Mutant for Hire

Re: The Authority:What the heck? Last I followed the comic, I thought it was just a long range mutant detector (admittedly a deus ex machina for putting together new teams). What have I missed?

Re: The Authority:What the heck? The description of this starship has more or less removed any chance that I will ever read Authority. Of course I have a marked dislike of uberpower characters and artifacts. I'm much more interested in reading about weaker characters using their brains instead of idiots who just throw raw power all over the place (or have artifacts that save them the effort of having to think).

Re: Things that work in comics but don't work in Champions Speedsters are also very hard to properly build in Champions and the ones that are tend to be far weaker than the ones in the comics, mainly on the grounds that a properly built Speedster will on average overwhelm the rest of the group. And yes, characters like Green Lantern can also overwhelm a group as well. Let's not go into Superman. Even in his weaker incarnations he can overwhelm a group, but point limits tend to keep him out of a game. Batman is hard to properly play in a game, mainly because he's supposed to be so freakin' brilliant its hard to get that in a RPG. "I make my omniscience roll, GM. Tell me what my character just figured out."

Re: The Stainless Steel Age I tend to think of the modern age as the Alloy Age. These days you have a mix of different Ages when you look from comic book line to comic book line, everything from Silver to Iron.

Re: I made the GM cry.... You know, you guys are the sorts of people who go "Why didn't Frodo just get the eagles to fly him to Mount Doom and drop the ring in directly?"

Re: The fall of the Soviet Union sucked. Actually, I consider it a small loss, honestly. A lot of Soviet superheroes were ill suited for covert operations, which in practicality is the only way that Soviet superheroes could operate inside of US borders. Even then, if they're caught, it's an international incident. Remember the U2 shot down over the Soviet Union and the stink that created? Terrorist supervillains work better, in my opinion. If Al-Queda sends supervillains to act inside of US borders, it works much better than superheroes (or supervillains) of some legitimate nation that the United States could bomb the crap out of or would have an international stink over them. China may send paranormals into the United States to cause trouble, but they're going to move damn carefully and preferably disguise any ties to China they have. So in general I prefer terrorist networks, secret conspiracies and of course hidden cadres of Nazis and true Communists in hiding.

Re: Things that work in comics but don't work in Champions Other things that work poorly in RPGs: 7. Teams of varying power levels 8. Depowering superheroes 9. Supertech (time machines, starships, etc)

Re: Fifth ed revised name? Fredrev? Freder? Frred? Hmmm. This is tricky.

Re: Social Limitation: Legacy Legacy is really composed of three parts: Reputation: Legacy Psych Lim: Legacy Code of Conduct Hunted: Legacy villains Possibly also Watched: Legacy Which would indicate that they were being watched to ensure that they were living up to their legacy.

Re: Spiderman Vs. Firelord Spiderman has a huge number of points, yes, but I think that Spiderman has a huge number of those points spent on Contacts, just about every superhero and superhero team in the books. How many superheroes has Spiderman not interacted with at one point or another? He's also got a reputation in the superhero community like anything. Even if he's strictly New York based, New York is the central nexus of Marvel's superhero community. His knowledge of other superheroes is also better than most people appreciate. Spiderman said once that he had researched ways to fight a lot of other superheroes, for example the Hulk, in case they went out of control. He's got a very high roll in KS: Superheroes. Most of his other XP in recent years could be considered to be blown on a large number of stunts involving his webbing over the years. He doesn't have a huge number of active points but his multipower or webbing VPP has a huge number of tricks to it. And he's got a high Power: Webbing roll to justify new tricks. Heck, he probably has an XP reserve he can use to spend on new power stunts on the fly. And he's probably got combat skill levels or even overall skill levels up the wazoo. To my mind a more interesting question is how Spiderman would do against the better martial artists in the Marvel Universe. How would Spiderman do against Elektra (assuming she's alive) or Captain America or Wolverine?

Re: Spiderman Vs. Firelord Colossus is the archetypical brick. He can outlift and outpunch Spiderman with very little effort. There's not really much point in comparing the two of them. Colossus punching Firelord and causing pain, that's totally believable. Colossus versus Spiderman isn't quite as bad for Spidey as the time he took on Juggernaut, but it wouldn't be much better. Spidey would have a hard time even hurting Colossus, though in Spidey's defense, Colossus couldn't touch Spiderman period. Colossus is not known for speed.

