Kristopher

I'm begging you to take the high road and stick with Drain or KA.

Re: Some suggestions

Originally posted by Vigil

I like your character concept but I do share some of the others concerns.

 

I agree that she should have some sort of PHYS LIMIT on how long she retains these powers.

 

The other alternative would be to give her a larger (yes larger!) pool but with the limitation that as she agquires powers from sampling other delicious, salty, blood that she acquires those powers PERMANENTLY and her pool is reduced by that much PERMANENTLY. You could even take the Independent limitation and have her forced to increase her pool by paying experience points into it. That could be a deterent from wholesale sampling and force that character into a situation where she may realistically (not winkingly) have to resist her sampling urges cause once she's tried something it's aprt f her forever. And what if she gets a "tainted sample"? She may end up adding a new disadvantage without any powers. Think about it. This way her power is extremely powerful but a double edged sword of the kind thatis fascinating to play.

{snip interesting Disads idea}

As I envision her now, the deterent to wholesale sampling is that she might get caught. Why do you consider the psychological and social deterent to be "winking"?

In my old setting I ran for awhile, there was an NPC alien electromagnetic/quantum manipulator named Spectrum. It's too bad I never had the change to use him.

Originally posted by Ndreare

I would not have a problem but to me with the character and story. It seems all good but...

 

As an NPC how powerfull are your PC's? the way you have set up the character and the huge variation of powers you already have for her the V.P.P. Limit Would only be -1/2 at most. After all how limited is she compared to the limits in the book. Not at all as an NPC you the GM will be all to tempted to say yeh I guess she would have tracked down the Silver Avenger so if she needs his super speed she can use it.

But I won't. That's not how I run games. She's also not a villain. The PCs are supposed to be 300-pt young heroes, attending or associated with The Academy (for which I'm sure I'll have a better name by the time I get to run this).

The level of the major limitation on the VPP was based on the Mimic pools in USPD (pg 265-266). Look at number 6 as a comparison. With that pool, the character retains access to all the powers and is not limited in choice between them. It has the following limits:

1. -1/4 Requires Successful HTH attack and skin contact to acquire powers

2. -1/4 Only to create powers copied from those touched

-3. 1/2 Powers may only be as powerful as those copied.

For #1, what level of Limitation would you assign for "Must injest genetic material from the target to acquire powers"?

For #2, we can can stick with the limit they assigned, but switch the text to "Only to create powers acquired via injesting a genetic sample."

#3 doesn't apply to Crimson.

But, #4 is "Can only duplicate genetics-based powers." What level of limitation would you assign for that?

That's what my thought process was on the matter.

The utilaty of that power is off the scale so should its cost. And remember if you are basing it on the fact that it will take her a full phase to change powers then remeberr that was included in the game mechanics when you purchased the power without the "0-phase to change +1" modifier.

I realize that.

I would look at the AP max you allow the players and compare her powers AP to that (Remeber that that does not even include the huge value of Variable FX).

Right now she doesn't have any variable FX.

In case it seems otherwise, I do appreciate the feedback, a great deal in fact.

Revised Background for Crimson

Crimson

AKA: Dierdra Fallah

Background/History: Dierdra Fallah was born to an Irish-American mother, and an Iranian-American father. Her mother was an archaeologist, and her father came from old money that relocated out of Iran during the reign of the Shah. Summers were spent travelling around the world with her parents, and the rest of the year at home with just the servents, attending school.

Dierdra didn't have the typical traumatic emergence of mutant powers. During the summer before 6th grade, she slowly developed the ability to see in the dark. In 7th grade, a "serious injury" suffered on the soccer field was an inconsequencial sprain by the next morning. Nothing serious came up, except for that strange little fascination with blood she never told anyone about. As a freshman in high school, her first serious relationship was with Nick Weller, now known as Megadyne. She was the first person he told about his telekinesis. Imagine their suprise when she manifested identical TK powers.

