Dr. Confoundo

Re: Completely Undetectable Why not? Dr. Doom uses magic, and Dr. Destroyer is just a Doom analog.

Re: Completely Undetectable Well, think about it terms of a campaign: an alien species of dopplegangers who your team has fought a dozen times before suddenly finds a way to make themselves immune to the detection methods that always used to work. The adventure isn't just 'What are they going to do?' but also 'How do we track them?', as well as 'Who can we trust?'. At the end of the adventure, the team has found a way to negate whatever safeguards they used, and everything is honky dory.

Re: Completely Undetectable

Re: Completely Undetectable Yeah, I may have muddied the water a bit with my first post. In the context of Secret Invasion, the Skrulls have developed perfect duplicates. As far as we've seen so far, you cannot tell them apart from the real thing.

Re: Completely Undetectable Maybe my experiences have been different than others, but it seems to me like most players build their characters with some sort of super-sense. (Which are usually there so that the character won't be helpless when flashed/blinded/whatever, but there's always a smattering of the 'Detect Evil' or 'Danger Sense' types as well.) And I wouldn't do this just out of the blue (or on a regular basis), unless it's specifically the schtick for a specific enemy. But if the bad guys find out over time what super-senses your team uses to kick their collective butts on a regular basis, isn't it tactically smart to figure out a way to get around them?

Re: Completely Undetectable Doesn't the GM have discretion to bypass player powers every now and again, without giving them extra Disadd points, if it makes a good story? For example, Heatwave, Master of Fire, uses nothing but fiery blasts to fight crime... but what happens when he runs up against the Mighty Molten Men, who are effectively immune to heat and fire? Would you as Heatwave's player feel cheated or frustrated because you couldn't melt the Molten Men? Using competely undetectable characters on a regular basis without good reason/compensation is probably a bad idea, but what about for one storyline? I'm sure that at the end of the Secret Invasion storyline, one of the big brains is going to find a way to see through the Skrull's ability... we just haven't gotten to that point yet. And if there is supposed to be a way to tell the difference between the real thing and the imposter, I'm not sure that ability to play the saxaphone would be enough of a hint. While that GM might have thought he was being clever, it's not hard to imagine that that solution would never in a million years come up to the players.

In discussing Marvel's current Skrull Invasion over in the NGD, I got a number of responses that surprised me... Spoilers for anyone who is interested in the Secret Invasion series: In discussing this storyline, some posters expressed dislike for making characters undetectable by all methods, and at least one implied that he would walk out of a campaign if he encountered something like this. Is it bad form for a GM to have a character be undetectable, or to baffle super senses that the player's have bought?

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? I got 'The Fearless Vampire Killers' from Netflix... it wasn't bad, kinda a fun light little vampire movie - but with some odd little bits that just reinforce the common conceptions of Roman Polanski as a pervert. Sharon Tate sure was beautiful.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Hudson Hawk is the movie that Ishtar and Waterworld make fun of for being crappy. That's how bad it is.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? I saw The Rundown over the weekend. Not bad, but not great. The Rock is a pretty good action star, and he'd make a great Black Adam if they ever get that Shazam! movie off the ground.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Iron Giant... very nice. I'd love to see a live-action version.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? They are now showing the first season of Dexter on CBS at 10:00 on Sundays... very dark, but so far very good.

Re: Massively Article On Champions Online I would assume so. You'll probably be required to team up for big fights (like Mechanon and Dr. Destroyer), but I'd surprised if there wasn't plenty of content for solo play.

Re: Massively Article On Champions Online Well, I was only explaining it to show that there are other possibilities to fix the loot problem often found in MMOs*. If COMMO has loot, I expect there'll be plenty of ways to get it rather than just raiding Destruga. I can definitely see grinding PRIMUS and UNTIL faction to get epic gear, or maxing out my Inventing or Magic skills to craft purple loot. *All of those options are available in post-BC WoW - that does not mean they are all of equal value.

Re: Massively Article On Champions Online

Re: Double The Hero Excitement! Yep - they took it back off the site. I found it in the 'About Champions' link earlier, but it's nowhere to be seen now.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Smoking Aces - not bad, but aside from the style there's not much too it. The best scene was when:

Re: Double The Hero Excitement!

