a note of them ("Speaks English, Spanish, Spider Monkey") and move on.

Perks and Talents

Mostly I ignore them. They are usually there to fill out the concept. Maybe they can be subsumed into a quality. Maybe not.

Powers to Powers

For your rough approximation, you want the square root of the number of active points in the power. Ignore any active points that are just there for reduced or eliminated END.

I'm not going to do a power-by-power comparison.

Most of the powers in a Multipower or Elemental Control can be stunted, so pick one or two that you think will be used a lot and stunt the rest. If there are a lot of powers in the multipower (such as a utility belt), consider one of the powers that is meant to simulate other powers: Gadgets, Magic, and Cosmic Power.

One of the tricks that shows up a lot in Champions is a character with both Density Increase and Growth. My thought is, do you need them both? Compare them to your concept. Remember that Density Increase and Growth each add 1 to your character's strength if put in; maybe that will change your character's strength level. They each give additional Damage Resistance.

A character whose schtick is speed (has a SPD of 6 or better) should probably have Fast Attack.

When you need to think about an NND, look at Affliction, Energy Drain, or Stunning to model a similar effect. Stunning and Energy Drain both offer your choice of being opposed by Strength or Willpower when you take the power.

Power Drain in Champions  might be Energy Drain with an ability extra, or Nullify. Champions Power Transfer is what used to be ICONS Power Theft:  Power Mimicry with an Extra.

For both Shrinking and Growth, figure out what the character's actual size is, and buy ICONS Shrinking or Growth based on that.

Spidermonkey has this shrinking thing going. She's got enough shrinking to be about a foot tall. In ICONS that's Shrinking 4. It's permanent. If it were only a short guy, I'd think about making it Quality, but she's pretty small, so let's say Shrinking 4, Limit: Constant. She gets +2 to hit and avoid being hit, an automatic "Small" quality. That ups her Prowess a bit. I don't think she needs more than 4 Prowess in total, so I'll adjust the ability down a bit so it totals 4.

She has these mental powers: TK, 6d6 Ego Attack, and 12d6 Telepathy. I have no idea which powers really get used in play, so I'll say that TK and Ego Attack are the two main powers she uses and the Telepathy will be a stunt. They each cost 60 points, which is level 8, so she's a very impressive mentalist. Like, among the best in the world is what it says to me. Hmmm. That's not really my concept. I want her good but still needing a team. Let's look at the benchmarks. Her TK can lift 6400 kg in Champions: more than a truck, less than a tank. A straight point conversion would be Strength 8, but looking at the benchmarks in both games leads me to a level of 6 or 7. We'll say 7 for both of them, and possibly change it later if it's not suitable for the game. She now has Mental Blast 7, Telekinesis 7, and she'll stunt Telepathy when she needs it.

As a spidermonkey, she has tracking scent (Super Senses 1) and a prehensile tail. Are they going to get used much? Probably the tail, but the tracking scent? Extra Body Parts (tail) gives her Fast Attack at her Extra Body Parts power level. She's not a particularly fast physical fighter, and you're rarely going to run into something where she feints with her hands and then pow the tail hits them. (Someone like the Lizard sometimes does that, so it's not out of order.) I'm inclined to say Extra Body Parts 1 and call it done. I might take it off entirely if the character is too expensive, and just stunt it, pointing to the Spidermonkey quality she's sure to have. I'll tentatively write in Super Senses 1, as well, but can stunt it if necessary. How often do you track someone for more than one scene? It's usually a bridge to the next scene.  (As a gamemaster, I'd probably make finding someone a pyramid test, and Spidermonkey's player can activate the Spidermonkey quality for +2 on tests. No need for a power at all.)

So for powers, she looks like Telekinesis 7, Mental Blast 7, Extra Body Parts (tail) 1, Super Senses (tracking scent) 1.

Disadvantages to Qualities

Look at the disadvantages and see if you can create a Quality that includes them but also has some upside. If you're converting a villain, you want to make sure that there are some Qualities that the heroes can use against the character.

In Champions, characters often have several disadvantages which are all reflections of the same underlying trait: "Always prefers to fight blondes; berserk if injured by a blonde, 8-; 3d6 susceptibility to hydrogen peroxide and hair bleach." 

Read through the flavour text, too, if this is a published character. In the roleplaying notes, you'll often find something useful.

You know she's got the quality "Mentalist Spidermonkey". So that's one.

She hates humans to the point of being vicious to them. Is it better to be vicious to humans or to hate humans? Either could encompass the "Enraged when captured" disadvantage, but how are they for the advantage side of Qualities? I run through some in my mind, but I'm fuzzy-headed right now. We'll make it "Hates living humans" and move on.

There are several disadvantages about superiority; that could be useful. I don't think the weakness to Ego Attacks is particularly useful, but if the GM has read the Champions version of the character sheet, he or she knows that I'll play it that way. I'm going to add "Uplifted" to the "Mentalist Spidermonkey" quality and tell the GM that the "Uplifted" can be used for good or ill.

Back to superiority and always being in charge. Maybe I'll go with "Wants to be the alpha female" and add Leadership to the list of Specialties up above (assuming that the nominal leader has bothered to put Leadership on his or her list of specialties).

Whew.

The Sample, Ready For Tweaking

A bit of tweaking has already been done.

Spidermonkey, a conversion

Prowess 4/6 Coordination 4/6 Strength 3 Intellect 4 Awareness 4 Willpower 5
(second number is to hit and to be hit, with Shrinking figured in)
Determination 4  Stamina 8 

Specialties: Athletics, Leadership

Powers: Shrinking 4, Limit: Constant; Telekinesis 7; Mental Blast 7
(Used the Limit to counteract the Determination cost of the Shrinking power.)

