Elysea

So if the consensus is that 3-point CSLs can only be used "actively," what about 5-point CSLs? If I have one 5-point CSL with Ranged combat and one 5-point CSL with HTH combat, can I put my 5-point HTH CSL into HTH DCV while I fire my EB?

I've been after t-bear to change his powers from Two-Hand Gestures to Restrainable for a long time, but does he listen to me? No.

Brian: See, your powers are only similar to Cheshire Cat's, whereas mine are pretty much an exact duplicate. Adam: Well, yeah, except Cheshire Cat doesn't have any indirect attacks. Ian: Teleportation + Stealth = Indirect.

I looked in the FAQ and didn't see this, my apologies if I over-looked it. If a character buys the HTH Attack power and applies a damage Advantage to it (Armor Piercing, Double Knockback, whatever), does that advantage then apply to the character's base STR for free when he uses that attack? Thanks in advance.

Tough call. Requiem's a "reformed" shadow magic shock-trooper. She was trained/brainwashed for years by her dark masters to kill without remorse. Since taking up the hero gig, she's tried to break out of that mindset, but she still burns for revenge against all things demonic and fights completely without restraint when facing these kinds of villains. Her first impulse would be to kill the kid, and maybe even the mother, but the nagging voice in the back of her head saying "I too was once an innocent child" would probably prevent her from doing it. But she'd keep a close eye on the kid, and if he slipped up even once... Her former masters recently sent an assassin after her -- after the team defeated her, Requiem removed the assassin's helmet and started choking the unconscious young woman. It took two attacks from her CVK teammates, the cry for help from a mortally wounded teammate (Requiem can heal), and a well-made EGO roll to get her to let go.

Requiem -- since all of her powers are magic/spirit powers channeled into her by her parents from beyond the grave, this would freak her out. She would assume it was from them. But at the same time, being a borderline casual killer, fighting and killing are her solutions for everything and she would want to find out what was in the building that needed maiming. And she's kind of bitter, so she would probably go with the team partially out of spite. She would not tell the team, but she would definitely be on her guard.

Genre Convention #13: If the debut of a new supervillain has been immediately preceded by the mysterious disappearance of any high-profile scientist, actor, politician, military officer, or multi-billionaire, the supervillain will inevitably turn out to be that missing person.

Boyscoutish team leader Assault to maverick, no-holds-barred, psychologically troubled team member Requiem: Assault: I'm aware that you're becoming increasingly unstable. Requiem: Am I? Or are you just becoming increasingly aware of my instability?

Oh, let’s see. Requiem would start by settling some old scores. The Bloodsabres killed her parents and kidnapped her as an infant and trained her to be a sword-wielding black magic shocktrooper. All of them would have to die. Every single one of them. Painfully. This might create some tension between Requiem and her Code-Versus-Killing teammates, and the Knights Templar, the order of holy knights to which her parents belonged and which recently “purified†her through trial by combat. Requiem had never thought that wielding shadow magic was evil in and of itself – she thought of it as a tool, which could be used towards evil ends or good ends -- but several members of the team disagreed, and the Knights Templar disagreed, so they forced her to give it up. She’s still kinda sore about that. After that, her new powers were/are mostly channeled into her by her parents and the powers on high. They might try to pull back on Requiem’s leash if she brutally murdered all of the Bloodsabres, so if her holy powers suddenly dried up, she’d probably turn right back around and take shadow magic back up. She would then inevitably have to wipe out the Knights Templar, and probably her teammates along the way. After that, she would probably just want to keep fighting against the forces of darkness and evil, using their own methods and weapons against them. Of course, after you slay your own team of superheroes and a secret order of holy knights mostly out of spite, your definitions of good and evil are probably open to debate. So if Requiem went Evil, she would fight Evil, with Evil, for Good (in her own mind).

Just to make sure I understand Breakfall. It can be rolled as soon as a character takes Knockdown or Knockback, regardless of the character's Phase, correct? If the roll succeeds, the Knockback damage is halved and the character is on her feet (full DCV). If the roll fails, she takes the Knockback damage and is on the ground until her next Phase (half DCV). On her next Phase, she may make another Breakfall attempt to get to her feet as a Zero Phase Action, otherwise, standing up takes a Half Phase. If the character hits a wall or other solid object, no Breakfall roll is allowed to reduce damage. However, if the wall holds and the character is not Stunned, may she attempt an immediate Breakfall roll to land on her feet? If the wall breaks and the character is not Stunned, may she attempt the usual Breakfall roll to reduce damage and land on her feet when she hits the ground on the other side of the wall? Could Acrobatics be rolled as a Complementary Skill to Breakfall? Thanks again Steve.

