Trebuchet

True, but a beam originating from the left hand has a different field of fire than one from the right hand, chest, or eyes. Common sense tells you that Superman can't use his heat vision on someone holding him from behind in a full nelson unless he comes up with a clever way to bounce the attack, and that's the essence of role-playing. That's the limitation such specified origin points provide. It all balances out in the end as long as you use common sense and some dramatic license. It still largely comes down to special effect. For example, if a speedster has an EB defined as throwing small objects hyperfast, I'd allow them to use either hand or maybe even kick the object (perhaps at a small OCV penalty) to use the attack. Heck, depending on the situation I might permit them to spit something small enough to do some reduced damage or flip a switch on a deathtrap. As long as the player is role playing I'll cut them a lot of slack. When they start loading up on cheese then my cutoff point drops precipitously.

I view this as more a matter of special effect. Nothing in the rules requires attacks to come from particular parts of the body. Iron Manâ„¢ has Repulsorsâ„¢ in both gauntlets. If Titanium Manâ„¢ breaks his left gauntlet then he can still use the right one. That's the definition of special effect: He can fire from either, and he's paid the extra points to have both. (I would probably require spending the whole 5 points without any discount from Limitations on the spare). The same thing would apply in Champions. Carrying a "backup" sword or pistol is largely genre-specific; and would seldom apply to superheroes anyway. If the device is a focus then something that takes out that focus will quite likely take out the spare. (Sure, you've got your spare pistol but no extra ammo, etc.). I'd just take this on a case by case basis, but I see no reason to preemptively ban it. No way does Green Lanternâ„¢ get to pack a spare power ring.

I don't know about a website, but you might check out Stephen Jay Gould's book Wonderful Life, which describes the fantastic creatures of the Pre-Cambrian Era circa 500 million years ago. Many of these critters have no modern analogue at all, and look like something dreamed up by HP Lovecraft. Perfect for servants of the Elder Worms. If you can't find the book, let me know and I'll gladly scan a few pictures from my copy and e-mail them to you. You might try a Google Search under "Burgess Shale" and see if that turn up any pics. Pic: http://www.nmnh.si.edu/paleo/shale/pamsci.htm

Just remember that base defenses are really only sufficient to keep out encyclopedia salesmen and pesky DNPCs. Any supervillain(s) would in all likelihood waltz right into the place. The real defensive systems are the PCs. We recently graphically demonstrated this in our campaign. Our remote base has state of the art sensors including motion sensors and IR cameras, guard dogs, and a well trained security detail of 150-point agents armed with hi-tech weapons and commanded by a 250 point superagent. In a drill-type scenario four of our team acting as a "supervillain team" managed to completely overwhelm the guard force, penetrate the base and "kidnap" the team leader's wife (a 120 pound dummy), and successfully escape in less than 30 seconds. And we didn't even know the interior layout of the building. It was a fun and different twist on the old "danger room" scenario. It also showed us our security has a lot of room for improvement.

Gotta have a helicopter...

1) Taken from the "We don't know how good socialism is because we've never tried it in it's purest form" perspective, that's true. However, "pure" anything is a pipe dream when we're discussing the vagaries of human societies. I should point out that the US is by no means a pure capitalistic society either. Nor is capitalism a system of government, but an economic system. Socialism purports to be both (and must be, because making humans follow socialist ideals requires government force.). However, I think we've acquired enough empirical evidence to make an informed decision. In every place where some variant of socialism has been tried, it has led to both lower standards of living and less freedom for the population. Conversely, capitalism has led to higher standards of living and more freedom for the population wherever it has been tried. This doesn't seem to be all that difficult to see. 2) And you are quite correct, the current Democrats and Green parties in the US are blatantly socialistic. The Republican party is slightly less so, but it's still no shining beacon of conservatism and capitalism. 3) The point is that those research scientists don't work for the government, they work for private industry because private industry pays them salaries commensurate with their talents. France, Germany, and Britain combined have an economy nearly as large as America's and socialized medicine to boot. So where are the new drugs from these socialistic economic titans? What drugs did the Soviet Union develop, or China? Where are the advanced medical technologies from Norway or Sweden, supposedly the most advanced socialist nations on Earth?

I think what you are looking for is the Talent Environmental Movement: Narrow Surfaces (FREd, page 64 sidebar). My super-gymnast has this even though her Acrobatics roll is 22-. Costs 3 points, and allows the character to operate on narrow ledges or tightropes without penalty (normally a -2 or worse). What's the difference between this and an Acrobatics roll? I asked Steve Long that very question; he said "With Environmental Movement you don't need to make any DEX rolls. It works all the time."

