Mentor

Oh yeah. Well considering Mentalla drained 3 points of Prodigy's Ego and then hit him with an Ego Blast, my mind was on other things.

More's the pity. We all have skeletons in our closet. This Euro team was one of mine.

Same with our campaign. Even the agnostics or atheists are respectful of the believers in our group in their treatment of religious issues. On the other hand, as in Highlander and vampire lore, Holy ground is real and powerful, whether its a church, the wailing wall in Jerusalem, or the Mescalero burial grounds, China's Wudan mountain, etc.

I agree that Bora and Pantera were a major loss to the lineup, but the Whip guy was a welcome deletion. When our team took down some of the Eurostar team, Scorpia went down early enough for one of our Martial Artists, Zlf to take out Mentalla while she was busy sparring (fairly successfully) with my Mentalist, Prodigy, who had mentally paralyzed Durak for three phases after Durak cold cocked our teleporting brick Sidestep...sort of a cascading rock, paper, scissors effect all around with two of the hero team standing and no Eurostar standing. If Z'lf had fought Pantera instead of Scorpia, the fight might have turned out far differently. Certainly if our flying Energy Projector had been present, Bora would have been a much tougher challenge than Fuermacher. Nonetheless, the fight was challenging enough for those of us involved. As Eurostar was literally the only component of the Hero Universe we have ever used in our campaign relatively unchanged, keeping Bora and Pantera would be an easy solution for the GM who ran the adventure, although he is new enough not to have all the fourth and earlier edition stuff.

Treb, I once designed a comic relief British brick who was called Beef Wellinton. Too stupid a concept or character to use in our campaign, though. I'll work on some ideas.

Gary, you are still the acknowledged master of Stat Fu. Great job.

What is the whole cultural mass psychosis with Paris Hilton all about? Does anybody really think that this quasi anorexic, overindulged, shallow airhead is hot??? I saw a segment of those two twits in "Simple Life" on the freaking tube and all I could think of was many blessings on D-Man for having the good sense not to own one of the vile artifices. Maybe we are are entering another Dark Age.

I love the Vegas themed characters. Consider them respectfully plagerized.

I always end up alpha, even when my PC originally was conceived as more behind the scenes or subtle, if not beta. Most of our gaming group is fairly to very passive, as Trebuchet can attest. He has really picked up the pace when I GM or am not there. Blackjack has a female brick who is not afraid to mix it up with anyone as a hero, but the character is a Beta "nerd" out of hero ID. Makes some cool roleplay. Interestingly, my two sons, age 14 and 9, now play in our campaign, and are pretty aggressive; sometimes too much so. That will change a team dynamic.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Seeker Great image, McCoy. "Krikey, its Dr. Destroyer. We'll need more than a staff to take on that beauty, mates.":D

Re: What Would Your Character Do? #30 My Egoist, Prodigy, is 900 years old and has been manipulating events in human history for the good all of his career. (Not always successfully given that his opposition is of similar longevity and ability). He views privacy and other modern expectations as convenient rather than necessary. As he would be just as likely to read someone's mind to track down the kidnapped Heather or mind scan the city for her, he would not be too put out.

After we accept "AM2" and the "Imperium" shield, a little more "rubber science" to accept a rifle that shoots around corners is just a little more "Annie Oakley" than impossible to accept.

I always got the impression that it was a kinetic energy weapon that used its incredible mass and hyper velocity to create the "explosive" effects. Maybe I should reread the series.

I gotta go with the Willys gun from the "Sten" series. A geostabilized battle rifle using a laser to propel force shielded, hyperheavy Antimatter 2 bullets, hundreds of tiny sized rounds per minute are fired from a magazine hold thousands of projectiles. Imagine a full auto BB gun with thousands of rounds packing the punch of a modern day main battle tanks gun. Sweet.

BTW our campaign has an Earth based PC with Tunnellng and N Ray vision. As the player is my 9 year old son and doesn't kow all of the nuances of the game or powers, we allow it. A mentalist with tunneling and N ray seems to be a problem in abusing the character concept rather than abuse of powers. Not very heroic to never come out of hiding. Sometimes balance requires trying something out before banning or allowing something. Given how differently players play the same Supers, these power levels are only meaningful if played a certain way.(ie arena battles vs chasing the bad guy through NYC streets and alleys)

BTW our campaign has an Earth based PC with Tunnellng and N Ray vision. As the player is my 9 year old son and doesn't kow all of the nuances of the game or powers, we allow it. A mentalist with tunneling and N ray seems to be a problem in abusing the character concept rather than abuse of powers. Not very heroic to never come out of hiding. Sometimes balance requires trying something out before banning or allowing something. Given how differently players play the same Supers, these power levels are only meaningful if played a certain way.(ie arena battles vs chasing the bad guy through NYC streets and alleys)

Just as an aside, Trebuchet and I were discussing this thread over lunch one day and hoped a real number cruncher would weigh in (as we were too lazy to do the math). At the time we both agreed that Gary would be just the right guy and...Ta Daaaaa. Good job, Gary.

What he said, Jason. Especially new players can be helped a lot when they know how various the "prototype" characters' powers can be. My 9 and 13 year old sons were able to use the concepts in USD to help us put some really tough Superheroes together.

Hey, did you guys notice that Clint Howard was even bald as a kid? (now that's geeky)

I think you hit it on the nail, Phraze. The players need to develop trust that the GM will use disads to enhance their enjoyment of the game. When a PC whups up on the Hunted who singles him or her out, the player knows that his character matters. Likewise, players need to use disads that make their PC three dimensional and real, not a cripple or campaign stopper. Most of our campaigns' Psych Lims and such never have to be called in by the GM as the players run their Superheroes with those personality characteristics "on" all the time.

See page 4, this thread.

Zl'f is fast and capable and doesn't get hit often, but she does get stunned or KO'd when when the baddies do connect. The rest of our team has been really good at jumping in to keep a downed team mate from getting the Coup De Gras, so far. All in a days work for Superheroes. For some reason, a Brick named Fezzek (yes that Fezzek) seems to have her number and I always seem to roll a 4 or 5 to have him hit her. I will admit to fudging the attack from a 15D6 punch to a 10D6 grab and squeeze. GM prerogative and Fezzek doesn't like to hurt little girls. She still took a little nap.

While I am in agreement that the GM has infinite points and doesn't have to justify design parameters to the players or fill in all the boring details and trivia, having the design mechanics too loose or nonexistant seems to run the risk of having the outcome of the encounter predetermined by the GM I have run Supervillains that I feared might be overpowering, but through great gameplay and teamwork, our team, Midguard rose to the challenge and beat them at the last minute. Likewise, villains I threw in as fodder had just the right combinations of abilities to completely frustrate the team. How do you deal with the question of spontanaity and real accomplishment by the players if the abilities aren't specified? Or am I reading too much into your description?

I am quite proud of Trebuchet's willing ness to play Zl'f and play her so well. You guys have no idea what a departure this type of character is for Trebuchet. His most famous PC was a Power Armor guy, named Ranger, with every type of defense built into the suit and the highest PD and ED (combining armor and force fields to cover those nasty NNDs, you know) of any character in any of the campaigns I have played in or seen. The original omni defense dude. Dr. Destroyer might have gotten Ranger's attention.

Must be the elitist in me but I do expect the "heroic,idealistic, selfless, superheroes" to be more likely to tough it out and get back in to the fight after being KOd, never giving thought to surrender than the "selfish, evil, obviously flawed supervillains". There will be exeptions on either side, but as our campaign is four color, unless the villains are homicidal/suicidal maniacs, they would usually rather stay down or run away than be crippled.