The following summer was the first that Dierda spent at home without her parents. It was also the summer that Nick took the fateful step of saving a falling construction worker in public, resulting in instant fame, and trouble close behind. Someone hired the mentalist mercenary Cerebellum to "aquire" Nick, and she would have succeeded, had someone warned her that he'd be on a date with another mutant. Suprised by the villain at a downtown restaurant, Nick went down without a fight. An empathic wave of panic from the mentalist sent the rest of the patrons screaming for the exits, but as she turned to claim her prize, the restaurant's floor-to-ceiling windows exploded and she was hit from behind by a storm of shattered glass. Confused, and thinking that it was Nick fighting her, she didn't react in time to a very angry Dierdra, who tackled her from behind and instinctively bit her on the shoulder -- hard. Dierdra's canines sank in, and for the first time in her life she tasted hot blood flowing into her mouth -- and she liked it. She recoiled in horror, and spat most of the blood out, but did get enough of a "sample" to aquire some of Cerebellum's repetoir. Cerebellum took advantage of the opportunity to flee, contract be damned. It was soon after that Nick was contacted by The Vindicators, regarding their ongoing fight with Cerebellum's employer, and an offer to train him. Suddenly bitten by the superhero bug, Nick jumped at the chance. Nick and Dierdra eventually grew apart romantically, but remain friends. Nick knows that she's a mutant, but not about the exact nature of her powers.

It was through conversations with Nick that she learned of The Accademy. She applied, transferred, and started classes before informing her intinerate parents of the move in a letter. Since then, she has aquired the powers of two other mutants. During a battle alongside The Corps of Chicago, she had to "sample" Spartan's powers in order to dig him out of the rubble after he was blind-sided by Blindside. Her recent rotation in The Accademy's medical facilities saw her complusion get the better of her; she drew two samples of blood from Kinetic, but only one made it into the lab and the records. The other was furtively gulped down as soon as she could slip away.

Personality/Motivation: Dierdra is remarkably confident, composed, and mature for a 16-year old girl. She is also reserved, and more than a little secretive. She shares nothing about herself that she doesn't have to, and feels absolutely no remourse or regret over this fact. Despite this aspect of her personality, she is a decent person, loyal to her friends when it comes down to it, and with a deep sense of responsibility. She has only begun to understand the effect that the increasing strength of her personality can have on others.

Quote: "You should not speak of things you do not understand."

Powers/Tactics: Dierdra is a mutant "vampire" with a twist: she's also a walking genetic library. Her body absorbs mutant genes, giving her access to whatever powers those genes grant. However, to absorb the mutant genes, she must injest them. A mouthful or two of blood is the most obvious, but not the only, method.

Just a handful of "samples" has given her excellent flexibility, and she uses it to good advantage in a fight. She plays it close to the vest, and doesn't brag, announce her attacks, or show off. She doesn't want anyone to figure out how her powers actually work.

Appearance: Auburn hair, deep green eyes, and skin with a hint of cinnimon. Her mixed heritage gives her a touch of the exotic. Her appearance has a slightly hungry look, and her increasing confidence and enigmatic tendancies only increase her mystique. Ironically, it's not something that matters that much to her.

HT: 1.73m / 5'8"

WT: 55kg / 121 lbs

You know, I really wanted to try this with my three PCs, and I just can't get a handle on it.

T'Shenk Kennet - right, who's going to sleep with a 1000-year-old winged green saurian demon with claws that can cut through steel and jaws like a beartrap on crack? And who would he ever be able to love after losing so much over and over and over again?

Gunner and Mayhem - I wish I'd been able to play them long enough to dig into the campaign setting to this degree, but in both cases the game short-circuited in a few months because of unreliable participants.

Are there any other Disad lists to tide us over? I can always use that kind of thing to jumpstart my brain with when creating characters.

Originally posted by gewing

So then I just link 8x 1pip penetrating autofire attacks for the same basic effect. It is a shredder, and horribly abusive if everyone in the campaign doesn't have hardened armor.

And so, if you're a player, your GM should not allow such a power. If you're the GM, you have no reason to give more than one villain such a power, and he's probably an archvillain that is intended to threaten the lives of the entire team when they finally face him.

"Can" and "should" are two entirely different things.

