Common superhero types you've never seen in play

[RexMundi]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

Actually' date=' the big difference between comics and the game is that characters in the comics - say, X-Men - generally avoid being hit, rather than soaking up hits. The DCV's are higher, considerably, than OCV's. Where, in game, most players want to hit reliably, certainly more often than they miss, so defenses take the forefront and DCV takes a back seat.[/quote']

 

Yeah Comic Characters do things like, Block, Dodge, Dive for Cover, Hide Behind stuff, Use Team Work, Roll with Punches, things like that ...... Stuff that tends to get forget a lot of times in a game when they get absorbed in trying to win.....

 

~Rex

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

True. In fiction characters are only hit when the writer wants it to happen. No such luck in role playing games and DCV is capped in most cases so when that hit gets through most players want to their character to be able to take it and give back as good.

 

You can represent dodging/rolling with it/etc. with regular defenses, not just DCV. No reason you can't have 20PD/ED Armor defined as 'I'm good at avoiding the brunt of attacks'.

[RexMundi]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

Players don't want to play SpiderMan if the GM is going to cap their DCV so they get incinerated by Firelord

 

If I could have a character who's DCV is capped at the level where only a Herald of Galactus could hit him. I woulndn't turn my nose up at such a thing.

 

~Rex...."Hey what's that smudge on the ground there?" New Yorker; "Eh, Spider-Man; Jabroni thought 'e had da Stones ta dukes it out wit Firelord, forgetaboutit!"

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

If I could have a character who's DCV is capped at the level where only a Herald of Galactus could hit him. I woulndn't turn my nose up at such a thing.

 

~Rex...."Hey what's that smudge on the ground there?" New Yorker; "Eh, Spider-Man; Jabroni thought 'e had da Stones ta dukes it out wit Firelord, forgetaboutit!"

 

Cause we all know Heralds of Galactus are constantly practicing their 1 on 1 fighting skills when not relying on "the power cosmic" to automatically take out entire cities.

[RexMundi]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

Cause we all know Heralds of Galactus are constantly practicing their 1 on 1 fighting skills when not relying on "the power cosmic" to automatically take out entire cities.

 

I'm sure he remembered a few things from his Xandarian Nova Corps life and being one of their best trained military combatants with piles of experience before going Herald. Sure, the Cosmic Flame and the Power Cosmic are a distinct crutch in a fight, but he was never a slouch when facing combatants FAR more powerful then Spider-Man......

 

~Rex

[Clonus]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

Cause we all know Heralds of Galactus are constantly practicing their 1 on 1 fighting skills when not relying on "the power cosmic" to automatically take out entire cities.

 

I'm willing to accept that Spider-Man would last for a while against Firelord just by not getting hit. I just have trouble with the idea that anything Spider-Man could have done could have injured Firelord, who is supposed to be in Silver Surfer's class.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

Not being a 'Marvel' guy I've never had as much of an emotional investment in their characters as I have with DC's. However, I don't see what the big deal is considering I've not seen anyone have issues with Batman (a normal human of extraordinary skill) being able to avoid being hit by Darksied's Omega-Beams (an attack that had never missed before, arguably modeled in HERO as AOE 1-hex Accurate) in the last episode of JLU:Animated. Spidey is the character that the HERO ability Danger Sense was modeled after. With it, he can avoid any attack on a personal scale (as long as he has his Spidey-Sense and super-reflexes). Firelord chose to fight him within a personal code of Honor that required that he restrain his attacks to a personal scale. Ergo, he lost the fight because he was being stupid, not because Spidey was 'better'. It's not that Firelord couldn't have fried Spidey a dozen different ways. It's that to rely so heavily on the power cosmic to do so he would have lost honor in the process. I's not that different from when Guy Gardner as a Green Lantern challenged Batman to a fistfight and took off his RING first (Batman proceeded to take him out with 1 Punch!). Fireord didn't have a ring to take off but restricting his tactics to his personal code of honor was just as enabling to Spidey as it was to Batman.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

I'm willing to accept that Spider-Man would last for a while against Firelord just by not getting hit. I just have trouble with the idea that anything Spider-Man could have done could have injured Firelord' date=' who is supposed to be in Silver Surfer's class.[/quote']

 

That depends a great deal on what definition for "injured" we are using.

Could he inflict any BODY damage in HERO terms? absolutely not.

Could he inflict any STUN damage... ? I believe so.

 

The reasoning is that a Herald's power cosmic is similar to a Green Lantern's Ring energy. They both can be used to do nearly anything. However, that does NOT mean they can do it all at the same time. They can't do everything simultaneously. In his tunnel vision of hunting down Spidey, Firelord was not concerned with raising his defenses to their maximum (which I agree wholeheartedly would be sufficient to stop anything Spidey could throw at while they were active).

