Armitage

I've only given in to temptation and written fan fiction once in my life. But I'd like to think that it contained a minimum of grammatical errors. But it only appeared on three newsgroups, two websites, and in a Scottish paper fanzine so I have no real illusions about it being an earthshattering epic. A Daria (MTV) crossover with the Cthulhu Mythos featuring The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets (a real-life Cthulhu-inspired band). "The Shadow Over Lawndale"

Warp, a refugee from an alternate Earth ruled by vampires. He still had a taint that made him smell good, or something, since he had "Hunted by Vampires, 8-" as a Disadvantage. Area Effect Mental Illusions to warp reality, a force field made by animating nearby debris, and a Multiform to Razor (a metal skinned clawed troll) and Rascal (a flying imp with Variable Special Effect EB spit). I made the mistake of giving him the Powers that I wanted and a 30 Ego, then putting whatever was left into other characteristics. With his SPD 3, he bacame known for making 2 attacks in an entire battle. Of course, the GM wasn't very good and fights tended to drag. This was a guy whose idea of a plot hook was "A dimensional anomaly opens in your base's parking lot and a group of villains emerge." It became a running gag, along with the "giant UFO hovering over the city".

Until you posted that picture, I never even noticed that Nighthawk has chicken feet. A new arch-enemy for Black Talon. "Curse you hero!! You stole my footwear!"

But all of the other sourcebooks were written using the assumption that you were following the official timeline. They did the same thing with the World of Darkness. "But I like the Ravnos." "Tough. We destroyed them all. They're never going to appear in a published book again." (exaggeration, I know) "I like Project Utopia. I want to use them as a straight heroic organization." "Sorry. Every book we publish is going to depend on the fact that they are a secret cabal of megalomaniacal fascists."

That was the case for most of the significant NPCs. That way the players couldn't disrupt White Wolf's pre-planned storyline.

Hit Location: Used to increase the dramatic effect and narrative element of combat. (e.g. "He tries to dodge, but your flame blast engulfs his arm.") The location roll also replace the Stun Lottery for KAs. Placed Shots: Yes. Impairment/Disabling: Mainly used for dramatic effect. The above mentioned NPC might eventually return with a cybernetic arm or something. Or a chase scene where the hero has to deal with a leg wound slowing him down. Knockback: Yes.

And there's a "monthly" paper comic book too. (As monthly as Dork Storm manages).

As I recall, when he first heard about Katy (Jo Grant) Manning's nude photo spread, he chuckled and said "Typical Katy". And I ended up with Second Doctor and Ace, incidently. Pretty funny, considering my degree in chemistry.

I just did some "quick" math. (What can I say, it's a weekend). The characters would be at 0 END in roughly 25.25 years, Unconscious in 31.75 years, dying in 119,525 years, and dead in 231,094 years. That's assuming that the characters reduce their SPD to 2 and take no actions. And since they have no ability to move in outer space, what else would they do? And for the same reason, they'd pretty much be defeated as soon as they left the atmosphere anyway.

Only observers can't tell an attack is taking place. The target still feels himself taking damage. H5, p. 169 "The victim still feels the effects of the Power, but other characters will not perceive them." "The victim will know he's taking damage, and will feel terrible pain, but observers will not see any burns, bruises, injuries, or other signs that he has been attacked."

No Life Support vs. Vacuum. You can't take Recoveries when you can't breathe, not even Post-12. If you lowered your Speed to 2 and took no other actions, you could hold your breath for just over 167353 years before you started burning STUN. Lack of pressure would also inflict 1/2d6 Normal NND, Does BODY, each Segment. So that's an average of 12 BODY and 24 STUN each Turn...which would kill you in 1394611 years. The STUN damage from the lack of pressure would render you unconscious and burning BODY in 13946 years. You'd also lose END from your body's inability to properly radiate heat, but only 4 END every 20 minutes if you took no actions, increasing by 4 END every 20 minutes. So after a year, you'd be burning over 100000 END every 20 minutes, 200000 every 20 minutes after 2 years, etc. You could live a long time in a vacuum, if you just floated doing absolutely nothing, but not indefinitely.

Re: Re: It's been a while How's your Middle English? From "The Three Deid Pollis", O sinfull man, in to this mortall se, Quhilk is the vaill of murnyng and of cair, With gaistly sicht behold oure heidis thre, Oure holkit ene, oure peilit pollis bair. As ye ar now, in to this warld we wair, Als fresche, als fair, als lusty to behald: Quhan thow lukis on this suth examplair Off thy self, man, thow may be richt unbald.

Trance Gemini. She experiences every possible future as if they were real and then tries to steer reality toward the best possible future she saw. At the end of the episode that focused on this, Dylan asked "If all the possible realities seem every bit as real to you as this one, how do you know that this is the real reality?" She just stood there looking like she wanted to either cry or be sick. It would be an interesting role-playing twist for a character.