I need a Penetrating 1-pip no-STR-add HKA to simulate a particular effect. What, exactly, were you trying to simulate with "The Shredder?" In fact, since it has a name like that, I'm tempted to guess that you were trying simulate doing lots of BODY cheaply, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Originally posted by megaplayboy

I think as a GM, that what I dislike is that often players just go for tactical efficiency rather than genre convention:

 

1. going for the mismatch foe rather than the nemesis(the egoist blasts the brick, the brick drops a car on their gadgeteer, etc.)

You call that "violating convention."

I call that very, very SMART.

The solution isn't to slam the players for not doing what works a lot better in the convoluted world of comics than a real fight. It's to make the villains smart too.

Example: Lure the PCs into a fight. Then, villain team's mentalist, hiding nearby, slaps a massive Mind Control of the hero brick and forces him to start puttin a whoopin on the other heroes out of the blue. Mess their strategy all up big time, it will it will.

Seriously, though, nothing ruins my suspension of disbelief and my enjoyment of a game faster than the expectation that a character should avoid blatantly obvious, simple, and intelligent actions to "maintain genre."

A lot of what T'Shenk Kennet fought against was supernatural in nature. Dark Seraph, Black Paladin, those types. Not just superpowered but still essentially human criminals; he fought real, actual, irredeemable Evil with-a-capital-"E".

Originally posted by Killer Shrike

Sounds like you are stuck in a rut, and are far too "meta" in your design. I have a player like this actually; unerringly seeking out any exploitable loophole rather than defining a concept and then fleshing it out.

 

I would recommend reevaluating the characters in a question and eliminating any power or ability which cant be expressed directly as part of their primary schtick.

Me? I've only had three characters I've had a chance to actually play in Champions:

The afore-mentioned T'Shenk Kennet, a demon of an odd sort, which kinda justifies almost anything and still stays in concept.

A power-armor based character. Again, at least a wide assortment of powers was within the concept, and not just weasely min-maxing.

A classic flying brick, who actually was lacking in some of the Dink Defenses, because of his concept.

I always concerned myself more with keeping within the character's personality and concept during the role-playing, than on the character sheet.

As for finding loopholes, no, not at all my style. I was more concerned with being loophole proof. In one group I played in, we had two VPP-based maxefficienators (with a bunch of quick-change prefab powers to speed things up), one guy in Power Armor with a Multipower, and little old T'Shenk Kennet. Funny thing is, T'Shenk was the steadfast, the rock, the pro, the one you could break but not bend. When the three hotshots had made a string of fatal mistakes in shuffling their powers around, the simplest character of the bunch was still standing. OK, OK, enough with that rant...

I'm not the guy who wants to do 8 BODY on a pair of linked RKAs with both Penetrating and Reduced Penetration. I'm not the guy hoping to destroy my opponent's foci with an attack that costs 3 points per die (see also, "Dispel.") I'm not the guy boosting his EGO to 30 in order to take on the villain-team's mentalist, a turn after using an esoteric twist on AVLD to drop the other team's brick and the turn before misjuding the something and getting creamed for it.

OK, maybe part of this is a limitation of my gaming breadth, but at least I've never lacked depth. At least it makes sense for my PCs to have every single power they have -- it's believable, logical, and within the concept and personality.

Originally posted by gewing

I have to admit I think the" 1pip penetrating does one body" is flawed, just because it made the shredder I wrote up too nasty.

 

iirc it was

 

1d6+1 RKA, Autofire, penetrating. reduced end-(0) Reduced pen x2

and linked 1d6+1 RKA autofire, penetrating, reduced end (o) reduced penx 2

 

for each one you hit by you do 8 body unless they have double hardened defenses??

I'd rule that each level of Reduced Penetration cancels out one level of Penetrating, leaving you with one level of Reduced Penetration.

Wouldn't getting a subscription to that mag be a dead giveaway that you're a super?

Your sig should never be longer than your post.

T'Shenk Kennet - Take things slow. Go to his lair and turn on all the news channels and NPR. Cautiously check with a few contacts (being careful in case they've changed too).

Originally posted by Tech

It's warming to see these posts. As I've said before (and will continue to when it comes up in a post): build your character around a concept. I've clashed with others in this matter but a character built around a concept can expand the starting concept out much farther and longer than those that aren't. A character built with a personality isn't just a 'bag o points' and is fun to play; they continue to be fun to play after hundreds of experience points later. By then, the characters are experienced, developed and balanced because they have a central concept. Other characters drop to the sidelines because they didn't have a personality base in the first place.

