Christopher

Spoilered for language
 

Steven Farraday was a mild-mannered comic book writer and illustrator, quietly inking the latest issue of "Defenders of Justice" when the local particle accelerator blew up.  The resultant energy release caused many in the city to get superpowers, including Farraday and his faithful feline companion Sparky, who were both doused in the inks Farraday was using.  The two can now call forth animated illustrated versions of themselves to fight crime.  (The animated versions are just different enough from normal that nobody has yet connected them to Farraday and his cat.)  As Champion and Sparks, the two are stalwart Defenders of Truth, Justice, and Freedom.

Finally getting back into gaming, running D&D 5e's The Sunless Citadel.  The PCs have just encountered the kobold Meepo, who has agreed to take them to see his leader.  There's a password he shouts every once and again.
Meepo: "Meepo will say (word) sometimes.  Is sa--password."
Me OOC: "I almost said safeword.  That's just not right."
Jeff OOC: "That's a whole 'nother kind of dungeon."

Well, you can see that Call of Cthulhu has a sanity statistic and the characters accumulate random insanities as time goes on until the character is lost.
 
With HERO, you can build a mechanic for almost anything you want to run but you need to be prepared to really sit down and think about what you mean by Corrupted by Dark Powers.
 
What would the game effect be?  Will there be intermediate effects or will a character simply accumulate some kind of corruption until it is lost to the player?  Will the corruption be due to player action?  Due to exposure?  Due to exploiting powers best left alone?  Can corruption, once acquired, be lost?
 
If you can answer those questions, you will be MUCH closer to knowing how to do this in HERO.
 

Doc

Meh, its not the blade that decapitates, its the magic of the blade.  And the vorpal sword doesn't do nothing when it fails to decapitate, it just does its normal damage.

That is a mater of perspective.
 
https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/raise-dead
As I read it:
As long as you have the head (in the proper place) when casting the spell, it should just count the "cut neck" as a mortal wound.
If the enemy stole the head, then you have to retrieve it or use a higher level spell. Same way if the target was dead for more then 10 days or had been turned into an undead.

This is a "I wish you into the Cornfield" effect.
 
EDM, Useable as attack is the direct choice. But I loathe applying UAA on any movement power. Much less on Extra Dimensional Movement.
 
Personally I think what might be more balanced would be Severe Transform. This is a effect wich is just shy of death (in how debilitating it is). Severe Transform covers a effect that is "just shy of death":
"Turning a person into a stone statue or an animal"
Trap the Soul turns the target into a gem, rather then a stone statue. Healing by breaking the gem.

Spoilerized for theology, size, and also language:
 

We need to expunge the mathphobes from elementary education, because they are lobotomizing generations of kids to as to guarantee the population is as stupid as they are.

Crypto Exchange Says It Can't Repay $190 Million to Clients After Founder Dies With Only Password

"Rampage II: The Kittening"

(Rise rise dead thread)
I stumbled onto an old post of mine, and it reminded me of THIS thread because it showed that superhumans are not without their own often considerable resources. You can argue that they might lose the moral high ground, but if you want more reasons why superheroes might have pull enough to complicate secret identities getting out... well, maybe the situation below (More meant to deal with registration acts and hard against super politicians than identities specifically) might work for you on why some politicians might seriously think twice about pushing hard on a superhuman community
 
 
Monument (D.C.'s hero)
 
Monument broke through yet another door while PRIMUS and VIPER agents battled it out outside. She found the Senator bound up and ready for transport. She made a note of the security cameras in the room- good.
 
"Monument!" He cried out, "Help me!" His eyes were wide and his face was pale.
 
The agents that were securing him turned and fired powerful concussive blasts that would have broken down a bank vault.
 
They might as well have been firing water pistols. Monument's skin might look like Marble, but it was much stronger than that. The Super heroine waded through the rays of energy as if walking into a headwind. Three punches later, it was all over.
 
She snapped the senator free strap by strap, but continued to do so. She had no love of this man, far from it, but at least while the VIPER agents in this room were down, they could talk.
 