I suppose nazism could be called a "middle class socialism" whereas marxism is more a "working class" form of socialism. I've always found it rather ironic that while Marx expected the factory workers of Germany or England to be the ones who would rise up and impose socialism; the font of marxism ended up being the primitive economy of Russia. Nuadha implied the Nazis were not pagan, but it seems to me their ideals of a return to a mythological ideal world where the Aryan Volk rule is an implicitly pre-Christian ethos. An return, if you will, to the misty forests of primal worship of Wotan and the other proto-Germanic gods. Just because someone uses the word "God" doesn't mean they believe in a Supreme Being as defined by Christians, Jews or Muslims. And since Germany was a predominantly christian nation it would hardly have been good politics for Hitler to have said "I am greater than God" or "I don't believe in God." without it affecting his political prospects before he seized power. Certainly none of the upper eschelon Nazis were devout Christians; in fact they often persecuted churches. Any comments on this question?

You go right on pontificating! That was very informative, and I certainly think supports my assertation that nazism was a form of socialism, just as a parliamentary democracy such as Britain is similar but not identical to a federal republic such as the US. A book I can highly recommend on the common origins of socialism, fascism, and communism is Leftism Revisited: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn.

Well, just based on your screed it's not hard to see which end of the political spectrum you come from. First of all, if you disagree with my arguments that's fine. It's a free country and you can say anything you wish no matter how stupid it makes you sound. But you might at least try quoting me correctly. I said "socialism is a bad thing in any manifestation. Some are just worse than others." There is an important difference between socialist ideas and socialism. One is a group of abstract concepts, the other is a system in power. Socialism may sound good when it's adherents are shouting the slogans in the streets, but it inevitably leads to oppression whenever it tries to run a government (See Nazi Germany, Revolutionary France, Marxist Russia, Maoist China, Fascist Italy). Every socialist government that ever existed has been oppressive, and the more purely socialist it is the more oppressive it is to the people it claims to be representing. That's cold historical fact. Many groups have had seemingly good ideas that ultimately failed the reality test. The Nazis built the autobahns, made the trains run on time, and rebuilt the German economy, but I'm not prepared to call them good guys because they had some "good ideas." Your assertation that socialism provides 100% employment is a fantasy. Not even the Soviet Union and Mao's communist China have ever attained 100% employment. And the heavily socialized advanced nations (Italy, Germany, France, Japan) have unemployment numbers approximately twice that of evil corporate-run America. More capitalistic societies such as Singapore have lower unemployment rates than America. 100% employment could only be achieved in a totally stagnant society where people hold the same job their entire lives without fear of being fired for incompetence or malfeasance. There would be no improving technology, because changes in technology means someone's profession is now outdated. The chariot builders would still have their jobs even though no one has used chariots in 2000 years. "Full employment" leaves no room for innovation, or for someone to quit to find a job they prefer, or to advance. Unemployment is not an unmitigated evil, but also an important incentive to a dynamic economy. At one time 70% of Americans worked on farms; now the number is 2% but we're producing more food than ever. Is that truly the level of technology you want to be at? If so, why are you posting on a computer when you should be living in an Amish township and repairing windmills?" And if you really think "capitalism has done a lot of good for the US, but it has also contributed to one of the world's most corrupt governments with politicians solidly in the pocket of big business," then you need to look around the world a bit more closely. America's political system is one of the least corrupt in human history. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. We probably look bad because unlike most nations we air our dirty linen in public due to our tradition of a free press. In most other countries corruption is seen as "business as usual," whereas in the US we at least try to put corrupt officials in jail. And while corporations do donate large amounts of money to politicians, so do grass roots movements and political action groups. If corporations really ran this country as you seem to be asserting, then why does Congress keep passing anti-business legislation? Why don't corporations simply tell their owned politicians that they should be totally tax exempt? American corporations "pay their workers so little" compared to whom? Lower class Americans have the same standard of living as middle class Europeans. "Poor" Americans own cars, TVs, microwaves, and often have weight problems from overeating. American workers are well paid and have the highest productivity in the entire world. Better than Japan, better even than the vaunted Germans. Capitalism may make money for the business owners, but the biggest benefactors are the consumers who can buy goods at incredibly low prices. I own more clothes and live in greater comfort than Louis XVI of France. Bill Gates may be worth billions, but without him or someone like him I couldn't have afforded this computer. Computers were once toys for government, big corporations and enthusiasts; now everyone in my family owns one including both of my retired parents. So I don't begrudge Bill his dough. Capitalism has made all of our lives better. It's even produced the heart medications my mom uses to deal with her congestive heart failure. Capitalistic American pharmaceutical companies develop over 60% of all new drugs worldwide every year; not government research facilities. So I trust you'll pardon me if my view of the evils of capitalism differs from yours. You may not like my point of view, but before you accuse me of getting my information solely from Rush Limbaugh and Fox News I suggest you try broadening your own sources. Your entire comment reads like a socialist party pamphlet.

