Zed-F

Re: Fallen Son Soulbarb would be able to tell (either immediately, or with research) whether this child truly is the threat it is claimed to be. This sort of problem is well within her area of expertise. She has the ability to see souls directly and has enough mystic acumen and occult knowledge to be able to determine the proper course of action. If this were to occur early in her career, while she is a Dark Champions character, Alister's claim would be verified and she would discover she has little choice but to kill the creature masquerading as an infant, and probably in some specific fashion. With some reluctance, she would do so. She would then track down Alister and ensure he pays for his crimes, probably by being sent or dragged to Hell as he deserves. Doubtless there would be complications along the way, but the nature of the threat the creature poses would be real enough and not easily avoided. If this were to occur later in Soulbarb's career, when she's more of a Standard Champions character, she would discover that the child is really a child and not a monster by nature, but that the curse Alister described is not inevitable. She would investigate and discover what it is that would be required in order to prevent it from being fulfilled, and do her best to ensure that the evil Alister foresaw would be thwarted. Naturally there are lots of ways that could happen, depending on circumstances. She would probably prefer not to take care of the child herself, however; she knows enough NPC mystics that odds are good she could find another who would be willing to give the child a good home and the care he/she would need to resist turning to evil. She would still ensure Alister is brought to justice. Sylph, on the other hand, isn't nearly as savvy about things mystical as Soulbarb, despite being mystically empowered herself. She's also much less willing to consider killing as an alternative, especially of something that looks to her like a little baby (though the missing navel is wierd.) She might have to try to contact the avatar of Dionysius (who might redirect her to the avatar of Athena) in order to get a clue of what to do about the baby. She'd be happy to take care of it temporarily, but she really doesn't see herself as a mother at this point in her life; she's still in university and her life is very much in constant flux, even more than usual for a superhero. She probably wouldn't be too worried about Alister Hammond's fate unless she happened to run across him by accident.

Re: Your PCs might be Underpowered if... It's not a 'slip-up'. LB is taking quotes from this thread and making a story out of them. As such it's quite germane to the thread's topic.

Re: Force Field Is No Good? IMHO visible + non-persistent shouldn't really exist independently. They ought to be merged with Costs END to Activate.

Re: Force Field Is No Good? I have to agree with this. Moreover, approaching things from a standpoint of 'Armor is better because I can put munchkin lims on it more easily and I get more free perks out of the deal that would be expensive to purchase outright' is lame. You should be approaching it from a standpoint of 'what's more in-concept for my character?'

Re: Force Field Is No Good? And most GMs won't allow it on account of the order of fromage.

Re: Force Field Is No Good? Don't forget as well that Force Field is better if you want to stack advantages that affect the amount of effective defense you actually have, such as hardened. FF 10/10, Costs End to Activate, Hardened costs the same as Armour 10/10 But the FF will be more effective if facing AP or Penetrating attacks, which seem quite common (especially given 5e advantage stacking rules for HAs and HKAs.)

Re: In Character: A Critical and Unauthorized Look at Disadvantages ... The unfortunate ranty tone makes it a bit of a difficult read. His points tend to get lost in the noise as a result, I found.

Re: Wrath Of The Anicent Pharaoh Soulbarb is a street level character at heart and really doesn't have a good reason to leave the general vicinity of her home city at this point in her career, so moving right along... Sylph might be there if there was some other globe-spanning threat going on, there was a lead in Egypt, and UNTIL had provided transportation. However, this sort of thing (huge undead armies) is really a bit out of her league. She'll defer to other teammates if any are present, or UNTIL if they aren't. That said, she is really good at tying up agent level opposition in general, and if the campaign is trying to take things up a notch or two power-wise, she could in theory do a whole lot to slow down that army if she can get enough plants bending to her wishes at once.

Re: WWYCD? #80: Future Hope or Hellspawn?

Re: WWYCD #81 A True Test of a Hero If I were switched into Soulbarb's body -- freak out. I really don't want to have to deal with her life. Aside from the gender switch, I now have literal demons to deal with, and I suspect I would not get most of her powers. I haven't had my soul conjoined to a demon, nor do I know anything about magic or crimefighting. I get all the downside but without the upside. Soulbarb switched into my body could probably cope pretty easily once she got over the shock. She's not much in tune with her femininity anyway, and knows a lot more about programming than I do about magic. She'd be surprised at being married and having a daughter, but could probably adjust. She would try to see if it's a fake, if there's a way she could return, etc. and my wife would probably think I'm getting a little too much into RP for my own good for a while, but assuming there really is no magic and the change is permanent she'd likely be happy enough in due course -- though she'd worry whether her soul is still bonded to a demon or not, and "I" would become a lot more active in our church as a result.

