Heckus

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine Villainess group that will soon be appearing in my campaign:

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine Here's a couple of my heroes, ThreeD (stretchy speedster) and Hero-Zero (Gravity manipulator)

Re: Not "Secret", not "Public", just "Identity" There's a difference between being nobody special and being unrecognizable. This comes dangerously close to the perk "anonymity". Depending on the campaign, what you have described could be more of an advantage. Pg. 78 revised 5th ed: Cost: 3 or more Character Points For many characters, a high degree of anonymity is a valuable asset — what the authorities don’t know about someone, they can’t use to catch him. With the GM’s permission, characters can buy this Perk. Anonymity means no offi cial or police records exist regarding the character — or if they do exist, they don’t contain any truly useful information. If Anonymity is bought before a character has the chance to establish a record for criminal, dissident, rebel, or other illicit conduct, it costs 3 Character Points. If purchased aft er the character has attracted the attention of the authorities, it may cost more than 3 points (possibly much more). Th e cost depends upon how much information the authorities have on the character and how damaging it is. (Of course, the GM should not allow a PC to buy this Perk aft er the game begins without running an appropriate adventure to explain its eff ects.) Like many Perks, Anonymity can be nullifi ed. If the authorities acquire information about the character aft er he purchases Anonymity, the eff ects of the Perk are diminished or lost. In this case, the character does not get the Character Points he spent on Anonymity back — and if he wants to preserve his Anonymity, he’ll have to purchase the Perk again.

Re: Not "Secret", not "Public", just "Identity" That's why it's a variable point limitation now (as opposed to the old "10/15"). When you make the disad, you choose how limiting it will be. In the cases listed above I think Spider-man's Secret ID is worth more Cap's or the Flashes. Spider-Man has (had) a particular well-known wife, a job for a boss that specifically hates his alter ego (at least in the past), and a vulnerable Aunt. if his Secret ID is discovered there's a lot of peril involved. Cap has no one left alive after all these years and the Flash has no relatives of note and "being the Flash" wouldn't necessarily invalidate his day job (crime lab tech). It's he difference between kid of limiting and extremely limiting on the value list. Other examples of characters with No specific identity (IMO): Red Tornado/ Vision (androids; occasionally they may dress up as humans but that's a disguise, not a sustained alter ego) Swamp Thing/Man-Thing (peramently transform; they may have had a human persona in the past but they've changed and can never go back); Darksied/Thanos (Alien entities; They don't pretend to be anyone else and knowing who they really are provides no advantage) Hercules/Loki (Mythological creatures; they are the real deal, don't claim to be anyone else, and good luck going to their homes to kidnap their families) Best example of a Public Identity (hands-down, IMO) is the Fantastic Four. They are celebrities, easily regonizable and the live in the big building downtown with the "4" on the roof. They also have children and loved ones that villains constantly take shots at. As far as face recognition, that can vary greatly with the moment in the campaign and who is seeing you making it harder to quantify points-wise.

Re: Nothing can stop me now! REDUCTION, not resistance. Reduction means that any damage that gets past regular defenses get reduced by 25/50/75%.

Re: Nothing can stop me now! A couple of options I use: - Don't have the villain 'achieve ultimate power' in the same room as the PCs. Let them see it via closed-camera or telepathic broadcast. Make them work their way to him through a wall of minions or a maze of traps. It makes the villain "seem" to last longer and adds a few fun encounters before thrashing the bad guy. It might even wear them down a bit so that the villain seems tougher without the cheese. -CONDITIONAL ultimate power. Yeah, the villain might have 75% resistant PD/ED hardened Damage Reduction and 40 mental defense, but he also needs a weakness. Maybe there's some item that nullifies his uber-defenses or a certain attack type that his power doesn't defend against. But you also need to make the PCs work to find it so that it feels "earned". -Give the Ultimate power some unexpected downside that the villain wasn't expecting. Turn the adventure into a testament about how "absolute power corrupts absolutely". This way he gets to rampage around for a little while before the downside kicks in and consumes him.

Re: Help with a power So if you're still advocating Trigger then what are you suggesting as his Trigger condition? "Every time he teleports next to a target"? Would it go off if he teleports next to a friendly target? Is he going to have to spend a half action reseting every phase (which defeats the purpose) or is he going to pay extra to reduce it? He's already paying a good bit for ALVD or NND that does BODY.

Re: Senses in a multipower--legal build? You're not supposed to put 0 END persistent powers in frameworks (senses, armor, LS) and the framework represents that they all come from a similar source/ability (not just "here are some random powers i want cheaply"). A multipower in particular is used to represent "one power" that you can use a variety of different ways. That said, you see it all the time with things like utility belts. If you declare it's a conditional use power (like on continuous charges, or costs END, or as a device that must be activated and deactivated) then it's usually ok (GM's descretion). In these cases you've made the power no longer always on or persistent. Example: Multi-spectral goggles: Multipower (OIF = Goggles, -1/2) ultra-slot: Telescopic vision Ultra-slot: IR vision Ultra-slot: Microscopic Vision Ultra-slot: "spectral analysis", Detect energy (like radiation or magnetic fields) In this situation he can only use one sense at a time, they all come from the same source, and they are dependent on the goggles (the "source" of the multipower"). Now, if he wants to be able to use multiple senses at the same time and they are just powers that he has with no obvious link then i'd recommend making him buy them independently.

