Mentor

Re: Any Good Non-Four Color Super Game Needs: Every hero's parents are supervillains, archcriminals, or secret government conspirators. The base computer is an evil/corrupted/possessed AI. Vampires, Psychopathic loners, unstable virus infected androids, and sociopathic angst filled teens are all viable character concepts. Police, security and military organizations are all rogue or corrupted formations. The average citizens are generally protected despite the fact that they will form xenophbic, bigoted anti mutant/super mobs at the behest of the most unlikely politician. One of the PCs will have their costume, power armor or focus take on an independently evil personality far outstripping the capabilities it possessed when in the character's possession.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Rumsfeld has apologized. All is forgiven. We are all one big happy nonpartisan American family again. Maybe I should have posted this on the "Tell a Lie" thread.

Re: "Reality Storm" Almost Here? Both of my sons, age 14 and 10 are in our champions campaign so now I can justify gaming expenses as family time. Remember if my wife asks, I bought Sidekick for the boys.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER OMG. I forgot all about that old story. LOL

Re: End of an Era The cool thing is that these scenarios are very liberating. My original PC, Double Eagle, sort of a cross between Batman and Captain America, was to be retired by the myself and GM. In the ensuing combat with dozens of ninjas (his longest term Hunted), each "hand" more powerful than the previous, we were down to three PCs back to back against the Supreme Ninja (an independent supervillain) and the heads of the five clans of the "hand" when we were called upon to surrender even though we had defeated scores of undelings. My PC told the supreme Ninja to take me to her employers as we don't negotiate with minions. Little did we know that we set off a couple of Psychlims, including an Enraged, which caused the Supreme Ninja to dispatch her erstwhile masters and take one of the other male PCs prisoner. The moral to the story: Even in a swansong scenario, if played straight by both the GM and players, you can still win. Never give up.

Re: Evil Businessmen. Murdoch and Turner would natural rivals to each other's plots conquer the world... or is that just what they want everyone to believe, Mwa, ha, ha.

Re: Evil Businessmen. Cool. Great choice. That is totally left coast. My sister in Santa Cruz used to call Coors "Contra Beer" because of Joseph Coors opposition to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Its not like anyone can drink the foul brew.

Re: My House Rules. Comments Welcome These are completely reasonable "balancer" house rules, especially in the context of a PBEM game. Is there some major contovery over these rules, WM?

Re: Minor player problem ... Not unless the character wants to end up in a federal penitentiary. This includes any weapons or ordinance captured or picked up as a souveneir on the battlefield. Your player is dreaming.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER

Re: Silliest Disadvantage Ever This passage is perhaps the single most misunderstood or ignored portion of FREd. Some people (not necessarily those involved in this discussion) can't deal with the idea that when it come to house rules, Steve Long even put in a rule that says "Cool." Rules lawyers automatically must defer to the GM, according to the rules. 'Nuff said.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Politics be damned. Worldmaker helped me decide what Sunday dinner must be. Excellent recipe, Jack. My obsession with beef must be countered.

Re: How much of a Limitation...?

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

Re: Name for a "I-hit-all" girl I prefer heroes to use their native language for character names, as a rule, since it gives them much more flavor than the vanilla Anglicized translation. Nahuatl is especially good for mysterious origins, as so few peole speak it these days. Go for the Nahuatl name.

Re: Player-Built Characters... For ten years we built PCs as etherio described, and were disatisfied with the imbalance of characters and their abilities. Our current campaign started with the primary GM (Trebuchet) creating a set of power guidelines (good be worried by military heavy weapons) as well as personality requirements (ie, no psychopathic loners or superior alien gods) making the team aspect primary. Power levels based on then fairly standard fourth edition recommendations were instituted with any deviation being approved by the GM. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the game was by invitation. Those individuals in the fairly large local gaming community of our acquaintence who are abusive, disruptive, egocentric or inept were not welcome. Thus we have a great campaign with a terrific group of players and a glorious team. The transition to 5th edition was easy and the combat abilities rose only slightly and in only some of the heroes. We used the points mostly to round out the personalities and noncombat skills, which we use a lot.

Re: Super Metals and Alloys Yep. Along with Mjolner, Iron Man's armor and the Surfer's board. (Absorbed them, actually) They got better.

Re: Special effect or something else? Power Question. I am a bit unclear on the effect you are trying to achieve. Buying Invisible Power Effect can prevent an opponent from recognizing that you are protected, but they will be aware that you are not taking damage from the attack. Creating the appearance of bullets or beams striking the PCs body would be tougher. An illusion power would have to be well within concept to be acceptable. SFX can only do so much.

Re: Is It Worth The Points? Exactly. This should be an interactive exercise where both the players and GM bring flavor to each other in the play of the game. When our team is glorious in defeating the villains I spent many hours crafting into the scenario, I cheer with them because I was part of the glorious tale too.

Re: Limitation punishment Hopefully both Disads and Limitations are bought with the idea of defining the character and not just to come up with those last few points to be invincible. Spiderman without Aunt May or Mary Jane showing up and becoming hostages would destroy the concept of the character. The X Men without the goggles and the wheelchair and the negative reactions to mutants would be a generic arena battle. Cap loses his shield sometimes and Mjolner has to be hidden from the bad guys and innocents in secret ID. The Joker, the Riddler and the Penguin are supposed to mess with the Batmobile and get into Wayne manor or the Batcave. Having disads and limitations is part of the genre and it is incumbent upon the GM to give players their glory and advantages to being a hero as well as to use (and they should use ) the limitations. They should never be used to screw the player nor as random happenstance to make the heroes look stupid. Overcoming obstacles is what makes them even more heroic.

Re: Too many stats in Hero I must agree with Gary on this point. Our campaign is very heavily science and skill loaded, so a high INT is definitely not wasted. The average score is 18 and the high score is 28 (a Nobel Prize winning scientist) . In addition to Gary's correct per centages on the rolls, the liklihood of statistically successful complementary skill rolls on the main roll is increased by the INT score while leaving the Overall Levels free to do something else, like raising your DCV in case someone wants to violently prevent your use of those INT skills. (Whoosh. It missed. Whew.) I have never regretted the points spent on a high INT and often wished my character concepts for average INT PCs didn't prevent buying everyone a higher INT.

Re: Answers & Questions Q. We got ten rounds for the shotgun and the there's twenty Dalton boys, so what do we do, Sheriff? A. Does that look like a duck to you?

Re: What superhero character concepts are you tired of seeing? In our campaign, the more origin detail, the more adventure hooks starring "Your Superhero". Kryptonite became the second most common element on Earth after the writers found that Superman's origin could be used for story hooks as easily as his powers could.

Re: What superhero character concepts are you tired of seeing? The loner, misunderstood, angst driven (ie. whiney ) ones are worse, as it justifies the events that just force them to kill and maim. "But he's really not a villain, OK." Real heroes just lock 'em up. "But, dude, he's part of the team." "Not anymore." Double Eagle replies. 'Nuff said.

Anyway, that is correct. Ultrasonique was a wuss and our Thunderbird kicks the Hero Universe Thunderbird's butt. Their Eurostar is pretty righteous, though.