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? I meant 'completely superfluous' in the 'get some halfway famous rocker to write a couple of insipid ballads so that we can maybe market additional copies of the soundtrack' sense of the phrase. I hated when Disney let Phil Collins do it; this time was barely passable, mostly because the songs were instantly forgettable.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? So after watching Titan A.E. a week ago, I finished out my animated space adventure two-fer with Treasure Planet. Aside from the completely superfluous music by the guy from the Goo Goo Dolls (which was at least not too distractingly lame), this movie was pretty cool. Some great character designs on Long John Silver (and his arm) and the other pirates, some fun action sequences (especially the last one in the exploding Treasure Planet), and all-around good voice work (unlike Titan A.E.). Take a look at this if you are ever planning on running a Spelljammer campaign - lots of stuff to steal.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? So it being a little slow at work right now, and what with the Writer's Strike dashing most hopes of good (or any) new TV in the New Year, I went through this thread and made sure to update my NetFlix Queue with anything that looked interesting. So I'm up to a total of 242 items in my queue... I've got plenty of stuff to watch in the new year Next up is Treasure Planet, The Illusionist, and the rest of Meerkat Manor.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? We saw I am Legend in the theaters. Well-done, but a bit of a downer. After that and The Mist a few weeks ago, my wife and I definitely need to see something a little more cheery. On DVD, we recently watched: Meerkat Manor disk 1: Never knew how vicious those cute little critters could be. Titan A.E.: Disappointing. Left me cold, and surprised by the violence. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: Excellent film noir movie, and some really funny stuff. If you haven't seen this one, check it out. Robert Downey Jr and Val Kilmer make a great team.

Re: Fairy Tale Challenges? These are much of what I had in mind in the first place. I've got five players, but one of them won't have to be tested*, so that means that I'll have to determine individual challenges for four of them. Let me give a brief rundown of the characters, and maybe some ideas will spring to mind. 1) The British Blur: a young Jewish man who saw his archaeologist father gunned down by the Nazis as they were trying to escape occupied territories. Now he has powers of Illusion, Teleportation, and Mental Attacks. 2) Ironwood: an ex-Olympic gymnastic hopeful and small-time catburglar. Now he is stuck in a Swamp Thing-esque tree-like form, with Elongation, Regeneration, and Plant Control powers. 3) Beacon: a medic and a small town boy. He now has a range of Light-based powers, making him a very Green lantern like character; he can blast things with lasers, make hard light force fields, or glow like a star. 4) Etalon (French for 'Stallion'): a Belgian man who lost his family to German invaders, he moved into France to join the Resistance. He is now a martial artist with danger sense and other forms of warning powers. *The remaining PC has a secret that he hasn't shared with the party as of yet. He's not really Dr. Atomic, with power blaster and rocket boots... he's actually the god Hermes, using what remains of his powers to pretend to be a superhero in order to investigate Loki's secret plans.

Re: Fairy Tale Challenges? ...Alfenheim. They do need some way to stick Loki back into his cave, and to bind him down there. I was trying to figure out where they could get the shackles to do it to him, but I hadn't thought of using the elves or the dwarves. Maybe they'll need something from each of them.

As described in one of my previous threads (found here), my group of World War II superheroes is rapidly heading towards a face to face battle with Loki and his Nazi Runekriegers at the White House, which should end with the PCs being transported to Asgard, while Loki and the Nazis rampage across the U.S. So they will be lost in a place of mythic reality, where stories that have been passed down from parents to children for hundreds of generations got their start. They will eventually make their way to a run-down and abandoned Valhalla, containing only the inconsequential spirits of the mighty warriors it once housed, and a broken down old Odin, bereft of believers. But as anyone who has read any fairy tales knows, it's not always easy to get somewhere... the journey is almost as challenging (if not more so) than what you find at the destination. I'd like to run a session where the PCs have to face some odd challenges which showcases the mythical and mystical location that they find themselves trapped in. Does anyone have a suggestion or two that I can use?