DoctorItron

Are the zombies available for free? I'm thinking of opening a horror theme restaurant. Will consider using them as either waitstaff or appetizers.

Wanted: summoner From the Most Evil of All Evil Overloads: Come, enjoy a lucrative position at the most evil organization ever witnessed by mankind. Together, we will make humanity tremble at our feet. Looking for a magician specializing in summoning. You will be paid a weekly salary yet have to do very little for it. All I ask is that, upon news of my demise, you promptly summon my soul back from hell and place it into a body. Said body will be provided by my other henchmen. In addition to your salary, benefits include full health benefits (including superhero insurance) and an unlimited supply of sacrificial virgins. Please include references and salary history. EEOC. (In fact, hunchbacks and others with hideous deformities will be given preferential treatment in my armies of evil.) No smokers, please.

The character would have to encounter the hero and the secret ID. Upon meeeting Batman, the character would have no idea that Batman was Bruce Wayne unless the character previously met Bruce Wayne. As GM, I would probably require a PER check after the character met someone in their hero ID and secret ID, and I'd apply modifiers for targets with Mental Defense.

The detect looks okay to me. It's pretty expensive and, although powerful, is not unbalancing. I would limit it to line of sight - it can detect invisible people, but not people on the other side of a building. The mentalist still needs Mind Scan to locate faraway people and attack people through walls. Invisibility to the mental sense group would allow someone to hide from the power. One possible headache for the GM is that the PC will be able to easily discern when an NPC has been replace by a robotic duplicate.

Re: Re: Re: One minor point Agent X, I'm with you. My post probably wasn't clear enough: I agree that Option 2 seems like the most accurate option. I presented the other options as possibilities only because I didn't have time to reread all the prior posts - some of the posters have been too venomous for me to waste time rereading all of the things written here.

Re: One minor point I think Patriot said that Vanguard did the teleport-with-the-floor thing on prior occasions and had similar problems, so it doesn't sound like GM fiat. Sounds like some sort of Side Effect limitation on the power. Vanguard's player either: 1) Forgot about his limitation. If that's true, then retconning is legitimate, as the character could have remembered that his teleport causes collateral damage, even if the player forgot. 2) Teleported despite a GM warning on the risks. I think Patriot said he reminded the player about Vanguard's Code v. Killing or Protect Innocents disad *before* the teleport. 3) Got screwed by the GM. This is only the case if Vanguard's teleport has no relevant limitations on it.

I think a gentler approach might work. Rather than having the whole world go after Vanguard, just have Lichtenstein push for extradition. This hits the world news, turning public opinion against Vanguard. Perhaps Eurostar is wanted for their part in this mess, too. Eurostar won't bother to show up in court, and let the players see that Eurostar is hated/feared by people in part because they ignore laws. Then ask Vanguard if he shows up in court... If yes, run a trail. It sounds like a conviction is likely. Maybe, just as the trial is ending, the courthouse is attacked and Vanguard helps save many lives, earning a light sentence in the process. The player will hopefully learn from the ordeal. If he avoids court and goes into hiding, then the rest of them has to choose between bringing him in or joining him.

I'm not sure how the rules officially handle it, but I run games so character death occurs only after the character is at negative starting BODY (calculated before Suppress or Drain effects). Example: Joe Normal starts with 8 BODY. Joe gets hit by a Suppress that siphons away 7 BODY, leaving poor Joe with a mere 1 BODY. Then "1d6 NND KA guy" hits Joe and rolls a massive 6 for damage. Joe has -5 BODY (cough, cough). He's dying, but he won't be dead until he's at -8 BODY. If the Suppress turns off before Joe takes more damage, then he'll pop back to 2 BODY (-5 plus the 7 previously suppressed, or 8 original BODY minus 6 from the KA).

If you remember the first airing, rather than a rerun, then you're not getting old, you already are old. John "there's one way to stop getting older, but I don't recommend it" Speroni

#1: My single favorite Champions product of all time is the BBB. It fixed copious rules problems in earlier editions and got everything into one book. I forgive the self-destructing binding. #2: Strike Force. Great info for GMing (even for non-super or non-Hero games). #3: Zodiac Conspiracy. I was just looking through it the other night gleaning some ideas for my current campaign. All of the "Ultimate" books never did much for me...

Yep, soft normals will take considerable BODY damage (7, on average). But that's not surprising considering that the attack tosses people 10 meters. I see the attack as more of a tool against hordes of monsters, agents, and martial artists. For normals, the TK guy might grab them with a weak area effect TK, imprison them in an area effect entangle, or surround them with a force wall.

Farkling, I think the power is good as written. The disads don't really matter much if it's going into a multipower. Don't sweat over whether it does or does not do BODY. Breaking windows and other stuff can be attributed to special effects - IMO it's such a minor thing that there's no need to work out the mechanics.