Qualities: Uplifted Mentalist Spidermonkey; Hates living humans; Wants to be the alpha female

Cost: 44 points

Not bad. With the remaining point, I'll probably increase the Willpower to 6, so Spidermonkey is a better mentalist.

Quotation on Qualities

Over on the ICONS mailing list (icons-rpg at Yahoo), John Clark asked a question about using Qualities and Trouble. (Following material quoted with permission.)

Initially, he thought the idea was essentially, "Take some Trouble, get an Advantage."

Which made sense to him, and I've often played that way. If you need an advantage so that you can push a power, taking trouble is a great way to get one. Sure, you can access the Uni-Beam but it will burn out your communications system. That sort of thing.

But John goes on. He said, "But then I realized, after reading the Tactics section again last night, that Tactics only allows you to take on Trouble so you can activate a Quality, in order to get an Advantage.

"If a character has to activate a Quality to use Tactics, if they don't have an appropriate Quality of their own to tag, would they have to go through the discovery process to find or create one first?"

All of this assumes that your character hasn't got an appropriate Quality.

This is what I suspect is the relevant text from ICONS Assembled:

Tactics: A character can choose to accept trouble (see Trouble, following) for the ability to activate a quality, such as accepting increased difficulty in defending against attacks in exchange for activating a quality to gain improved effort in making attacks (an “all-out attack” tactic).

 To get to the implication, John also added, "If a character has to activate a Quality to use Tactics, if they don't have an appropriate Quality of their own to tag, would they have to go through the discovery process to find or create one first?"

Steve Kenson responded. First he said essentially, that if the Trouble=Advantage thing works for you, do it, even if it's not rules-as-written.

Then he expanded:

Strictly according to the rules-as-written, yes, assuming the player absolutely couldn’t find a creative application of one of the hero’s existing qualities for the tactic.

Otherwise, you are supposed to come up with a new quality, either using the maneuver rules, or “borrowing” an existing quality from your opponent, the environment, etc. (that is, one established by the GM).

However, there is a bit of a loophole: I allow players, when they choose to cause trouble for their own characters, to take on a temporary quality associated with that trouble for the character, which can ALSO be activated for advantage, using the DP earned from the trouble!

 That does eliminate some of the extra complexity.

In fact, that's why I let Qualities be  tentative for the first few sessions.  It might be an  important part of your character to have "Hunted by an anti-mutant organization." That signals to the GM that you want it to be part of future games (important!) but does it help if you need to do a stunt or improved effort when dealing with Monstron, the Beast With A Thousand Appendages?

A large part of it is learning to write the Qualities well. Ideally, you want double-edged and specific Qualities, but a Quality you can activate in a large number of circumstances is better than a really specific Quality you can't. "Known mutant" is probably better than "Hunted by an anti-mutant organization" because you can twist it in a lot of different ways. Yeah, the anti-mutant organization can show up (here, have this determination point), or you can call that number for the pro-mutant organization you got on a card at the rally, or you can push some ability, or even recover, saying, "Because I'm a mutant, I can push myself further and therefore get a full recovery this panel." (Someone will now argue by listing Ten Things You Can Do With The Quality "Hunted by an anti-mutant organization".)

I'm looking forward to reading Steve's "Q is for Qualities" in the hopes that it talks in part about writing good Qualities, even if his ideas contradict mine.

 

Sampling That Conversion

So I did run a test fight, and discovered that my conversion of Drain to Nullify was a bit too effective. In Champions, drains affect active points, so it's common to see strength or will drain, because characteristic drains are a place where you get bang for your point buck. Still, they take a while: you whittle folks down instead of "turning them off." In bog-standard ICONS, though, you turn things off. 

I think that's just Drains, though...still, I will go ahead and modify the conversion of Leech to match what I've discovered.

Clearly, somebody has to test the various powers to see that they're roughly effective.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12LvdYB3xrwnvs_vEOfzc3RECsV344EUAXTr_F_JnlvA/edit?usp=docslist_api

Clearly I need to convert everyone in the BBB and see how it works....

Sample Champions Conversion: Obsidian

 And here's Obsidian, who is a surprisingly cheap character. I haven't played him for decades, so I don't remember if I've missed anything vital.

Maybe Steve Kenson can tell us whether he intends for the additional Strength +1 from Growth to combine with the +1 from Density to give +2 to Strength. I suspect he does; with a random roll system, this sort of thing can happen. (Subject to the usual limit of 10.)

(Mathematically, they don't necessarily.)

Duh: Forgot the link:

Here's Obsidian.

Sample Champions Conversion: Leech

SYSTEM: ICONS

I was curious about how my suggestion to Fabricio   might work, so I tried a Champions conversion or two from fourth edition, I think. (Whatever Classic Enemies was.)

This might not be a fair test, because right off the bat, I chose a character with a power that's not easily represented in ICONS. However, if you're willing to accept the more wargaming side of gaming, then Champions characters fit right in. I have Obsidian kicking around here, and I'll do a sample fight of Leech against him. With luck, I'll remember to post it.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dz--oE3sTobsc2dkJHloDZlpK-IlR0-Zvsy5lh32Rws/edit?usp=sharing

Update much much later... So apparently my brain doesn't work. Drain in Champions is essentially Nullification or Power Nullification in ICONS. Power Mimicry has an advantage to do attributes only; it sounds to me like you could have an advantage to apply your Nullification to abilities under 7. (Or did I already say that?)