[Bloodstone]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

Not being a 'Marvel' guy I've never had as much of an emotional investment in their characters as I have with DC's. However' date=' I don't see what the big deal is considering I've not seen anyone have issues with Batman (a normal human of extraordinary skill) being able to avoid being hit by Darksied's Omega-Beams (an attack that had never missed before, arguably modeled in HERO as AOE 1-hex Accurate) in the last episode of JLU:Animated.[/quote']

 

Actually, I know PLENTY of people that complained about that.

 

But there is a big difference between what Batman did in a cartoon and what Spider-man did in the comics.

 

Sure, Batman dodged an attack that Darkseid claimed was undogable. But he did not follow it up by beating down Darkseid with his bare hands...

[phoenix240]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

Players don't want to play SpiderMan if the GM is going to cap their DCV so they get incinerated by Firelord

 

Oooh, you're a bad man.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

Actually, I know PLENTY of people that complained about that.

 

But there is a big difference between what Batman did in a cartoon and what Spider-man did in the comics.

 

Sure, Batman dodged an attack that Darkseid claimed was undogable. But he did not follow it up by beating down Darkseid with his bare hands...

 

Did I make a claim that Batman could damage Darkseid with his bare hands?

[phoenix240]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

I am a Marvel guy and I don't get the rage either. A comic book character did something unrealistic as a plot device yeah, but the genre is practically built on those sorts of things. And I am more invested in Spiderman than one of Galactus' flunkies to begin with. The comic was about the Amazing Spiderman not the Fabulous Firelord. So David beat Goliath. You can come up with narrative explanations (fanwanks) to explain it but in the end its just because they probably didn't want that to be the last issue of Spiderman.

[RexMundi]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

That was the Issue when Spider-Man went from a Build that I like to see, to a Build that I hate seeing....... Spider-Man, has had the crap kicked out of him by "Normal" (that's comic Normal) guys. Firelord, just with his base stats, coulda farted, and the atmospheric reverb woulda ripped Spider-sham into multitudes of little pieces. Firelord was less effective in that fight, then, Hammerhead for pete's sake. I can only suspend so much disbelief.

 

~Rex

[Spidey88]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

For my part, I'm sorry for having inadvertently stirred this particular pot a bit in another thread.

 

I know that's I'm firmly on one side of the fence on this particular issue, so I'm not going to comment on it - perhaps we should all agree to disagree?

 

Not that anyone here is getting terribly hostile or anything - I just figure we should maybe try to let sleeping dogs lie before it gets out of hand. Previous searches here have indicated this topic is quite a hornet's nest...

 

 

 

Anyway, back to the topic of the thread:

 

My current campaign has, as major NPC team-mates:

 

1) a stretchy guy

2) a shrinking lady

3) an invisible/desolidification guy

4) a shadow/darkness manipulator

5) an amphibious guy (not helpless out of the water at all, but has some aquaman-esque elements, and will be talking to certain aquatic animals in short order)

6) 2 superscientists who aren't gadgeteers.

7) One of the players has telepathy and mind control, but no TK.

 

Granted, there's 30 NPCs on the team at the moment, so they're bound to cover a lot of ground concept-wise.

 

 

That being said, I've never played with a character who was an energy projector without flight. One of the PCs is "Cyclops, done the way the player would have made him" - so in addition to versatile energy blasts and martial arts prowess, he can fly.

 

 

Other types I've rarely seen:

 

High-level bricks without high defenses, period (resistant or otherwise)

 

Power-armour wearers without gobs of tech skills (eg. pilot the suit, but didn't make it or can't fix it)

 

Speedsters with low DEX (pretty odd, but certainly not impossible to have an effective character like this)

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

Actually, I know PLENTY of people that complained about that.

 

But there is a big difference between what Batman did in a cartoon and what Spider-man did in the comics.

 

Sure, Batman dodged an attack that Darkseid claimed was undogable. But he did not follow it up by beating down Darkseid with his bare hands...

 

Batman has, in fact, beaten Darkseid in unarmed, hand to hand combat.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

Cause we all know Heralds of Galactus are constantly practicing their 1 on 1 fighting skills when not relying on "the power cosmic" to automatically take out entire cities.

 

Actually, I don't recall Firelord, to that point in time, ever really demonstrating he was that hot in one on one combat. Thor beat him up for most of his early appearances. While on a scale well beyond Spidey, Thor isn't nearly as hard to hit. Did Firelord demonstrate any real personal combat skills up to that point in time?

 

As far as how powerful Heralds of Galactus are, the Thing kicked the Surfer pretty good in his first appearance, and he didn't have to battle him in a cross country run for several hours to do so.

 

Seems like Firelord gets credit for being really resilient because he survives in space - but that's just Life Support!

[Querysphinx]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

Another Build I'd like to see more of.

 

Darkness using characters. Not just, Blasters with the SFX of a Dark Bolt of power, but actual Darkness...... Guys like The Shroud (one of my favorites), Dr. Mid-Nite, that kinda thing..... I build 'em, but I rarely see them.