Quite so. My own martial artist/speedster can generate a 13d6 attack with a full 30" Move Through - and with her 6 PD (1/2 of her 12 PD is Combat Luck whick doesn't apply versus Move Through damage.) risks Stunning herself or even knocking herself out if the target doesn't suffer knockback. For obvious reasons this is not an attack she uses often; only in desperate situations. Otherwise she sticks with her 8d6 Martial Strike or her 10d6 Sacrifice Strike.

That's quite true, and the "purists" were constantly bickering with the less ideologically pure (read: opportunistic) Nazis. Movements inevitably splinter into factions; that's their nature. The communists did it too (Trotskyites, etc.). The communists were originally a radical socialist faction, as were the fascists (Mussolini was originally a communist before he broke off and formed his own party.). That's a very clever suggestion.

Re: Point Creep? I'm not certain I understand your problem. Are you complaining because you gain too many XP, or because your designs use too many points? If the latter, then limit yourself to X points. I seldom worry about points for villains, I just build them so they work as envisioned. I consider this mutual storytelling, not a character design contest. So it's not important if my villain is for a good match pointswise with the PCs as long as he's an interesting opponent.

The Mayor is a former RAF officer, but he's still a politician. I suppose "kit" will do nicely. Many thanks. IIRC, knife was "cnwf" in Old English (Don't ask me how to pronounce that! I need vowels.), from the Old Norse word "knífr", Anglo-Saxon was "cníf". Looks to me like the "k" sound is pretty old. How was the word pronounced in Elizabethan times when Shakespeare was writing? I can check my OED for origin, but none of these old languages were big on silent letters. So when did the "k" sound drop off the pronunciation?

I'm writing a phony interview for my Champions campaign newspaper, the Weekly Globe Enquirer, of the mayor of Tintagle where a recent supernatural incident occured. What I need is British slang for "gadget" or "equipment." The only word I know in that vein is "kit," which I'm not certain is correct slang for military hardware. And if anyone knows a good website or dictionary to get translations from our mother tongue to American and vice versa, I'd appreciate it. I'm still trying to figure out why we Yanks spell "grey" with an "a" and leave out the "u" in "harbour".

That's one of the most inane comments I've seen recently on these boards, and that's saying a lot. Of course the Nazis were nationalists; it says so right in their very name. As in N-A-T-I-O-N-A-L S-O-C-I-A-L-I-S-T. Duh. What makes you think I can't handle the obvious? Don't like nationalism, do you? I can't help but notice you give your location as "Glasgow, Scotland," not "Glasgow, Europe" or "Glasgow, Earth." So do you consider yourself a good Scotsman, a subject of the United Kingdom, or merely a citizen of Europe? I, on the other hand, am proud to be an ardent nationalist. We Americans are funny that way.

Just how did the Nazis have more in common with these elements? They were anti-individualistic, oppressive (!), statist (they had one of the largest and least efficient bureacracies in Europe) and pagan; the very opposite of what you called them. And it's not like National Socialists was a name assigned to the Nazis by reactionary governments; the very name of the party was the National Socialist Worker's Party. You know, those same workers who supposedly owned everything in the former Soviet Union. Communism and national socialism are two branches of the same tree who were bitter rivals because they each viewed the other as heretics from "true socialism". They are not opposite ends of the political spectrum, but close kin. I can't help but feel that your desire to paint the Nazis as incorporating these elements is an attempt to somehow paint them as some type of conservatives. What I see in Nazism is a violent overturning of traditional values and the creation of a personality cult based on an ideology rather than on heredity, achievement or social position. You know, like Lenin or Mao. I'm sorry if you can't handle the name socialism being attached to the Nazis; but in my book socialism is a bad thing in any manifestation. Some are just worse than others.

That is largely correct, and I have no disagreement with most of what you said here about fascism. Nazi doctrine was essentially trying to recreate a mythological "perfect state" of Aryans; which was the only thing about them that was "conservative," just as Mussolini was trying to recreate the glory of imperial Rome. My problem came with your blanket assertion that "Nazi Germany was run on behalf of companies like Krupp and Ford," which is patently false. That's as absurd as saying that communism is a plot of the Elders of Zion. The Nazis were perfectly willing to use the industrialists (and vice versa), but that doesn't mean they were working at the behest of said industrialists. This thread has wandered a bit off topic, but not much. Most people have no real idea of what Nazism means; their ideas are formed by 60 years of movies and books with Nazi heavies which offer little but a cardboard cutout representation of Nazis (They hate Jews, have cool black uniforms, decorate everything with swastikas, are evil, use advanced technology, etc.) but nothing of the actual meat. There is certainly nothing to admire about the Nazis, but that doesn't mean they aren't worthy of study. Evil is always interesting, at least in the abstract. Two books on the subject I can recommend: The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS by Heinz Höhne, and The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933-1945 by Richard Grunberger