"Senator, I hope you realize just how ironic this is, given your stance on superhumans?"
 
The man looked disoriented, and confused. The sounds of blasterfire continued. Then he seemed to come to, "Ironic maybe, but I stand by my stance. It's what the people want. You super heroes think you're above the law!" Still, he swallowed.
 

"I think the registration act will eventually come undone and a lot of good men and women are going to die because of it," She tried to stay calm, and freed him from the last bond. She hoped Douglas was on the job. She hated putting him in harms way, but the man was ex secret service, he was used to it.
 
"Just get me the hell out of here" The Politician said as if expecting a new threat to arise.
 
"As you like Senator,"  She fireman carried him through the wreckage despite his protests about the indignity of it. Already VIPER was in full retreat, and PRIMUS and the local heroes of DC were victorious.
 
She sat him down, pretending she didn't notice the cameras and spoke clearly, "Take good care of the senator¦ he's been pretty frightened,"  She tried to mix just the right amount of sympathy with pity. Too much of the former, and others would feel the same, too much of the latter, and her contempt would be evident instead of subtle.
 
The senator sputtered.
"No need to thank me Senator,"  Monument inclined her head, "Now, I really must be going. Thank you, good folks of PRMUS,"  and she left.. though naturally under the pretense of leaving she allowed some reporters to wean a few choice comments (Her choosing, not theirs) on the situation as she went.
 
Much later, in her lair, she glanced over the disc again, "This is good stuff Douglas."
Douglas smiled, "Good thing for you VIPER likes keeping records. They hadn't transmitted this yet, that I could tell, but I figure this gives you what you want."
 
"True. We edit out, very carefully, the parts that remotely portray the senator in a noble or brave light..."
"Not much to edit there."  Douglas smirked, but Monument continued..
"....emphasize the parts that have him giving up blubbering willing to give up government secrets, and then later pleading for my help. We should manage to portray him as a coward quite easily, and while folks might show sympathy for a coward, they won't re-elect one."
"Sending it to his rival, or the internet?" Douglass asked.
"Both I think. Run it through the internet in parts first, make sure it looks like a copy of a copy of a copy, then voila!  He disputes it. Claims someone is picking on him. Then we send the original disc anonymously. I pay Donald well he'll make sure the alterations are nearly untraceable. In the end, it won't matter. Seeds of doubt will be planted, and that coupled with the money I've funneled into his defeat will finish him. One less anti super politician in congress."
 
"Donald's one of the best, " Douglas conceded.  "Guess he feels he owes you for getting him out of the Shadow Army."
Monument remembered the cover up she had done to keep Donald's record clean, so he could go back to his family and see his daughter without prison bars in the way. Sometimes she felt guilty, but this was Washington, and compromises had to be made.
 
"I guess he does.. besides, there's a lot we'll do for family,"  The marble seeming heroine let a note of pain enter her voice.
 
Douglas noticed it and asked, "You want to head to Millennium City to,  you know, pay respects at the park?"
 
She shook her head, "No. No more worrying about the past. Just making sure the past doesn't repeat itself. That damned registration act meant any hero not registered was denied access to important information about Dr Destroyer and his minions. Information that could have saved their lives. That's not happening again, not if I can help it"  Inwardly, she hoped the rest of the Civic Guard never found out. Some of them would never approve... never understand.
 
Douglas nodded. He had more respect for her than some of the presidents and Veeps he'd protected in the past. Sure, she sometimes got herself dirty, sure she had an agenda. But it was DC! EVERYONE has an Agenda.
 
 

Nor is there much point to anyone interacting with you at all if you are going to look right at words you actually said and deny having ever said them.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
Feed it to a palindromedary

Going back to the performing arts, here's a little number for you.
 
 

Oglaf.com is absolutely NSFW, but today was an exception.
 