Re: Help with a power A couple things: 1. If you're looking for a power that lets you "teleport to the target, attack, and then teleport away without anyone striking back", Consider a penetrating Indirect RKA and explain the "indirect" part as the rubberband porting. Or a NND or ALVD. 2. If you're looking for a way to move, attack, and then perform other actions, as a GM, i say "tough luck". The hero system mechanic is designed for 2 actions per phase. If you want to be inhumanly fast then buy more speed. 3. I think both linked and trigger are "if-ie" options. With trigger you have to define one very specific circumstance to set it off. Unless you pay more for alternate means of activation, you can't use it without meeting that condition (not that much different from linked and possibly more limiting). Also, once you've used a triggered power you have to use a half phase action to reset the power before you can use it again. Sure you can make it so that it resets either as a 0 phase action or even automatically but that costs another +1/4 (for 0 phase) or +1/2 to 1 (for auto-reset at GM's option). Trigger is great for traps, reflexive attack backs, bombs, and reactive defense but as a primary attack it's kind of a cheese IMO.

Re: Not "Secret", not "Public", just "Identity" There was also an episode of JLU where Lex Luthor and the Flash switch bodies. Lex says "well at least I can find out whose behind this Mask". pulls it off. Short puase. "I have no idea who this is."

Re: superuseless superpowers The Human Clog!! Growth (12 levels), No Stat Gain (-1/2), May only use as many levels as it would to take up all available space, no more/no less (-1); 0 END, Continuous, Uncontrolled. with linked: Shape Shift, linked to growth (-1/2), Only to take the shape of the enclosure that is filled by Growth (-1/2). He basically expands to completely fill whatever room or hallway he's in.

Re: Not "Secret", not "Public", just "Identity" Another downside to Public ID is the vulnerability of family and Friends. Unless you're an alien, an orphan raised by wolves, or a robot, you probably have family somewhere and, close or not, villains like VIPER will harass them if you piss them off. Have a girlfriend? She's fair game too. Your DNPCs are that much more vulnerable. Also be prepared for the bi-weekly house/apartment bomb or vengeful villains showing up on your doorstep at 3 AM. To have neither a public nor a secret ID is to be a person who either has no ID apart from his super ID (see examples above) or whose normal ID is so unimpressive that if his real name were to be revealed no one would care. Dr. Destructo: "Ha-ha!! At last to reveal the identity of my arch nemesis, Punch-Man." "ummm....who the hell are you?" Punch-Man: "Gary Garison, lawn-care consultant." Dr. Destructo: " You gotta be $%-'n me." A player of mine once tried to get points for public ID and then said he was an only child and his parents and grandparents were dead, he had no lasting friendships, lived in an trailer outside the city (illegally parked), and worked as a homeoffice internet salesman (obviously trying to completely invalidate the "public" downsides). While he was away on his first adventure, his mobile home was stolen by his hunted, filled with bombs and detonated on the steps of the City Building. The charred license plates led the police back to him.

Re: superuseless superpowers Actually I've always liked the idea of Taste as a targeting Sense. "I have the power to blast whatever is on the tip of my tongue". Or better yet, an R-Ray sense: "I can taste through walls".

Re: DMA Super Spies Major Villains: Rex Manning III: skilled normal; Billionaire Industrialist (weapons design); Last of the Big Game Hunters. His grandfather worked with Nazi Germany and the mysterious Thule Society. Both dad and grandpa were villains killed by the Secret Six. He was raised from birth to hate Metahumans and is believed to be in league (if not in charge of) the Omega Objective (see above). A surprising twist is that his 10 year old son Rex Manning IV is a Meta with the power to talk to animals. Iron Wolf: Russian cyborg whose specialty is bringing down metahumans. he always does his homework and has hi-tech traps design specifically for his prey's powers. Always has trained agents for back up. As a member of the former-KGB he usually just gets deported (prisoner swap) when caught only to return later. Elijah Gibson: A seemingly immortal psychic "Omega-level" meta who can steal another's powers by eating their flesh. Creep factor of 10. The team unwittingly released him on the world while investigating a Thule Stone buried in an old mine in Arkansas. There is also evidence that he may have beaten the PCs to a recently discovered Ancient city on the Moon where he stole an artifact off unknown importance. Migraine: Former DMA gone rogue who is gathering an army of Metas to take there rightful place as masters over mankind. Jealous over having a relatively weak power, he injected himself with an underdeveloped strain of the meta-boosting drug called "Jump" and has since developed massive psychic powers but was left severely deformed. He leads the "Rejex" a team of Lurkers that hate mankind.