Re: Does Sapphire bug anyone else? Actually, Madonna with powers doesn't scare me that much. Madonna has been successful in part because she's a fairly savvy businesswoman who plays the media game extremely well. Shallow perhaps, but not stupid. Arnie is another guy with middling talent but he's smart as hell and so he's had a career where a lot of other guys with talent haven't. Britney and JLo with powers do scare me.

Re: Sapphire? Actually Sapphire is more of mutant JLo, which isn't exactly an improvement. Supergirl's new look is frighteningly like Britney, which makes me fear for the character, but then some cool characters have come out of lookalike clones of media figures.

Re: Finally Picked up Heroes 5th and Champions... Even worse about Hermit is that he's not that far from 10,000 posts. When that happens he... um. *thinks about consequences* Ignore all of that! Hermit is my favorite forum poster! He's the most brilliant and insightful posters on the forum! Anyone who says anything against him is clearly jealous of his brilliant wit and insight! I've never said anything against him! Except for a few postings that were clearly done by an imposter! Listen to Hermit! Read his writings! Memorize them! There will be a test later! *looks at the countdown to apothesis and starts packing bags*

Re: New Writeup Game! Fix the "Weaklings" Actually, there is one serious non-skill modification I would give Cypher: a datajack. Yes, it's totally cyberpunk but the fact is that Cypher is the one character would really use a device to let him plug his mind into a computer directly, and without having to go through Warlock. I'm not sure how he'd get it, there are a number of options but it would definitely be something to save up points for.

Re: New Writeup Game! Fix the "Weaklings" Actually, Cypher's last appearance in the Marvel universe chronologically was when Rahne went to speak with his ghost I believe, in a later issue of New Mutants. Technically, all you need to revive Cypher is a little cloning and a little necromancy involving his ghost.

Re: What do you call "Four Color"? Happy Endings This is another four-color attribute. A lot of people measure the end of the Silver Age with the death of Gwen Stacy, and that was a story with a distinctly downbeat ending. In the Bronze Age unhappy endings became a lot more common than in the Silver Age, where it was rare that they happened to anyone but the villain.

Re: What do you call "Four Color"? The Golden Age and the Silver Age have a distinct range to them. Early Golden Age, for example had a very pulpy feel to it. The lines between pulp and superhero were extremely blurred. Late Golden Age had shaken off most of the pulp elements. Early Silver Age has a strong golden age feel, except that thanks to the H-bomb and Sputnik things started to take on a more cosmic level tone. The dominant characters at this time were often boosted versions of Golden Age characters. As people have observed, one of the big differences between Golden Age and Silver Age is that there's a rising amount of soap opera. In the late Silver Age, soap operas and personality flaws were the status quo. And for that matter, the status quo that used to be the mainstay of the Golden Age and early Silver Age is starting to break down here. The early Bronze Age segues in smoothly from the late Silver Age mainly in the covering of taboo subjects from the Silver Age. Drug abuse, racism, and a host of other subjects were finally dealt with. The progress in the Bronze Age is more a progression of what subjects could be dealt with in a superhero comic. By the end of the Bronze Age, there was little that wasn't. The Dark Knight Returns is very late Bronze Age and more or less inspired the Iron Age. This is my opinion. Take it as you will. As to the topic, I consider anything in the Golden Age and Silver Age as four color.

Re: New Writeup Game! Fix the "Weaklings" If I had multiple man's powers I'd be holding down a dozen jobs or so, sending off a few duplicates to multiple schools getting multiple degrees in subjects, etc. Multiple Man, like a few other supers, in some ways makes a lot more sense as a mutant in business. Of course a lot of supervillains you wonder why they aren't selling their gadgets to the army for lots of research funds for that matter, which gets back to the whole difference between superhero comics and science fiction.

Re: Weak Supers who just needed better writers I think I didn't get my point across well. Storm was on the X-Men and she was more or less holding her own despite the fact that she had less power than Cypher did, at least in theory. On sheer skill she was holding her own on the team. Cypher was treated as a wimp for having a weak power, but no one seemed to think Storm was weak with even less power. There was in a way a double standard here.

Re: Weak Supers who just needed better writers I think that's why I had some confusion. Okay, the main problem was that there wasn't a decent writer's bible and the continuity people were asleep at the wheel. But yes, the forcefield and blasts are the logical extrapolation of his powers. Well yes, but he doesn't have to fight as a human cannonball. He picks up other options as well. But all the above is part of my divergent X-Men timeline which happens shortly before Fall of the Mutants, when things go to crap in the X-Titles as far as I'm concerned. No X-Force, none of the Goblin Queen mess and Inferno was not the best way to resolve the whole Magik storyline, and we have an Editor with the power to make Claremont (or someone) resolve dangling plotlines. Maybe we need a "Non-Weak Supers who just needed better writers" storyline, except that I think that would pretty much include all of them at some point or another.