Meanwhile in response to being ripped into the cold in the wee morning, and as soon as his eyes adjusted was forced to withstand a flash attack from a thousand cameras. Punxsutawney Phil then went on a spree of ripping off people's faces.
 
Next year, he will have a Broly (dbz) type power up and destroy the Northeast.

Pathfinder : Mummy's Mask : Wandering Monsters
Nemat: One of the advantages of being an urban adventurer is actually getting to sleep in a bed.

Onka: For a minute there I thought we were going to tart up the gnoll.
Zenobia: ...what?
Nemat: Nothing!

Even if most of the undead in the Necropolis are crowding around the gates like Black Friday shoppers, there's still plenty of random monsters to run into. For example, we're heading towards the second Elegiac Compass location, and realise we’re being followed by some exceptionally unpleasant undead - hairless, festering, so malformed that they’re quadrupedal. Happy, their actual combat prowess isn’t so sophisticated. If they’d just waited until we reached the bathhouse, we wouldn’t have smelled them coming - the place is a swamp.

Asrian: But no naked zombies.
Nemat: Thank the gods.

Nemat does find a Lens of Detection among the wreckage, though.

Nemat OoC: An Inquisitor just found a Lens of Detection - all the criminals leave town. I can go full Mad-eye Moody with this.

Asrian: Well, this was a bust. But not as beautiful as Zenobia’s.
Zenobia: *blushes under her regrown fur*

The other two locations we need to check are the Pyramid of Arithmetic Bliss, and the Tomb of Menket Maatya. Nemat, naturally, wants to go to the latter, so he can exercise his History Geek skillz. Menket was a wizard and astrologer who died about a century ago, who just before his death made arrangements for his tomb.

Nemat: Just before? This was a good astronomer.

Unfortunately it looks like somebody got here before us. The place has been looted, and the crystal from the middle of this compass is missing as well. Nemat launches into a high-speed pursuit of the culprit, and the first thing he finds is a metal skull amid the rubble, which he picks up. Apparently it’s a Gearghost, and it doesn’t like being disturbed.

Skullboy: OI! Getoff! This is my loot! Nobody else gets it!

Gearghosts were thieves killed by traps, and exist to spread the pain by making their own traps. It seems likely he was one of the people the Silver Chain used to loot the Necropolis.

Onka: It would be such a useful undead is it wasn’t bats**** crazy.

Happily, one of Nemat’s abilities synchronises very well with and scimitar-work by his friends, and Zenobia and Asrian both use scimitars. The demented metal skull is promptly dispatched, although it will probably reform soon enough. Off to the Pyramid of Arithmetic Bliss! It’s just as well there aren’t any maths geeks in the party. For one thing it’s trapezoidal.

Nemat: Ah, it’s a conceptual pyramid.

Naturally we try to get in through the topmost floor, first. This could be a problem, since the chamber is black. With spiders. Happily, Onka knows Fireball. Less happily, the surviving spiders pile up around the body of a gigantic dead spider. Which animates. And sprays web at us. Which catches fire in the burning oil we set up as a barrier ( and the toppings contains Potassium Benzoate). Happily, Nemat can easily make himself resistant to the flames, which is even better when Zenobia hits the monster with a Tangleburn Bag.

Zenobia: Doesn’t Tangleburn explode if you try to put it out with water?
Onka: I believe so. Who knows Create Water?
Nemat: *grinning evilly* I do.  

Flux, our technomage, has been mind-controlled and kidnapped by Talisman and the other bad guys. He’ll probably realise that going off with them was a bad idea, but not until the spell wears off.

GM: 24 hours later you go B**** F***ing MINDCONTROL!

Not that some of us have actually realised this yet - we’re still in a smoke and crow-filled California bungalow, where we were trying to pull Black Paladin apart like a stewed chicken. He teleported out before we could.

Hero Shrew: Coward! Come back and fight like a man! *looks around* Where’s Flux?
Allana: He got teleported out. Willingly.
Hero Shrew: … what?
Flux OoC: I’m going to put it all down to mind control.
GM: You’ve seen the way Talisman dresses, right? There will be debate which brain you were thinking with.