Dragon magazine #100. Champions Plus, by Steven Maurer Temporal Fugue 30 for base (11 or less) / + 1 for 10 Temporal Fugue is also known as “replay.†It allows a character to replay immediate past events and take a different action, now that the character knows exactly what will happen. To use Temporal Fugue, the character must roll the ability, minus the number of 1/2-phase actions he wishes to reverse. If successful, the replay starts at that point, with all rolls and actions staying the same until the character interferes with the past. You can only replay an event once. Example: In a battle, Orakle sees an agent leveling a blaster at her. Since he is just a normal agent, she decides to depend upon him missing — but the agent shoots and hits. Before damage is rolled, Orakle uses her Temporal Fugue power to undo his 1/2-phase attack. She rolls a (12 - 1 = ) 11; her attempt succeeds. When the agent levels his gun at her, she dives for cover. Play resumes at this point. The agent, seeing that Orakle has just jumped behind some boxes, lobs a grenade at her. Orakle, having already undone the attack once, cannot use her Temporal Fugue again. Referees may choose to extend 1/2- phase actions to include non-combat or simultaneous moves. Thus, an ambush might be considered a single action for purposes of Temporal Fugue: the same goes for running down a blocked corridor. Though it is a power, Temporal Fugue has all the limitations of a skill: It cannot have power advantages or limitations, and it can’t normally be placed in a power modifier. Only Temporal Fugue levels add to the Temporal Fugue roll. It is a no-phase action and it costs END.

The manipulator arm and the gun were two different limbs next to each other. Except for the Special Weapons Dalek in "Remembrance of the Daleks", which just had a single massive cannon in the center of its more heavily armored shell.

Or Aberrant. With 1 dot of Mega-Strength (1 ton lifting capacity) you get 5 automatic successes on damage rolls. Assuming the attacker and target roll equal successes for base Strength and Stamina, a normal human will be put at the Maimed Health Level with one punch. With 3 dots you can lift 25 tons (fairly average for a strong super in the genre) and get 15 automatic damage successes. That would put a normal human 8 damage levels below Dead. Somewhere in the "fine red mist" category.

You mean like when The Doctor destroyed 3/4 of Italy (alternate reality) from orbit by stopping its motion relative to the Earth or Hawksmoor turned the city of Tokyo into a giant suit of battle armor?

Under 3rd Edition rules, he was a 268 point character. Enhanced DEX, a sword, Flash Def AVLD EB Enervator Ray, Force Field, Flash grenades, Entangle grenades, Flash Def goggles, Mental Defense (helmet?), and a Running boost from "leg pumpers" (OIF). And because of all of his gadgets, he took 1d6 electrical damage if splashed with water. He would require a severe rewrite these days. e.g. his Force Field is bought with 16 Charges.

To quote Greg Porter in his Adventurer's Club article "Send in the Marines" (reprinted in Hero System Almanac 2): "...the Army is a very sluggish organization. Most superheroes can make the Rapid Deployment Force look like arthritic snails. Heroes have the advantage that they are "above" rules and regulations. They do not have to follow set procedures, go through chains of command, etc., but can go straight to the scene of the action, something that can be difficult to do with a 65-ton tank."

Contest of Power, pp. 58-60. Special Effects must be related or directly opposed, i.e. fire vs. fire or fire vs. ice. The defender uses an available action to attempt to counter the attacker's attack. Attacker rolls to hit the defender's DCV. Defender rolls to hit the attacker's OCV. If both hit, the powers meet at a point midway between the two. When one character has a Phase but not the other, the point moves 1" toward the inactive character. When both have a Phase, damage is rolled for both attacks and the point moves (Higher BODY-Lower BODY)" toward the character with the lower roll. When the point reaches a characteer's hex, they take damage. END is only spent on a Phase when your opponent acts. If an attack rolls double the BODY of the other attack it automatically wins. A Continuous attack moves 1" during Segments when nobody acts. Double Knockback adds 75% to BODY for the Contest. Autofire adds 1 BODY for every shot that hits.

Adventurer's Club #20 had an article "How Far Did Grond Throw You?", by Dean Shomshak. It attempted to apply real world physics to calculate how far superhumans could throw objects, rather than the throwing rules. According to the charts in the article, it would require 130 STR to throw the tower at orbital velocity. The equations rounded the acceleration of gravity to 10 m/sec/sec, used an escape velocity of 11200 m/sec and assumed an acceleration time of 1 second. F = m x a F = m x (v/t) = (m x v)/t F x t = m x v m = (F x t)/v m = (lifting mass M x 10 m/sec/sec x 1 sec)/11200 m/sec = M/1120 So the amount a superhuman can lift, divided by 1120, is the amount they can throw into orbit. Conversely, the amount they can throw into orbit x 1120 is the amount they can lift. In this case, roughly 1.6 megatons, 130 STR. The article notes that the equations don't account for air friction.

Which I guess explains the "Amos Fortune Hotel & Casino" where Green Lantern got blown up.