 

In short, way to go Monolith and everyone else.

I consider it a personal challenge, sometimes, to have my cake and eat it too when it comes to creating characters that are concept & personality based, and effecient, at the same time.

Re: Predictability?

Originally posted by drrushing

I would have to agree with almost all of the posts on this thread. Making your characters stick to concept, instead of efficiency, is very important. I had a brick character once, now retired, called "Rock". He was a middling brick (40 STR, 5 SPD w/ Professional Wrestling MA). The one redeeming quality of this character is that he had absurd defenses. I designed the character to be the last one standing.............no matter how long the fight took. As a strange irony, this character survived 4 superteams, enduring the deaths or disappearances of at least 15 other heroes. This added immensely to the characters depth(his disads), the insane lengths he would go to protect the innocent and his friends and family. I would have to stress again concept and substance over efficiency.

That's the role that T'Shenk Kennet filled. He didn't hit as hard as a full brick, and didn't have the insane CVs of a lot of martial artists, and had no ranged attacks. However, no matter how bad, how crazy, how messed up things got, his teammates could count on him to still be standing.

Originally posted by Hermit

Please do, and welcome.

It just surprised me to find out that, while some villains matched her, V'han for example, as yet*, no 5th Edition published heroine outshines Megaera for highest comliness stat. In fact, few superheroines break the 20 mark in comparison with their evil counterparts. Are the forces of evil really that much more attractive?

Easier, the dark side is...

D-Man and Zornwill covered my thoughts on the subject with more depth than I gave.

Regarding a 12d6 EB with Standard Effect and Penetrating:

Originally posted by D-Man

1) the attack with do 36 stun and 12 body (in truth the average is 3.5 (42 stun), but steve write the rule as X3).

How much would Penetrate, though? 12 STUN, as with normal?

I might be the wrong guy to ask. I'm the guy our Champions GMs (there were two back in my college days who ran alternating campaigns) called "Dr. Dink Defense." This refered to my habit of making characters who had Power Defense, Mental Defense, Flash Defense, scads of Life Support, Regen, high REC, etc, and could justify it. They couldn't go toe-to-toe with every villain, but man were they hard to take out.

I think this little neurosis was inspired by the first guy I saw running Champs, who seemed to delight in using special attack powers every week. And buy the plethora of special attacks in some of the Champions products.

Right. "Duh moment" on my part.

OK. Let's split this into two questions, then, since I'm still curious:

1) If you had a 12d6 EB with Standard Effect, how would that interact with Penetrating?

2) How does a 1-pip HKA work with Penetrating? Are you guaranteed 1 pt of BODY damage (unless the defender has hardened defenses)?

Here's an example power:

Bite: HKA 0d6 + 1 (standard effect: 1 BODY, 2 STUN), Penetrating (+1/2) (7 Active Points); No STR Bonus (-1/2), Target must be grabbed, unaware, or willing (-1/2)

How does the Penetrating Advantage interact with the Standard Effect? My intent is to insure that one point of BODY, but no more than that one point.

I've never been impressed by the Spidey-Sense. There's no mechanism, it just "is".

Venom, I guess you can explain that with Venom's symbiotic nature. It was attached to Spidey for a while, it adapted to not set off his...ugh...danger sense all the time, or something.

Dispel should not affect constant or persistent powers. What's so hard to understand about that?

Of course, once I look it up in FRED, I'm even more torqued about it. It's 3 pts per die, and it's being used to ruin, or even destroy, foci, at range!

So instead of RKA or a ranged BODY Drain, either of which costs 15 pts per die, you can now shred power armor for 3 pts per die, and it's useless until repaired.

Hell, even if you put the "only affects inanimate objects" -1 Limit on the RKA or Drain, you're still looking at 7.5 pts per die, or TWO AND A HALF TIMES the cost of the Dispel.

WTF?

Seriously, give me a break here. Dispel is cheap because, as far as I knew, it was only really usefull against temporary manifestations of powers. There is NO WAY I'd allow half the uses discussed in FRED on any character, PC or NPC, in any of my games.