Scooter is bit upset. Quite more upset than the rest of the team are used to.

Flux OoC: You weren’t nearly as upset when Fireflash was kidnapped.
Hero Shrew OoC: Letting her be kidnapped was the PLAN. Then it went pear-shaped.
Flux OoC: That’s true. We all panicked a bit when my thingy-detector stopped detecting.
GM: ‘Thingy-detector’ - this is the level of competency Quadrant had before Allana joined.

GM: Does ANYBODY in this team apart from Flux have any occult knowledge?
Allana: Of course not. *pointing around the team from herself, to Scooter, to Fireflash, to Hardlight* Mundane, mundane, mundane, mundane and an idiot.

And least there’s a few minions half-buried in the wreckage we can apprehend. Less happily half the magic circles were destroyed when Scooter burrowed up from underground. And the bungalow is still surrounding by guardian undead.

Fireflash Hi, my name is Fireflash, this is my ID. You’re under arrest.
Minions: Lawyer. Lawyer. Lawyer.

GM: Sonya recognises some of the symbols though ‘Those are planetary symbols! They keep showing up in Sailor M- … never mind’. Her Geek is showing.

Flux OoC: Are these headshot zombies? *BLAM* Nope, still moving - limbs it is then.
Hero Shrew OoC: Unless it’s Saturday Morning Cartoons zombies, who always seem to revert to human at the end of the episode.
GM: Even in Saturday Morning Cthulhu - I mean Inhumanoids.

Hero Shrew: I’m going to have to ask Colin for time off from my other job. I’m going to have to concentrate on finding my friend.
GM: You could always rent out one of those new Sleep Pods.
Flux OoC: Non-zero chance of psychosis though.
Hero Shrew: If we don’t find Flux soon, I’m probably going to go psychotic anyway.

We DO try to track down where the bad guys got the generator, inflatable mattresses, and porta-potty from, but it’s hardly likely that Black Paladin, Talisman, and Shadow Dragon would have been hiding out here eating microwave dinners. This site was probably just one of their attempts to get their Big Project to work, and they’ve probably taken Flux back to their actual hide-out. And we’ve got no way to contact Alberich, the mage that showed up to assist in the previous battle. That doesn’t stop him and his Cabal (which apparently includes a necromancer, a former vampire, and a Moreau voodoo-practitioner) from finding us.

Allana: Mr. Alberich is here. Sorry, I never found out if Alberich was a first or last name.

From the scent Allana picks up, the wolf-Moreau apparently used some of Scooter’s hair to locate the team, but she doesn’t stick around long enough to ask. She used her magic to get Alberich here in a hurry.

Alberich: So, there was a magic circle here. Which you destroyed.
Allana: Scooter came up through it and the roof couldn’t support my weight.
Alberich: A collective ‘you’.

Apparently they were trying to bind a fire elemental. Our new Harry-Dresden-wannabe also analyses the residual magic to get us a bearing on wherever Flux was taken, and opens a portal. Using the same black smoky energy Talisman uses. This doesn't reassure Fireflash and Allana. But they’ll have to hold Scooter back once Alberich explains.

Allana wisely waves her smartphone through the portal to get a GPS signal first - it’s Ellison Heights, a few blocks from Fireflash’s home. Allana’s plan is to grab Flux and bug out. The room on the other side is nice enough, but Allana can hear somebody watching porn nearby.

GM: The guy watching porn has a stab vest and a shock rod. He uses it on Girl Scouts.
Hero Shrew: What???
GM: Ok, that come out wrong - he uses it on anybody that comes knocking on the front door and won’t go away. Jehovah’s Witnesses.

GM: The rest of the guys have gone to get everything on Flux’s shopping list. Flux IS there, gesturing and chanting over a pile of crystals.
Allana: Sorry about this *punches Flux out*

We grab Flux and everything that looks expensive or important and try and sneak out again. Happily, Alberich obliges with another portal. Scooter thinks he recognises one of the Moreaus in the porn, but doesn’t alert the bad guys by ejaculating something to that effect.