Note that multiple multipowers are often *less* efficient than a single big multipower, so I don't see any red flags there. I use multiple mutipowers to speed up play. Let's say I want to build a flying speedster. I could get one big multipower and stick everything in there. I'd rather make separate multipowers, one for movement and one for attacks, because it's much quicker to play - "Pick one power from menu A and one from menu B". Lets' say I put 60 points into each pool. Well, if I made one big pool with 120 points it wouldn't cost any more, but I could put a huge honking 120 point attack in there. I'm actually dealing with this in the campaign I'm GMing. The speedster has a very flexible multipower but he needs a spreadsheet to list his most common multipower configurations. I want him to pull the movement powers into their own multipower to speed up combat. I guess multiple multipowers could become a problem if a lot of limitations were stacked on some of the pools.

Darren, I purchased the product in part because of this thread. I read the playtest and liked it, so I figured $12 to get the real thing was a fair price. After downloading the file, I felt that the playtest was better than the actual PDF product, solely because of the overly restrictive security settings on the PDF: 1) Commenting is disabled. I can't annotate the document to make notes. 2) Copying is disabled, so I can't grab a chunk of text and make notes outside of Acrobat Reader. I sent an email to orders@herogames.com ("Re: Question about Shades of Black PDF") a few minutes ago. Please take a look at it when you have a chance. I don't really need a reply, but I think I raise valid points about the product. I don't think they negatively impact product sales of the Shades of Black PDF because people don't find out about the settings until after they've paid. However, perhaps purchasers of earlier PDFs stayed away from Shades of Black. (I checked Digital Hero #1 and I can Copy text, so I suspect these security settings might be new.)

Polaris, I think your idea is workable, but (depending on your game world and players) I think the rebellion has to move slower, and would likely be the focus for an entire campaign. As others pointed out, VIPER could not grab the entire world at once. Too much opposition. VIPER could instead focus on taking over weak nations first. Portion of Africa, the Middle East, Central America, and other areas with lots of turmoil. The rebellion could consist of VIPER openly sending a large strike force, or it could be more subtle like staging a military coup, bribing an heir to the throne, forming an alliance with the current ruler, etc. VIPER would have to use subterfuge against stronger/larger nations. VIPER might be able to gain control of the USA by infiltrating VIPER agents into the governement. There's the cliched plot of a VIPER undercover agent getting elected President, but you could opt for a lot of other variations. Imagine if the governors of all the states in one portion of the US were loyal to VIPER. Those governors could use their clout to back Senators who were loyal to VIPER. And so on... Or, VIPER might realize that the true path to power is to control the minds of the people. VIPER might start to take surreptitiously (sp.) gain control of media (news and entertainment) companies. Imagine if all news broadcasts were in fact controlled by VIPER...

There's no hard and fast rule. A lot depends on the individual characters. For a "typical" group of four 200 point heroes, I'd say that the following opposition might be balanced: 1) Four 200 point villains, or 2) Eight 100 point agents, or 3) One 350 point master villain A lot of it is subjective, though, depending on the actual players and characters. A group of detective-style 200 point characters without many combat skills might be challenged by a single 200 point combat-oriented villain. If you're starting a new campaign, give the villains motivations other than killing the player characters. If it turns out the villains are way overpowered, they will beat the heroes, accomplish their real goal, then escape. The heroes get to heal. Then, for the next adventure, use villains that are a little weaker. Eventually, the players will have enough experience to go after the original villains that wiped the floor with them.

Q: Doctor, can you remove this foot growing out of the middle of my forehead? A: His pants are engulfed in flame.

Q: So, Foxbat, why do you prefer light beer? A: Our plan is to substitute them with Folger's crystals.

I dislike reading large volumes of text on a computer. Sure, e-books can be printed on a home inkjet, but then that makes the real cost much higher because of ink cartridge costs. And we only wind up with poorly bound, single sided books that smudge as soon as they get near any moisture Tangent #1: Has anyone brought an e-book to a printing shop to get a nice copy? How did it turn out, and did it cost as much as I fear? Tangent #2: Has Hero ever considered releasing the same product in print and e-book formats at the same time? I'd *love* to have electronic versions of Fred and Champions.

Ditto on the cardstock working well. /begin run-on sentence/ Since most of us are probably printing these on an inkjet, and many printer inks smudge when they get wet, and many gamers have soda and other foods around the table, it's probably best to seal the surface so you don't have to print and cut a new set of maps for every game session. /end/ After cutting, try spreading them face up on cardboard or newspapers, then spray with clearcoat. Laminating is always an option, but it will be a lot tougher to trim all the maps to size.

We all love you, Mr. Vimes. You've had enough fun at DragonCon, now get back to work. I like the maps a lot. I have one nit-picky comment: the backgrounds for the lab interior are too dark. I prefer the lighter background used for the other building maps. John "Mr. Vimes might own stock in an inkjet cartridge company, and he's doing this just to make us use ink" Speroni

Q: May I have a cream cheese & ketchup sandwich? A: A case of beer and 13 buckets of dirt.

Q: What is Teleios trying to improve to further his nefarious goals? A: Anubis, Ally McBeal, and William Shatner.

Do you mean the Stormwatch story? I wasn't familiar with it before your posting, so I don't think it had an influence on me.

Q: What is CLOWN's favorite deathtrap? A: Three giraffes playing the kazoo.