It wasn't really simple, but it wasn't particularly difficult for my campaign's version of Dr. Destroyer. Of course the cartels relocated elsewhere, but they are no longer Columbia's problem. And it's pretty hard for agents of the drug cartel or marxist groups to remain hidden when the President of the country can cast a spell which tells him if they are lying. His first action upon taking control was to personally purge the Columbian Army's and Air Force's officer corps; he killed several hundred of them who were either corrupt or spies. And he also has some dandy 350 point superhuman followers, the Jaguar Women. Their favorite pastime is removing living human hearts by tearing through the ribcage with their claws.

The fact that you can even say such things as "Nazi Germany was run on behalf of companies like Krupp and Ford" shows me exactly how little you know about actual Nazi ideology. Fascism in it's own way was as radical as communism; it was hardly a friend of the traditional ways. In general the Nazis despised the old school Junkers, industrialists and nobility. Property ownership was a polite fiction under the Nazis; Kruppstahl worked at Hitler's behest not the other way around. Their instructions were to be followed or the result would be...unpleasant. Many business owners, especially of large industrial plants, found themselves little more than well-paid managers. Wars are not profitable when bombs are raining on your factories.

I originally considered having the Emerald Mage take over Spain, Italy, or Portugal (He speaks all Romance languages plus several ancient tongues, but not English). But I rejected those because they were NATO members and the US would be much more likely to intervene. Columbia was perfect as a base of operations (He originally tried seizing Belize by force, but was thwarted by the PCs). He cleaned up the drug cartels and marxist insurgents and now the US government thinks he's the best thing to hit South America in 50 years. And the massed adulation of his countrymen gives him enormous amounts of manna to power his spells. The PCs he considers little more than "quality control". He wants to bring humanity to a golden era of peace and prosperity, with himself as it's eternal ruler. He's charismatic, patient, immortal, and extremely powerful. He will, of course, eventually rule the entire world. It is, after all, his destiny.

National socialism was quite aptly named. The core philosophy of fascism is that the collective "people" supercedes any individual rights and all things done by the State are collectively willed by the people. Communism substitutes "workers" for "people," which is really not much of a difference IMHO. I consider the real differences between fascism and socialism/communism to be rather minor, especially since both sprang form the same philisophical wellspring (Kant) and the real world practices of each are so similar. But to non-believers the differences between Shi'a and Sunni Muslims are also apparently trivial. Obviously those differences are big enough for them to kill over.

The only major difference between fascism (national socialism) and communism (international socialism) is the dispensation of private property. One controls it, the other takes it. And their method of contol are virtually identical (Secret police, labor camps, total control of all media, etc.). I like the idea of an elected leader. Make the guy charismatic as hell, have him run for office legitimately (while his Nazi goons stomp opposition party member's heads), select a scapegoat group to blame (Corrupt official are always good), and let him legally seize control just like Hitler did. That's what happened in my campaign. My universe's biggest villain, the Emerald Mage (1750 points of bad attitude and a 300 point Cosmic VPP; formerly known as Quetzlcoatl amongst other aliases) was legally elected President of Columbia after promising to clean up the drug cartels and corrupt officials. He succeeded, and is now one of the most popular rulers in South America and is now working towards a merger of Columbia and Venezuela, with the short-term goal of creating a "United States of South America". All the while our heroes have watched helplessly because he was legally elected. They can't expose his true identity because he also knows theirs.

Our PCs were the first public superheroes, although a few costumed crime fighters and other secretive types would probably technically count. In any case, I envision about 1000 supers worldwide, 2/3 of them with actual powers. The remaining 1/3 are tech based and/or trained humans. Of the supers, 50% are 250 points or less. 25% are 300 points, 20% are 350 (including the PCs), and 5% are over 350 points. This last group includes megavillains and a few NPC high-end supers, mostly reworked imports of retired characters belonging to one of our GMs. Our PCs are the most powerful and respected superhero team in the world. Thus far we've probably encountered only about 60 other supers.

We are indeed a four color campaign (Still 350 point base, though most of our characters have about 30 XP now.), where our characters are the campaign equivalent of the Avengers or the Justice League. The 23 DEX of our brick isn't even our lowest DEX; we have two SPD 5 DEX 20 characters as well as a SPD 4 DEX 20 powered armor type. It works out pretty well. Our second-tier MA has a SPD 6 DEX 29, but he hits much harder (13d6), has 40% higher defenses and has other semi-mystical powers. On the other hand really I enjoy my MA having a 22- Acrobatics roll. Our brick, by the way, defies convention two ways: 1) She's female. 2) She's our team scientist, with a 28 INT.