Champions' Iconic Characters (Blasphemy next 500 words)

[Rage]

Originally posted by Acroyear
Magic can't be used to gate people from other worlds? Why not?

That's the point. The spacemen with rayguns aren't magic, themselves, but with "magic powers" you could certainly summon them. If a magician summons a lion to fight someone... or a snake or whatever (both much more commonly accepted than spacemen, I would assume) neither of the animals, themselves, are magical. The lion doesn't attack with "magic" claws and the snake doesn't attack with "magic" snake venom. It's just claws and snake venom. Similarly, spacemen with rayguns are hitting you with lasers or whatever, not eldritch bolts.

But if they are just summons then you still have to see if they will actually work for the caster, and if its a weapon like a ray gun and they are continually having points tied up for it then surley a dispel magic could be ruled to send them back through the void? (Using crap about astral displacement and the like)

Magic is a valid EC effect. Saying that it isn't because the powers used aren't neccisarily magic (e.g creating a pile of meat to drop on captain vegan) so that magic defence isn't effective is like saying a fire guy isn't allowed to burn a part of a wooden beam so the wooden beam drops on top of Lord Imune to Fire Man.

The SFX is common in the EC and thats what matters.

By the by when I do a mage I don't do EC but a VPP

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Monolith
I would bet someone could also come up with proper examples to fit many of those powers into an EC as well; I just could not think of any. The point is that Fire Guy is not really limited by needing to define his SFX because almost everything works

Density Increase--Thats a tough one for fire

Ego Attack--Playing on the Mesmeric qualities of fire, this is easily explained away if No Mental Awareness and Range Penalties Apply are taken

Growth--Easy; surround oneself with a giant fiery exo form, with an offensive Damage Shield perhaps. Also useful to characters which are actually made up of flame; grow really big and burn stuff with your Affects Physical World Offensive Damage Shield.

Mental Illusion--Again, play up the Mesmeric qualities of flame; take a variant 'Requires Eye Contact', defined as target must look at flame.

Mind Scan--ditto on this; basically, Mind Scan only vs targets that are looking into a flame. Good Pyromancer or Demonic schtick as well.

Multiform--many forms of fiery goodness. Great for characters that have a desolid flame form.

Shape Shift--Shape Shift vs Sight for a flame based character that can shape his fire aura into different forms.

Shrinking--Again, the fire form based character could use this to make himself the size of a candle flame. Good shtick.

Swimming--kind of a tough one, but concievably could boil off water, decreasing water resistance.

Telepathy--like the other Mental power, use the Mesmeric properties of Fire; Telepathy, only to read the minds of people looking at a fire.

Transfer--Transfer fire powers to fire powers.

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[Killer Shrike]

As Ive stated before, I personally am much happier with the 5th Ed Champions Universe. I always genially loathed the 4th Ed CU. IMO it was just a huge corny mishmash.

The new CU is much more dynamic, cleancut, and vibrant to me, and for the 1st time ever in 13 years of using the HERO SYstem as my primary/default game system, Im running a campaign in the actual CU rather than homebrewing a setting.

This is significant because it is something that I never would have done with the 4eCU. Ever. Forget running; I wouldnt even play in a 4eCU campaign. My personal take on 4eCU was easily summed up by 1 word: LAME.

I understand that for those who enjoyed 4eCU, its probably a kick in the teeth, but the thing is you get the best of both worlds. You can keep using your existing campaign and incorporate in elements that you like from 5eCU.

IMO, YMMV