GM: And in related news Dysprosium Dawn have a reduced presence on the streets for a while, because somebody rolled them, and they don’t want to say who. That’s because Flux told Black Paladin and Talisman they should steal the materials they need from Dysprosium Dawn.
Flux: I was mind-controlled at the time.

It also takes Allana to remind us we got our copies of Superhero Teams For Dummies from PRIMUS, and we all put it to one side because we were busy.

Fireflash I was in the middle of exams at the time. My copy is back at Mum’s place, at the bottom of the ‘to read’ pile. Or maybe in storage.

And Scooter is back working the door at the Collar Club when some guy in a suit apparently offers a job. He’s one of those excessively friendly people that leave Scooter baffled.

Hero Shrew: Um, OK? My shift ends in an hour.
Strange Guy: Great! I’ll meet you inside - take in the ambience. You stay you, champ.

Hero Shrew: So what’s this job? I’m already working two.
Strange Guy: It’s not a job offer, it’s a revenue stream. Call me Rep.

Rep: You’re an important guy, Scooter - working a place like this isn’t really image-friendly.
Hero Shrew: Hey, it’s the best titty-bar in the Zoo.

Rep: We’re talking endorsement deals, licensed merchandise. You eat a lot of those food bars, right?
Hero Shrew: Wow, you’ve really been doing your research.

He also knows where the other team members live and work - or at least those with public identities. He also knows all about the importance of keeping secret identities secret. But apparently going to Allana’s clinic or Fireflash’s home would be more sleazy than going to the Collar Club. He only wants 15% of whatever deal he arranges for us, after Scooter talks it over with the rest of the team. Scooter calls Fireflash, at 3AM. She answers the videophone naked, but he doesn’t comment.

GM: He works at a titty-bar.
Hero Shrew: I see LOTS of co-workers naked.

Fireflash So what impression did you get?
Hero Shrew: 15% seemed fair?
Flux: Net or gross?

Hero Shrew: Can I get an action figure?

Apparently the Rep also represents people like Sapphire, and a few of the Bay Area teams. Fireflash calls her mom to get advice - she’s a commerce attorney for accounting firms - and arranges a lunchtime meeting with the Rep, herself, her mom, and Flux. Hero Shrew needs to sleep, Hardlight has a krill-farming meeting he can’t afford to miss, and Allana wouldn’t fit in the chairs. Or perhaps she would have - the Rep has actually arranged reinforced steel chairs with the restaurant.

Rep: Miss Helstrom, Mr Flux! And this gorgeous creature must be your sister? I know, I know, it’s an old compliment, I know she’s your mother. Afternoon, Mrs Helstrom, charmed to meet you.

Rep: I can see Nocturne as the spokesperson for brassieres. What’s the biggest complaint for large-chested women? Lack of support!
Fireflash *comparatively flat-chested* Really.
Rep: And swimsuits for you!

Rep: I’m talking those three magic words in marketing - Collect. Them. All.

Fireflash’s mom certainly likes everything she’s hearing, and the example contract he brought with him is comprehensive.

Flux: Why us?
Rep: You’re new! Used to be Hero Shrew might have come across as tokenism - too much of an uphill battle for me. But now you have Nocturne - two Moreaus on the team, and two women! Great visuals.

Fireflash What do you think, Mom?
Ellen Helstrom: Well, I feel like I need a shower after this, but he really seems to been looking after your interests, not his own.

Fireflash I think we can introduce him to the rest of the team.
GM: At the very least it’ll be fun to watch fur crawl.

Rep: Sonya, you change your outfits all the time, that’s great! Flux, you never change yours. We’ll ramp up the Snake-eyes aspect - all your details are redacted. It’s a SECRET!
Allana: Glowy axes and shields...
Rep: Hardlight is the Accessory Hound! Scooter has to be brushable.
Allana: My toy is going to be HUGE.