From the editorial in Dragon #127, November 1987, by Roger Moore (gotta love the CD Archive): This month’s editorial is about Tucker’s kobolds. We get letters on occasion asking for advice on creating high-level AD&D® game adventures, and Tucker’s kobolds seem to fit the bill. Many high-level characters have little to do because they’re not challenged. They yawn at tarrasques and must be forcibly kept awake when a lich appears. The DMs involved don’t know what to do, so they stop dealing with the problem and the characters go into Character Limbo. Getting to high level is hard, but doing anything once you get there is worse. One of the key problems in adventure design lies in creating opponents who can challenge powerful characters. Singular monsters like tarrasques and liches are easy to gang up on; the party can concentrate its firepower on the target until the target falls down dead and wiggles its little feet in the air. Designing monsters more powerful than a tarrasque is self-defeating; if the group kills your super-monster, what will you do next — send in its mother? That didn’t work on Beowulf, and it probably won’t work here. Worse yet, singular super-monsters rarely have to think. They just use their trusty, predictable claw/claw/bite. This shouldn’t be the measure of a campaign. These games fall apart because there’s no challenge to them, no mental stimulation — no danger. In all the games that I’ve seen, the worst, most horrible, most awful-beyond-comparison opponents ever seen were often weaker than the characters who fought them. They were simply well-armed and intelligent beings who were played by the DM to be utterly ruthless and clever. Tucker’s kobolds were like that. Tucker ran an incredibly dangerous dungeon in the days I was stationed at Ft. Bragg, N.C. This dungeon had corridors that changed all of your donkeys into huge flaming demons or dropped the whole party into acid baths, but the demons were wienies compared to the kobolds on Level One. These kobolds were just regular kobolds, with 1-4 hp and all that, but they were mean. When I say they were mean, I mean they were bad, Jim. They graduated magna cum laude from the Sauron Institute for the Criminally Vicious. When I joined the gaming group, some of the PCs had already met Tucker’s kobolds, and they were not eager to repeat the experience. The party leader went over the penciled map of the dungeon and tried to find ways to avoid the little critters, but it was not possible. The group resigned itself to making a run for it through Level One to get to the elevators, where we could go down to Level Ten and fight “okay†monsters like huge flaming demons. It didn’t work. The kobolds caught us about 60’ into the dungeon and locked the door behind us and barred it. Then they set the corridor on fire, while we were still in it. “NOOOOOO!!!†screamed the party leader. ‘It’s THEM! Run!!!†Thus encouraged, our party scrambled down a side passage, only to be ambushed by more kobolds firing with light crossbows through murder holes in the walls and ceilings. Kobolds with metal armor and shields flung Molotov cocktails at us from the other sides of huge piles of flaming debris, which other kobolds pushed ahead of their formation using long metal poles like broomsticks. There was no mistake about it. These kobolds were bad. We turned to our group leader for advice. “AAAAAAGH!!!†he cried, hands clasped over his face to shut out the tactical situation. We abandoned most of our carried items and donkeys to speed our flight toward the elevators, but we were cut off by kobold snipers who could split-move and fire, ducking back behind stones and corners after launching steel-tipped bolts and arrows, javelins, hand axes, and more flaming oil bottles. We ran into an unexplored section of Level One, taking damage all the time. It was then we discovered that these kobolds had honeycombed the first level with small tunnels to speed their movements. Kobold commandos were everywhere. All of our hirelings died. Most of our henchmen followed. We were next. I recall we had a 12th-level magic-user with us, and we asked him to throw a spell or something. “Blast ‘em!†we yelled as we ran. “Fireball ‘em! Get those little @#+$%*&!!†“What, in these narrow corridors?†he yelled back. “You want I should burn us all up instead of them?†Our panicked flight suddenly took us to a dead-end corridor, where a giant air shaft dropped straight down into unspeakable darkness, far past Level Ten. Here we hastily pounded spikes into the floors and walls, flung ropes over the ledge, and climbed straight down into that unspeakable darkness, because anything we met down there was sure to be better than those kobolds. We escaped, met some huge flaming demons on Level Ten, and even managed to kill one after about an hour of combat and the lives of half the group. We felt pretty good—but the group leader could not be cheered up. “We still have to go out the way we came in,†he said as he gloomily prepared to divide up the treasure. Tucker’s kobolds were the worst things we could imagine. They ate all our donkeys and took our treasure and did everything they could to make us miserable, but they had style and brains and tenacity and courage. We respected them and loved them, sort of, because they were never boring. If kobolds could do this to a group of PCs from 6th to 12th level, picture what a few orcs and some low-level NPCs could do to a 12th-16th level group, or a gang of mid-level NPCs and monsters to groups of up to 20th level. Then give it a try. Sometimes, it’s the little things—used well—that count.

Are you sure your name's not Tucker? (Assuming there are enough old-time gamers here who remember the story.)

Adventurer's Club #22, "The Fright Before Christmas", by Scott Heine. Santa Claus is corrupted by Coatlicue's Skull Pendant ("To Serve and Protect") and becomes Dark Santa. Without the battle armor he designed, Santa was 1093 points, 4th Edition. This didn't include Duplication for the Christmas flight since according to the author, under 4th Edition rules it came out to approximately 126,195,000,000 points. 5th Edition would make it much cheaper to have 500 million identical Duplicates.