Re: Weak Supers who just needed better writers I actually sat down once and worked out an alternate timeline where the New Mutants got a better writer than what they got after Claremont left the title. I actually worked on developing and augmenting the powers of the New Mutants, not through radiation accidents so much as the fact these were adolescent mutants and their powers were growing and developing over time. I'll go over my results: Cannonball: It turns out that Sam's actual power is to generate a forcefiled that he can generate molecular bursts from. His normal flight mode just has a forcefiled around his feet (which is why his power doesn't burn his legs off), and he can extend the forcefield around the rest of him. Later on, he learns to call up the forcefield by itself without the rocket and to be able to generate focused molecular bursts akin to his rocket as a ranged weapon. His forcefield also behaves as an exoskeleton of sorts (which is why he can lift massive objects as he's done at times). New code name: Impact Sunspot: He learns to store power and release it in bursts. giving him bursts of strength that can exceed his regular strength. He also learns to tap into that power to accelerate his speed and to heal himself of damage. In time he even learns how to extend his aura outside of himself, creating an area of darkness which he alone can see inside (his teammates prefer he not do this around them). New code name: Eclipse Magma: Learns to call up armor and weapons of rock, to summon up molten golems to fight for her. Also learns to manipulate and create a vast range of geological phenomena under the training of Havok and Polaris (remember? Mutant geologists) Wolfsbane: As a mutant whose hybrid form has claws and enhanced senses, she gets handed over to Wolverine for training in how to fight. He also takes her off to the wilderness to train her in the ways of wolves. Her wolf and wolfgirl forms grow stronger over time, and she picks up a regeneration power along the way. New codename: Wolfen (not a bane to wolves at all) Karma: She develops telepathic abilities. She's a focused telepath, a very powerful one, though she has the limitation she has to take over a mind in order to work with it. She can do things to minds even Charles Xavier would have difficulty with. In time she joins the staff of the school, using her powers to help mutants gain control of their powers and deal with damaged minds. Never decided what her new code name would be. Magik: Illyana's power is actually not what everyone thinks it is. Her true mutant power is the ability to form spiritual bonds with things and people, to draw and share power with them. She bonded with Limbo once and her magical power and teleportation abilities are based on her tapping into Limbo. That Kitty can use the Soulsword is because Illyana bonded with Kitty. In time, the older Illyana goes back to her own timeline (the one where the X-Men died) and our Illyana comes back as a child. Warlock: With help from Reed Richards and Moira MacTaggart is 'cured' of his transmode virus and learns other ways to feed and reproduce. With Cypher's training he overcomes his father and returns to his own race to set them on a better path (sorry, but he did not belong in that title). Mirage: Dani becomes a shaman of sorts. She learns to delve into spirits to learn all sorts of things about people. And she learns to make temporary and permanent spiritual constructs. She can start fires by conjuring up a spirit of fire, and can even permanently create a fire spirit. She can alter and even destroy spirits as well. New code name: Spirit

Doing Cypher I'm really tired of "Douglock". To my mind one of Cypher's great weaknesses in the comics was that he was far too dependent on Warlock. He should have spent more time focusing on his own strengths. The hard part is building the core of Cypher's translation power. Probably as a VPP with a list of justified powers that he's come up with. If I had Cypher as a fresh, just inducted into the New Mutants type of character, I'd start spending points in parallel on his martial arts abilities on one track and a gadget pool on another track. He'd be beefing up his science skills as well, reflecting off the gadget pool. As time evolved, I'd beef up his gadget pool, give him Wealth, and increase his social skills.

Re: Weak Supers who just needed better writers I tend to view him as essentially a normal with a built in analytic/translation computer in his skull, which is his mutant power. His technical expertise was specialized primarily in computers, and there he was quite brilliant. In the area of hacking computers I would be quite willing to pit him against Reed Richards, Forge or Tony Stark. He wrote some very nasty viruses in his time, one of which turned up in Excalibur. As I made out in my postings, he lacked the scientific expertise to make use of his power to maximum effect. Cypher already had expertise in electronics, which is why I think he was instantly able to understand a lot of alien tech. And Magus was techno-organic, which meant that he was essentially a robot with an organic base. Cypher should have been introduced about five to ten years after he actually was. If he had been introduced now, he's be the Internet savvy resource of whatever teen mutant group he was in and writers wouldn't have any problems thinking of things to do with him.