I agree that the heroes getting killed is a longshot. Their deaths isn't my only concern though. Concern #1 is that BODY is just one more stat to keep track of. For brand-new players, I think STUN and END are enough to keep track of if we want combat to move along without getting too bogged down. Concern #2 is that even if they're not killed, BODY damage doesn't heal too quickly and a little bit goes a long way. To keep the first few sessions breezy and light-hearted while the new players climb the learning curve, I don't want seriously wound them. I'm not proposing leaving BODY out of the campaign entirely; just not introducing it right away. If one of the new player's characters spends a month in a hospital because they didn't know they could Abort to Dodge, or that their Force Field would go down at the end of the Segment if they got Stunned, or that they would take an extra die of Knockback because they were flying, it'll leave them with a bad first impression of the game. I'm pretty much just trying to give them a safety net while they learn. [Edited for grammar]

I was only planning on ignoring BODY when it came to attacks on PCs and NPCs. We'd still be using STUN, so there would still be "hitpoints" as it were, to avoid the mentioned "cowboys and indians" scenario. It would just be that the worst that could happen to the characters would be getting knocked unconscious and waking up in the villain's secret lair, or whatever the story dictated. It isn't very Saturday-morning-cartoonish for one of the heroes to get mangled by an enemy -- it's just not the genre. And since that's the genre I'm aiming for, I didn't want it to be a concern. Inanimate objects would, of course, retain their usual BODY, so the players would have some exposure to it when Entangles and the like came into play, and we could perhaps introduce BODY into the campaign for the players once they were out of their cribs, but I didn't want them to have to worry about it on their first outing. I like the idea of counters for the players to keep track of -- I'll have to see if I can come up with some poker chips or the like. Thanks for the suggestion! I'll probably just make Speed 4 mandatory for all three characters to make sure there's no Speed Chart confusion.

My current character started out sort of as a Black-Paladin-fighting-for-redemption. She wore a suit of black platemail but chose not to wear a helmet (fortunately, the campaign isn't using the Hit Location rules!). Instead she wore a black Zorro-style half mask, covering her hair and eyes but leaving the lower half of her face exposed. Her black longsword and red shield completed the outfit. Unfortunately, she was being hunted by both the Knights Templar and their corrupt arch-rivals the Bloodsabres, who had been training her as one of their shock troops until her escape. This being a modern-day teen heroes campaign, some of the team voiced their concerns after the second time her Hunteds showed up at their high-school. She ended up submitting to trial by combat with the Knights Templar, with the support of the rest of the team. (We six 250-350pt characters came extremely close to defeating the "Arch-Lich Takofanes," but that's another story.) Purified by the trial, her powers re-manifested (read: radiation accident) and she updated her armor and mask to off-white. She put a bright red line across the front however, starting at the bottom of the left rib cage and running up and across, terminating below the right breast. She'd taken a lot of BODY when one of the Knights Templar had apprehended her at school, slashing her without her armor on and her Force Field down. She's still bitter about the incident and put the marker on her armor to symbolize her grudge. No sword and shield anymore -- now, she fights with a fistful of balefire. Aside from the head, the armor covers her entire body -- no anime-style showing off of skin here.

I know one of the mentalists wants to play an illusionist/trickster-type mentalist rather than a Force Field/TK/Ego Attack kind of mentalist, so there should be plenty of room for them each to fill their own niche. I'm confident that the three can perform adequately as a team without a traditional brick or energy projector if they're creative. The more experienced player and I have started running a campaign with just the two of us, based on Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. He's GM'ing, I'm playing. I'll be trying to get the two new players to sit in for a few of those sessions to see how the system plays before we begin the four-player campaign. Obviously Fantasy-type Hero and Champions Hero are a little different but it should still be a valuable experience for them. I'll slowly introduce BODY into the campaign, after a session or two -- I don't want them to believe that they're invincible and combat gets boring if there's no risk involved. END I'm up in the air about -- it's semi-realistic and it makes you have to fight more intelligently when you have END to conserve and spend wisely, but it may bog us down a little too much. Maybe we'll try it after awhile and if it makes the game significantly less enjoyable for the newer players we can back off from it. And yes -- combat's just one part of a Champs game. I'll probably keep the first session or two light on combat and heavy on set-up and role-playing. Steve: I'll be dropping you an e-mail. Thanks!

Lord Liaden: That's correct, not going to use much of the optional combat rules. Knockback will probably stay in, and if my one experienced player wants to use some of the optional rules and maneuvers, that may be a good way to slowly work them into the campaign. My experienced player wants to play a martial artist/gadgeteer, so he'll have lots of possibilities there. His character also has a "mysterious benefactor" who will be providing most of the group's equipment -- all very convenient. The other two have expressed interest in playing pseudo-mentalists. The lack of a team brick concerns me but I'm not planning on enforcing my idea of what a superhero team should be on my players. I'm not a Digital Hero subscriber but my interest is piqued -- tell me more about Sidekick? Supreme Serpent: Good call on Speed. Thanks for the suggestion. Spd 4 should work nicely. Barton: We're looking at a Teen Titans-esque theme to the campaign. Not sure how the two inexperienced players plan to flesh out their characters' backgrounds or explain their powers yet -- we'll see. I'm not too enthusiastic about making the team mutants, that can get a little maudalin sometimes. If the players can come up with good ideas for their characters we'll roll with that and then find a way to bring them all together into a group. I was planning on working with 200pt characters to begin with, haven't decided on how much of that will be disads yet. Thanks for the suggestions so far guys!