 

~Rex

 

This would be my current character Nightwatch. Uncontrolled darkness fields combined with a sticky tarry change environment that slows down movement through them. They are so annoying on the battlefield that his Teammates usually ask that he does not deploy them.

 

[RexMundi]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

For my part, I'm sorry for having inadvertently stirred this particular pot a bit in another thread.

 

I know that's I'm firmly on one side of the fence on this particular issue, so I'm not going to comment on it - perhaps we should all agree to disagree?

 

Not that anyone here is getting terribly hostile or anything - I just figure we should maybe try to let sleeping dogs lie before it gets out of hand. Previous searches here have indicated this topic is quite a hornet's nest...

 

 

 

Anyway, back to the topic of the thread:

 

My current campaign has, as major NPC team-mates:

 

1) a stretchy guy

2) a shrinking lady

3) an invisible/desolidification guy

4) a shadow/darkness manipulator

5) an amphibious guy (not helpless out of the water at all, but has some aquaman-esque elements, and will be talking to certain aquatic animals in short order)

6) 2 superscientists who aren't gadgeteers.

7) One of the players has telepathy and mind control, but no TK.

 

Granted, there's 30 NPCs on the team at the moment, so they're bound to cover a lot of ground concept-wise.

 

 

That being said, I've never played with a character who was an energy projector without flight. One of the PCs is "Cyclops, done the way the player would have made him" - so in addition to versatile energy blasts and martial arts prowess, he can fly.

 

 

Other types I've rarely seen:

 

High-level bricks without high defenses, period (resistant or otherwise)

 

Power-armour wearers without gobs of tech skills (eg. pilot the suit, but didn't make it or can't fix it)

 

Speedsters with low DEX (pretty odd, but certainly not impossible to have an effective character like this)

 

Heh, no worries on the Spider-Man stuff, I came to grips with Fandom a long time ago. I defend my stuff just as vehemently so it's all good. That's part of Comics.

 

I've got a very good High End Brick with jack squat for defenses that I use a lot in my game (His Defenses, are GOBS of Stun, Endurance, Body and Recovery, but he's not any tougher PD/ED wise then say, a Prize Fighter), and Champions New Millennium had the only version of Defender I've ever liked, and that was just the "pilots the suit" PA guy.....My sideline Supers Game has two Speedsters with low dex, Rockslide and Bullet, so I do see those builds.

 

~Rex....finishing a few builds...available if folks want them.....

[RexMundi]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

This would be my current character Nightwatch. Uncontrolled darkness fields combined with a sticky tarry change environment that slows down movement through them. They are so annoying on the battlefield that his Teammates usually ask that he does not deploy them.

 

 

I like this cat.....great concept!

 

~Rex....says post the sheet!

[phoenix240]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

re: Firelord vs Spiderman

 

Is this issue hosted online anywhere I could take a look at it or could someone PM the details?

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

re: Firelord vs Spiderman

 

Is this issue hosted online anywhere I could take a look at it or could someone PM the details?

 

Original HERO discussion thread

 

link to cover and basic plot

 

review of 1st issue

review of 2nd issue

 

youtube video part 1:

 

youtube video part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnqbtgIJfP0&feature=related

[Spidey88]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

Original HERO discussion thread

 

link to cover and basic plot

 

review of 1st issue

review of 2nd issue

 

youtube video part 1:

 

youtube video part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnqbtgIJfP0&feature=related

 

 

I was going to say: "I can give you the play-by-play" - but this is way faster!

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

Spidey obviously had a can of Brutomax with his Wheaties for breakfast that morning.

 

Warning NSFW!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSVoz4xI96o

[phoenix240]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

(Assorted linkage)

 

Thanks!

[Orion]

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

 

You can represent dodging/rolling with it/etc. with regular defenses' date=' not just DCV. No reason you can't have 20PD/ED Armor defined as 'I'm good at avoiding the brunt of attacks'.[/quote']

 

The greatest advantage of Champions is that you can do anything. It's also the biggest disadvantage of the system. Some people love to see how many different ways they can build a power set. Others, like me, see only a single way to do it. I've met more than one player/GM that got as much or more fun from gaming the system as they did playing the character.

 

I despise the AD&D system and its hit points. I hate how taking and avoiding damage are combined. Now, it works great for many things, including the fact that the hero seldom gets taken down in a single hit. It's great to model the favoritism a character gets from a writer. I still hate it. Use the right power/statistic/skill for the job. Your suggestion of using armor to model avoidance is this. Any player that suggested using the rules this way would be slapped down by me, and I'd take a much more careful look at anything they designed in the future. You want to be hard to hit - buy DCV. Want to resist damage after being hit - buy armor. In the long run, there may well be no difference in combat between these, but there is a very big difference in the feel of the game.

 

Pant pant pant. Sorry about that. Rant over. Back to the thread.