My take on Cypher: Here is my take on Cypher's power: He has the power to process raw data for information encoded in it, and when possible to reverse the process, limited by whatever form of I/O is available to him at the time. This works fairly consistantly with his manifestations of power in the X-titles. His most powerful manifestations of power has been when he's fused with Warlock. He can use Warlock's power to directly mentally interface with computer systems and speak to them in their own langauge. Cypher is one of those people who can truly think in computer code. But information is encoded in all forms. The whole thing about "body langauge" is that is information about a person's physical and mental state based on facial expression, posture and movement. Cypher's power logically would translate body langauge fluently and with incredible nuances, within the limits of his senses to see body language. That body language talent would be one of the more subtle and formidable expressions of his power. He should be able to function as a human lie detector, akin to Wolverine or Daredevil. Few people would have the total muscular control to suppress all telltale signs of their lying from him, including intonation in their voices. He also has the potential to be one of the best hand to hand fighters around as well. His reflexes are excellent. He was very good with arcade games. His ability to read an opponent's attack before they make it would make him very strong on defense, and he could read his oppoennt for things like strained muscles and seeing where holes were going to open when his opponent moved. Nightcrawler, Storm and Wolverine should have taken him in hand. There are a lot of things that Cypher should be able to read. The weather is one of them, if he manages to apply his abilities. He might be able to become a formidable tracker as well. What does a tracker do? Read their environment to determine information. And there is the fact that Cypher might be able to read the data from the financial markets and determine information encoded in them. Now what are the limitations? First off, his power does not give him any special ability to access information, it only works with the information available. Cypher cannot read Invisible Woman's body language, nor can he deal with Quicksilver's. Unless he can perceive something in some way, he cannot translate it with his power. Likewise forms of communication he can't perceive, he has trouble with. Second off, as noted, his expressive capabilities are limited to what he can work with as expressive tools. Voice, gestures. If he invented a device to speak in some strange form like smell or electromagnetic radiation, he can do fine. A third issue is that his power translates misinformation as easily as it does information. A lie encoded in another language gets translated as a lie, and Cypher's power gives him no inherent ability to distinguish truth from falsehood. While few have the muscular control to totally control their body language to lie to him, someone who did could lie to Cypher very easly as a result. Even when he has information, he has two limitations: composition and comprehension. Cypher can be instantly fluent in French. That does not make him Voltaire, any more than his ability to speak English makes him Shakespeare. Cypher can be fluent in a wide range of language, but he's still stuck with his own compositional skills. Incidentally, this means that Cypher's genius as a hacker was more due to his being brilliant with computers, rather than just his power being useful. A moron with his power would be able to talk to computers but would have poor programming skills. Doug was quite properly one of the most brilliant of the New Mutants. Comprehension is another theory. Even if he can read one of Reed Richard's papers on dimensional physics, he may not understand what he's reading because he lacks the conceptual framework to understand it. If an alien expresses a word that translates to something beyond Cypher's comprehension, it's still garbage to him. This is the main problem with him becoming the world's greatest genetic engineer off the bat. He can read DNA code but unless he understands protiens and other organic molecules and how they all work, his brain is just going to be bombarded with concepts he can't understand. Of course if he studied genetic code, that would give him the conceptual framework to understand what he is reading. Even then, his ability to cook up DNA sequences is limited by his talent at composition, getting to the previous issue. Cypher has pretty much two career paths open to him. One of them is becoming a very talented scientist, in multiple disciplines, ala Reed Richards or the Beast. He creates a range of scanners that can probe something and dump raw numerical data on a screen, which he can read and his power translates into an explanation of what is going on, limited by his understanding of the physical phenomena. An intersting side possibility is magic. He can read any mystic language fluently, and I expect that his power would give him fluency in any magical language as well. Of course given Cypher, he would probably try combining magic with technology to rather weird results. He and Forge could have an amazing collaboration. The other path is James Bond. SHIELD would love to have a guy who can go anywhere, speak the language like a local, read people, and it even boosts his combat abilities in an invisible fashion. So what if he can't crumple steel. There's these things like weapons and armor. Of course Nick Fury would never let him out of the base given his ability to translate any code or cipher on the planet given just a small sample of it. As a result, Cypher could easily turn into a very formidable superhero, a cross between Reed Richards and Nick Fury, and whether you throw Forge into the mix depends on your own feelings on the matter. Financially he supports himself by reading financial data from all over the world and adjusting his investments accordingly. In combat, he fights in something akin to Spiderman style. His defense relies heavily on moving out of the way of his target before his moment connects.