Just bought the FRED, a couple of questions

[Brutal]

Okay I bought the FRED, Champions, and Conquerors, killers & Crooks (CKC).

However, I was missing VIPER, until and demon information? Did you dump them completely? You can read about them everywhere in the book, how villains and heroes are hunted by them, but you dont actually include them in the book? Same with the CKC book. Some of the villains i WANT to use, but i actually cant because you havent written down their hunteds. Including at least a little information in the championsbook cant be very hard IMO. So question is: did you forget about including VIPER and UNTIL stats?
It seems i have to make the stats for viper and until by myself, or did I miss them in the books?

Secondly I have a rules question:
Page 103 in FRED. Ego attack. Under the DOES BODY advantage it says "mental defense does not have to be resistant to stop the BODY damage".
So, does this mean that its worked out as a normal energy blast would?
Even though this is more balanced than a mental killing attack, its still pretty unbalanced i think? Not everyone have mental defense so any attack like that is rather powerful.

[Acroyear]

I think they list some basic stats for Viper & Until thugs in Champions Universe. There's a whole book devoted to Viper on the release schedule this year, too.

Re: Your Ego Attack does body - yes, work it out like an EB.

It's not really that unbalanced because it costs more, thus less dice to begin with and probably averages close to the same end result.

A 3d6 Ego Attack that does body is 60 points. We'll assume no mental defense - that's 11 Stun on Average.

A 12d6 Energy Blast costs 60 points. We'll assume an average 20 Defense. That's 22 Stun getting through... twice as much! Even if you jack up the target's def to 30, it's still doing 1 more Stun damage than the mental attack.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Some of the answers to your questions can be found in Champions Universe . Looks like you need to buy a few more books.

[cjudisch]

Originally posted by Brutal
Okay I bought the FRED, Champions, and Conquerors, killers & Crooks (CKC).

However, I was missing VIPER, until and demon information? Did you dump them completely? You can read about them everywhere in the book, how villains and heroes are hunted by them, but you dont actually include them in the book? Same with the CKC book. Some of the villains i WANT to use, but i actually cant because you havent written down their hunteds. Including at least a little information in the championsbook cant be very hard IMO. So question is: did you forget about including VIPER and UNTIL stats?
It seems i have to make the stats for viper and until by myself, or did I miss them in the books?

VIPER & UNTIL are each getting their own books. Some of the Champions Universe villains will be there. I'm not sure if DEMON is getting it's own book or not, but there's some information on it in Champions Universe & I imagine it'll get covered more thoroughly down the road a bit.

I'm not confident enough in my knowledge of hero 5th to try and answer the rules question (I'm sure there are others on these boards that are however).

Another possibility would be to post this question on the Hero System 5th Edition Rules Questions forum.

[Brutal]

Originally posted by Michael Hopcroft
Some of the answers to your questions can be found in Champions Universe . Looks like you need to buy a few more books.

Oh jesus and i just spent a bunch on 3 books already

So, a followup question then, is that book worth buying at all?

[Acroyear]

Champs Universe is kind of the world-view campaign setting (a city book is in the works). If you really, really need those agent stats... then yeah (or wait for their own books). If you're willing to slap together your own agents... nah.

Champs Universe was an ok read, but ultimately it went to the bookshelf and hasn't come off since. I don't need a campaign setting, myself. Your mileage may vary.

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Brutal
So, a followup question then, is that book worth buying at all?

Well, if you want some information on VIPER, DEMON, ARGENT, IHA, The Circle of the Scarlet Moon, The Trismegistus Council, the L'Thoth Institute and UNTIL you should probably get the book. Of course there is also the information on the Empyreans, Lemurians, Atlanteans, Millennium City, Vibora Bay, and a couple of dozen character write-ups.

If you plan on playing a supers game in the Champions Universe, or are just looking for some inspiration, you should probably add it to the collect.

[Lord Liaden]

Champions Universe has some information about the new versions of VIPER, UNTIL and DEMON, as well as sample rank-and-file agents for each organization, and several gadgets used by each organization. Not really enough to make them central to your campaign, but probably enough for initial encounters with Hunteds.

According to the publication schedule, a new VIPER Sourcebook is scheduled for release in August of this year, UNTIL in December, and DEMON tentatively for late 2004.

If you don't mind using 4th Edition HERO System material (which really isn't hard to update to 5th): the original VIPER Sourcebook is an excellent resource, with scads of agents, villains, weapons and vehicles to flesh out the boys in green. Classic Organizations has quite a bit of detail on DEMON.

UNTIL received its greatest detailing to date in the old Super Agents supplement, but that's hard to find nowadays; however, much of that info was updated to 4E in the HERO System Almanac II. If you don't want to wait for the 5E versions, those 4E books contain a lot of useful stuff. They show up with fair frequency on eBay, and there are online dealers who often have them - several of us could offer you suggestions of where to look if you like.

Hope that's of some use to you.

[JmOz]

My sugestion, you have CKC, use Dr Destroyers agents, and some of the equipment from Champions, mix in a dose of any agent org you want from Marvel comics (Hydra is especialy appropriate, so is Cobra from GI Joe). That will make a passable Viper agent (or use the Shadow Army stats)

For Demon, use the same stats but make them more magical in the F/x, with satanism themes mixed in...

[Lord Liaden]

Originally posted by Brutal
Oh jesus and i just spent a bunch on 3 books already

So, a followup question then, is that book worth buying at all?

You have my sympathy.

If you would like to use a pregenerated universe, either in whole or in part, CU is a good one: lots of details on the history of supers; how they've affected law, culture, media; the super scene around the planet, galaxy and multiverse. Not a huge number of writeups, but scads of interesting ideas to scavenge.

It's meant to reflect the type of comics universe seen in Marvel and DC; supers have had a significant impact, but the world is still essentially the one we're familiar with.

[cjudisch]

Originally posted by Brutal
So, a followup question then, is that book worth buying at all?

Bearing in mind that this is my opinion and therefore utterly subjective... I absolutely love the book. I think that CU is the best Comic Book setting (that wasn't based on an established Comic-Book Company's continuity) I've ever seen for an RPG (and, considering how much I loved the "IST" setting for SJ Games' GUPRS Supers, that's saying something).

I mean, sure there are a few characters and setting ideas that I don't care for (they just don't jibe with my personal tastes or what have you), but even those are useful... the characters provide me with a ready-made "Hit List" of characters for supervillains to kill during plot moments and the setting parts I don't care for provide me with plot ideas (i.e. "Hmm... I'm not real crazy about the Emperyans, I know! I'll do an adventure where Dr. Destroyer wipes them all out and takes over their hidden valley as his new headquarters!").

As I said though, that's just my opinion. YMMV of course.