Re: WWYCD? #80: Future Hope or Hellspawn? Soulbarb just groans at more dimensional madness. She's not about to have any kids (and in fact at this point in her career is biologically unable to,) and would take the idea that she'd adopt with extreme skepticism; she's not ready to raise a family at this point in her career and has no intentions of doing so. She does know at least a little about dimensional magics, but not yet enough to send them back where they came from, so she'll just have to get them both to settle down until she can sort out this mess. Hopefully Imagine will pop up sooner or later to get these two back where they belong. Sylph: "Alaric and I have a son someday? And Magnesia and I adopt a daugther? Squee! On the other hand, I probably shouldn't be too surprised that Dionysius would be trying to turn my son's dimension into a new ancient Greek paradise, like my daughter's is. After all, he's been tempted to try the same thing here a time or two. Why don't we all go have a chat with him and sort this out? And no, son, that doesn't mean I'm about to play favourites! Well not more than normal, anyway. We can call your father in, he'll make sure everyone stays on the level."

Re: Video Hits All characters: if it's got to my character then then there's no stopping the signal; none of my characters would normally be investigating other heroes' private lives. Since the cuckolded individual is going to find out one way or another before long, try to break it to 'em gently, preferably by getting the amorous couple to do the responsible thing and take care of their own messes. In Soulbarb's case, she'd also check for evidence that all may not be as it seems, and react accordingly.

Re: Only You Can... Soulbarb: Soulbarb would groan at another visit from dimensional duplicates, even if she herself isn't among them. She might suspect that she did once have a dimensional duplicate in the visitors' home dimension, but that one of her other dimensional duplicates killed that instance of her. (Fortunately the auto-genocidal duplicate is no longer a threat as far as she's aware.) In any case, a world without Soulbarb is a world without Camuranima. At her usual power levels, the world in general and Houston in particular would actually be a better place overall without her because Camuranima would not be around behind the scenes mucking things up. Eventually Soulbarb does get powerful enough to confront Camuranima and get rid of him, but she isn't there yet. Neither is she a member of a supergroup at this point in her career, but most likely what any future supergroup would need out of Soulbarb is her mystical expertise -- especially her knowledge concerning demons and the afterlife in particular -- and her ability to see souls directly. Things are probably not a lot different in a world without Sylph except that there would be more patients in the local hospital. If she were not around, some other hero would step up to the plate, as is typical for Silver Age universes. There's really not much that's unique to Sylph -- there are other experts on Greek mythology around, and her healing powers, while handy and not terribly commonplace, certainly are not unique in her campaign world. Most likely what she would be needed for specifically is to deal with some problem related to a species of intelligent super-kudzu that is aggressively taking over their campaign city but defying all attempts to communicate with it, let alone defeat it. Sylph's powers of plant empathy and control would blossom to new heights in that sort of environment and could indeed be key to establishing a dialogue with the new race.

Re: Why the dislike for Find Weakness? We'll just have to see what new, better balanced tools Steve plans to add in the toolbox to replace it.

Re: Missing Airliner *Wonders whether detect magic would pick up the energy*

Re: WWYCD: "Dear Superhero" (Warning: Ugly situation) Very debatable, depending on how many conspiracy theories might exist and/or be credible in the game world in question concerning 1st world corporate exploitation of the 3rd world, cold war style proxy battles between other nations, and so forth. If you live in X-files world, like many super-vigilantes or people with powers seem to, the problems in the 3rd world are very potentially mere symptoms of bigger, better hidden problems at home.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Hm, like many others, I enjoyed SFB back in the day, but gave up trying to find people to play it with long ago. These days I get my sci-fi-warfare fix from computer games instead. Games with tactical starship combat simulations are out there if you look for them! Some of them in the Star Trek universe, even a few in the SFB version thereof.

