Mutant for Hire

Actually, we had a thread on this on the natoman boards.

To reiterate the points I made there, to have common magic items like you describe, you need to come up with mass production techniques for magical items and a shift from artisan wizards to magical engineers.

What's the difference? Artisans in the middle ages relied on very simple tools and a lot of personal skill and nothing but personal strength and dexterity in crafting items. When you think about most fantasy wizards, that's more or less the same as well. Their spells are limited by personal skill and the strength of their magic is their own.

A magical engineer uses precisioned machined tools and crafts items to high precision, that often tap into artificial power supplies. A wizard learns to cast a sleep spell. A magical engineer designs a schematic so that someone else using precision magical tools, possibly with standardized interchangable parts, can craft an item that can cast a sleep spell.

The big issue is where all the power for all these magical items came from. Our own industrial revolution would have been incredibly stunted without huge amounts of coal and later petrolium to make it happen. As magical engineers start machining magical standardized parts to be assembled into magical items, there comes a question of where the power for all these items is coming from.

Perhaps architects and landscapers can use mystic geometry to focus the natural flows of magic through the earth and radiating down from the celestial spheres to create mystic focal points for magic batteries to be charged up and used to power magical items elsewhere.

One of my ideas was to design a magical steampunk world, where difference engines are used to grind out astrological prognostications and steam powered automata controlled by clockwork guided by bound spirits stride across the land.

Incidentally, see Vision of Escaflowne for an idea of what warfare would be like in such a world.

The question is, if they do pull it off, what will happen to Captain America? Or other comic book characters?

I picked this off another board:

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/sports/3797336.htm

Yes folks, someone is working on the super-soldier formula.

There are a bunch of reasons that Marvel and DC characters don't age, none of which apply to a superhero campaign. Personally, I like the idea of superheroes having a shelf-life and then going off and retiring.

It allows for all sorts of things with new champions characters like having one or both of their parents be retired superheroes. Makes for some great roleplaying opportunities, as well as allowing for inherited enemies. Old geezers saying that this young pup isn't a patch on the hero's grandfather, now there was a real hero...

Originally posted by Old Man

I can't say I like the idea of elven martial arts. Nowhere in the literature can I remember an instance where elves are taught a specific style of fighting. Instead they're just supposed to be wicked fast and accurate, rather than assuming a Wing Chun stance.

First, the elves of RPGs are nowhere near the elves of literature if we're really going to get picky here. The elves of RPGs are a creative variation on Tolkiens' elves, and Tolkien himself was a linguist and a scholar of European languages, not European martial arts.

Nowhere in western literature is it written of human martial arts either, with the exception of a few surviving feltenbuchen. And yet there are strong indications from those books that Europeans practiced comprehensive systems of martial arts back in the middle ages.

Something to remember is that the 'unskilled fighting off of brute force and raw talent' doesn't cut it in a bloody violent world as you tended to find in those times. The warriors who survived fights learned what worked and what didn't and when they trained their sons in how to fight, they passed on what they knew. And the ones who survived those battles learned even more and passed it on to their kids.

The elves having long life spans would naturally be inclined to study martial arts and as they are typically portrayed as intellectual would take a very scholastic view of fighting. Likely as not there would be scrolls and books on the value of stances and proper technique against various opponents, like the human feltenbuchen of historical Europe.

One way it might work is if there are different styles of elf-jitsu taught to different tribes or specialist subgroups of elves. That might be cool, especially if the subgroups in question are obligated to kill each other on sight. But most of the time, people talking about elven martial arts intend to give it to every elven fighter you see, and that's just icky.

There might be multiple schools, especially if elven martial scholars have different theories on combat. There will most certainly be differences based on climate and environment. Elves living in hot regions where heavy metal armor would lead to heatstroke will develop a different fighting style than in more temperate regions where one can wear such things. Elves living in woodland areas will have a different style than elves living out in flat plains or in moutanous regions.

I of course used my superb drawing skills to create my avatar. None of this cheap plagarism here. (and showed why I stick to writing instead of drawing, though someday I dream of being able to do more than stick figures...)

In reflecting on this thread, it has occured to me that we may be a bit too harsh. A lot of outfits that people have worn in other times and cultures. Whether or not some superhero outfits look any goofier than stuff people wore in the sixties and seventies is a matter for doubt. And how about some of the more bizarre creations of fashion designers these days?

That being said, I am inclined to think it would be hard for a lot of those costumes to become fashionable, though frighteningly enough during the sixties that might have been possible...

Two words: Combat Luck

I would say that James Bond has a huge amount of that, in order to survive all those explosions and gunfights. That can help keep the characters alive for a prolonged campaign without necessarily ruining the feel of the genre.

To some extent its like martial arts. Most martial arts moves are pretty bland when you write them down in terms of straight HERO mechanics. The key is to come up with cool names.

The trick is to come up with a great visual and then work backwards to what the effect actually is. Does the magicain hold the Cerulian Swords of Samanthyr or are they floating swords that fly around on their own? HKA versus RKA.

Oh yes, and don't forget to go overboard on the flashy psychadelic spell effects to go along with the powers. In the end, most of Doctor Strange's spells were pretty basic in the effects but they looked really cool and had really cool names to go along with them.

What about powered armor?

It's occured to me that some of the powered armor trypes might not be so bad. Or it's at least possible to make some powered armor that wouldn't look goofy in the real world.

Thoughts of the soon to be out Daredevil movie drew me to this question.

What characters in the Champions Universe would pass the cosplay test? That is, what costumes would not look ridiculous if they were worn by someone in real world.

My main question was whether these were Tolkien-style elves, who are physically superior in every aspect to human beings, or whether they tended to be more classical RPG elves, who were more agile but weaker than humans, and perhaps less robust.

In general if they are on average weaker than other races but more agile, their fighting style is going to show it. Stamina is also an important issue. Can these elves keep up with the younger races such as orcs and humans and dwarves? That pretty much determines the 'quick kill' versus the 'wear your opponents down' sort of affair.

Also their fighting style to some extent will depend heavily on armor, weapons and environment. Armor and weapons incidentally will be a reflection of their resources/skills in combination with their physical peculiarities and their environment. They're going to invent the lightest plate mail they can possibly make, which allows them the greatest freedom of movement possible.

And then there are cultural imperatives. If you're members of a long lived but slowly reproducing rate, your fighting style is likely to be highly defensive and with a strong emphasis on ranged attacks, especially by magic, which you can take the time to learn over the centuries. Most elves that have any sort of aptitude for magic I think would be inclined to learn it.

Also the typical reasons that most professional warriors prefered polearms for swords in battle would hold doubly true for the elves. The elves would prefer spears and other weapons that let them strike at range and keep them out of grappling distance with physically stronger races. Close up melee weapons would be the weapons of last resort for these people.

For their unarmed fighting style, I tend to think throws and strikes at nerve centers which don't require as much strength but a lot of agility and knowledge of anatomy would apply. Elves could take the time to learn the weak points of every other creature around.

For contrast dwarves who are short but sturdy and strong and generally conceived of having hardy constitutions are going to be miniature tanks and favor close up fighting. Axes, picks and hammers that really let them get their strength in. Their unarmed combat style would favor getting a grip on their opponent and then doing as much damage as possible, where the opponent's agility doesn't help as much as a straight strength versus strength contest.

Something that most games don't address is skills growing rusty with a lack of practice. Consider your average special forces type. These people are the pinnacle of skill in terms of combat, but the reason they keep that skill is because they're constantly in training. Think about any skills that you haven't used in years, or even over a decade. Do you think you'd be as good at it now as you were when you stopped?

To some extent, I would say that any skill that isn't used recently degrades in time down to a familiarity. They might reaquire the skill more quickly than someone who never learned it, but still, any skills they haven't used in say, a century or so have probably gotten a little on the rusty side.

So an elf has probably done a lot of things in five hundred years, but unless they've got inhumanly perfect magical memories (which may be possible) they have also forgotten a lot or allowed a lot of skills to go rusty over the centuries as well. Only those skills in recent use should be of high level.

As for what sort of fighting style your elves would use, that depends a lot on what sort of elves you're using.

5) The players are doomed to lose in the end.

If I was a superpowerful wizard capable of blowing up a castle with a single spell, I would certainly also learn a spell to protect my castle from being blown up like that.

The simple answer is for every power there is a counter. In the end, other beings on the same power level are going to be in opposition. Of course your average peasant is going to have the mystic equivalent of a fallout shelter to dive into every time a new power comes in to challenge their leige lord. The ones who didn't haven't lasted that long.

So who is going to counter your powerful wizards? Other powerful wizards.

Other options include the gods. All those peasants praying to the gods for deliverance from these horrible magicians wandering around causing damage. I expect that the local priests being a focus for the power of the god and the prayer of the local congregation might well be very powerful themselves.

His arguments are not completely without merit. There is a valid case to be made under the current rules that COM is a waste of character sheet space.

Amusingly enough, he actually missed a point: non-combat skills are for the most part scaled to DEX/5 while combat skills are scaled to DEX/3 and I have yet to figure out a reason as to why.

And then there is the question of why so many attributes only manifest in CHAR/5 levels, making one wonder why one should not just divide the attributes by five in the first place.