Re: superuseless superpowers The Amazing Mr. Oven-Mitt: LS: immunity to heat, for hands only (-1) +40 Ed, only vs. Fire (-1), for hands only (-1)

Re: Doomed Campaigns Part of the problem with running "large" champions groups is that everyone has a different view of comic books and super heroing. If you say you're going to play Fantasy everyone thinks LotR or Conan and they can all get on the same page relatively quickly. But, with Supers you have you golden-silver age mind sets, your gritty punisher-esk fans, character-specific fans and so on. OR you get the guy who wants to play a two-fisted street hero who gets by on his wits teamed up with Devil-Tron the Soulgrinder of K'Laarg whose recent actions were only mistaken for doo-goodery (and he can move mountains with his mind). My worst case scenario with this was back in the 90's with a 8 player group in what was supposed to be a 4-color campaign (main purpose was to familiarize everyone with the rules for future campaigns). About half the team had come up with serious characters, although two of them had the exact same character (speedsters) with different dressing. The other 4 had ideas for cartoony or shtick characters (no personality, just one joke ponies with some super powers). Of the guys with real ideas, 3/4 were brooding loners who had no reason to want to team up for anything more than a one-off. Oddly enough the game went pretty well. A few players eventually made minor changes to their existing characters once they got into the game or brought in new dudes once they got a feel for the campaign. I didn't make them change, I just ran it as-is and eventually the arrived on the same page. One funny thing was: At the end of a major story arc there was a big debate over lethality between the CVK and the Casual Killer which led to the CVKer turning an unconscious Casual Killer over tho his hunted (secret government agency). This split my group into 2 smaller groups and a spin-off campiagn started with a player escaping from the evil shadow agency. The Spin-off campaign turned out to be way more fun and only had 4 players (waaay easier to manage in champions). For my current campaign, we knew we wanted to play Hero system but all i had was a few half-formed ideas, so I jotted the basics of each idea down and let my players vote (prioritizing favorites 1-3). Once they picked the genre I did the same with a few game elements (tone, power level, group origin or not, etc..). This campaign has been going strong since April of '08. I think working with the players helped to make something that they were all interested in.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine Ok. that seems to happen with my laptop. It's Vista. I can even see the images where you quoted me. I'll repost from my desktop. Darn you Vista!!

Re: Adventure Ideas With These Villains... Holy crap, I just responded to a 6 year old thread. Oops.

Re: Adventure Ideas With These Villains... Oh and be sure to throw in the Red Rapier, the Green Knight, Aerion and the Buffalo from Enemies III (circa 1984).

Re: Adventure Ideas With These Villains... Take away COIL and the rest of the list would make a nice "Secret Society of Supervillains" type plot. In the background: Tired of being consistantly beaten by heroes, a band of looser/2nd string villains decide to form a coalition. Monopole and Half-Jack are the Masterminds and gather as many others as they can find. For added muscle, Half-Jack steals the inert body of Avar-7 from a PRIMUS base and reprogram it. Scenario #1: Heroes respond to an emergency downtown. They arrive to find 1 villain committing a crime but as the battle ensues several more arrive to assist him and take the heroes by surprise. Scenario #2: There are a string of police station break ins where bush league villains are rescued. Soon after they appear along side other villains in groups of 5 or more and are far more organized than they've ever been. If the heroes manage to capture a villain he immediately spills the beans on the Society ....but this is actually part of their plot to lure in and finish off a few heroes. Scenario #3: The heroes bust into the Society's secret hideout expecting to find maybe 8-10 light-weight villans tops, but instead find a small army with a few heavy-hitters. The heroes either escape to find allies and a new plan, or they are captured in which case the villains begin to argue on how best to deal with them. Smart players will play the villains against each other in hopes of finding a chance to turn the tables or escape. Scenario #4: Battle Royale.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine Two reoccurring villains in my campaign: Smoke: Is a sadistic hottie who can her body into..(you guessed it)...smoke. She can also turn her daggers semi-smoke-like to bypass armor. ..and her partner, Ma'Salla who can turn his body to a brass-like metal and super-heat himself (it's like being punched with a hot iron).

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine A few more: Alien Commander ..and Mr. Magi

Re: Power Game. Give it a try. Oh, and I did have a player once try to buy 512 ninja henchmen. I said no.

Re: Power Game. Give it a try. Back under 4th edition we always joked about "Instant Change" Useable Against Others, At Range, To any outfit. You could put as many advantages as you wanted on it, it was only 10 points base. The villain was dubbed the "Revealer" and he'd go around zapping heroes back into their civilian IDs or worse....in hula girl outfits. Would be particularly funny against power suit guys. I like to think that's why they changed it to a transformation attack in 5th Ed.

Re: Aaron Alliston's Strike Force Campaign Sourcebook My copy is well worn and tattered but I still crack it open at least once a year to reread. I bought it new and I've borrow a lot from Strikeforce over the last two decades.