Re: WWYCD: "Dear Superhero" (Warning: Ugly situation) It might, depending on the nature of what those powers can be expected to be good for in the character's game. Certainly for a cinematic type game, the GM can be expected not to throw the characters into a situation they really acn't do anything about, so there is a certain amount of GM trust involved here. On the other hand, saying you'd prefer to clear out the log in your own country's eye before the splinter in your neighbor's eye could be a valid response as well, for some games.

Re: WWYCD: "Dear Superhero" (Warning: Ugly situation) Totally depends on the tone of the game world if you ask me. A lot of games would answer yes, superheroes would do something! For those games where the answer might reasonably be no... maybe we're now talking about a super-vigilante game or a people with powers game, instead of a superheroes game. And there's nothing wrong with that! Different strokes and all...

Re: Missing Airliner Soulbarb is a detective type, but she's based in Texas and is a steret-level super, not a nation-spanning one. Odds are pretty good someone else with a mystic background -- probably someone higher profile -- would be along to investigate it long before she would. If, by GM's hook or crook, she happened to be the one on the spot... assume the authorities will cover the technical end of things, since she's not really well-equipped to look into that anyway, and start looking into the mystic end of things. If there's magic involved in the plane's disappearance, she could likely figure it out. Failing that, she's a pretty good detective; perhaps there are clues about to be found. She'll also call up Nocturne, her conspiracy-theory-loving boyfriend, and see if he's heard anything that might point her in at least a semi-useful starting direction. Sylph is not a detective, and isn't well-suited to be one. If UNTIL has a direction to point her in, she'd be happy to help, especially if there's a possibility the plane may have crashed and there could be survivors that need medical attention and/or rescue. Failing that, if the plane has truly vanished without a trace, there's only a couple things she could do: -- listen to the voices of the planet's plants, carried on the breeze, for whispers of things more sensed than seen, which might be related to the plane's disappearance, -- or, more problematically, call upon the capricious Greek gods for divine assistance. She'd be reluctant to do the latter unless matters were really desperate though.

Re: Morty The Mugger Still Can't Catch A Break... Soulbarb suggests to Morty that he should perhaps consider another line of work. Her mere appearance causes Morty to promptly soil himself. Sighing to herself, she takes a moment to quickly peer at Morty's soul to make sure he's not under some sort of compulsion to act this way when he's so obviously unsuited for it. Assuming he's an entirely normal (if incompetent) mugger, she'll find the nearest cops and let them take him in. Attempted assault is still a crime. Sylph, being more sympathetic, will stop to make sure Morty isn't seriously injured, e.g. as with a fall down a manhole. She will probably give him a short lecture about abandoning a life of crime and then let him go.

Re: A world of your own In Soulbarb's world? Yes, the males would also get raped, flayed, and otherwise violated. It's as much a psychic and mystic experience as a physical one. The powers each individual had would depend on the nature of the summoned demons, of which there would be a significant variety. In Sylphs's world, the more common powers would be thematically associated with the various Greek gods as they would be the source of divine energy for the magically powered society; there would be a magical power cycle there flowing to and from the gods just as there is a water cycle in the real world. Sylph's own powers of plant control and shaping would be one of the most common power sets, but there would be several other common ones as well.

Re: A world of your own Soulbarb would be in a world where everyone is sexually attacked by a ritually summoned demon as a rite of passage at puberty, and either dies from the experience or gains a demonic soul-rider from it. I can't imagine anything good coming of this. Sylph would be in a world where cities no longer exist as we know them; instead cities would be something closer to an Ancient Greek version of Tolkein-esque elven forest cities. The Greek gods would still walk the earth, and everyone would acknowledge their divinity. There would probably still be science, but the directions it would have taken would be very different, and more closely coupled with divine magic. Sylph would probably still be a university student, probably still majoring in fine arts, and still feeling that she maybe should be doing something more useful with her life, such as becoming a healer.

Re: June 2nd Not exactly accurate, which is important. You can characterize in a MMO, and this is entirely in the hands of the players. Which, as you point out, means that very few people characterize. However, it's very difficult to tell a story or come up with any sort of plot other than the one that comes with the package in an MMO. Since telling a story is a very important part of roleplaying, it could very easily be argued that it's impossible to roleplay in just about any existing MMO. If you can't tell a story, that removes a significant amount of the fun of characterizing your avatar well.

Re: Your character's theme music! Sylph: