Bloodstone

Re: How much change to a character do you consider it a new character.

I agree with this statement. Changing them all together makes a fundamentally new character. Changing any of them individually might not. People can assume new identities without changing who they are, so a name change does not fundamentally alter a person. Who we are is not strictly determined by our gender, either, so while remaking a character in a different gender might be a drastic change, it doesn't, I think, mean a whole new person.

 

Changing a character's history is a tougher subject. I think what matters is the degree of the change, and whether or not the change is keeping in tone and theme with the original history. Obviously if Bruce Wayne's parents had owned a candy factory and had never been shot, that would seriously change who he grew up to be, and thus change who he was. But if they had been killed in a terrorist attack instead of being shot, that would seriously alter his history without necessarily changing the character as we know him. He could still very well grow up to be ruthlessly devoted to protecting the people of Gotham.

I've had characters change their names plenty of times and if there is an in game reason for it, that's cool Even if the in game reason was as simple as "Felt like I needed a change" or "On the run from the law"...

I've had characters change genders, orientation, species and legal living status before and again, if there's an in game transformation, this is a different matter entirely.

Even histories can be change in the course of a game, what with time travel, implanted false memories, reality warping retcon punches and what have you.

That's all just a part of character growth and development

Lets take my Pulp character: Frankie McAdrian is a quintessentially quirky detective from Chicago that fights Nazis and talks to angels.

I could file off some serial numbers and change him into a smoking hot Russian woman named Ivanna Blavatsky, who uses her psychic powers to solve crimes and look glamorous while doing it. Almost nothing would have to chance stat wise to do this. The sheet is the same except for name, gender and history. But Ivanna and Frankie are fundamentally different.

Sure, they share a skeleton, but the meat of the characters is different.

Re: "Holographing" a la Greatest American Hero

OOPS! Sorry for the typo

The lim is also covered in the APG p85.

If I recall, and it's been a LONG TIME, he uses Holographic Vision as a way of finding people...right?

So you might need to tack on Tracking or some sort of Mind Scan effect.

Can't remember the details of the show well enough to say exactly though

I should get around to rewatching it...

Re: Where to find: Delta and Navy SEAL templates?

Dark Champions for 5th

Re: And now, for your daily dose of cute...

Young flying squirrels' date=' right?[/quote']

 

Japanese dwarf flying squirrels actually.

Re: And now, for your daily dose of cute...

"The council of cute is now in session..."

MOMONGA!

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore

Egg yolk & ground beef can work as a pairing. Heck' date=' they do it with raw egg yolk and beef tartare![/quote']

 

When I have steak and eggs, I usually dip some of the steak in the yolk... and some of the bread in the au jus before dipping it into the yolk

Re: Creepy Pics.

Well, if Im in dark water, I KNOW that theres a huge, toothy fish waiting to eat me out there, somewhere.

 

If Im underwater already, I believe that the appearance of a huge, toothy fish is a logical motivator for me to be creeped out.

 

I dont understand why THIS is my phobia, considering I live in a land-locked state...

I can somewhat relate. I have a mild aversion to open water, though it hasn't kept me out of Lake Michigan or the Gulf of Mexico.

But I'm a bit more reluctant to go snorkeling or scuba diving...

You had a bad experience in a wading pool?

Lake Geneva for me

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore

Dumb question ... are you actually supposed to leave the egg on the burger when you eat it' date=' or take it off and eat it separately? I have trouble imagining egg and burger tasting good at the same time ...[/quote']

 

Together... I love the taste of yolk, but not egg whites, so this particular combo lacks maximum appeal for me...

Re: "Neat" Pictures

She seems to be REALLY enjoying the ride... probably do to her lack of pants...

Re: How much change to a character do you consider it a new character.

All the characters, I make, regardless of system or setting, exist in sort of my own mental continuity.

So I don't tend to just pop one character out of one story and insert them into another unless there is some plausible in game reason for me to do so (and there have been many times)

As such, doing something as dramatic as changing a characters name, gender and background story but leaving most of the stats the same is, to me, making a fundamentally new character.

Re: "Holographing" a la Greatest American Hero

I'd probably just re purpose the Psychomentry (-1/2) limitation

Re: A Thread for Random Videos

It's been done...

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

While they may not be cosmic or magic' date=' the mechanics still come down to "Whatever is needed at the time"[/quote']

 

Not necessarily. You accumulate a few dozen slots in a large MP and pretty soon it's cheaper to just buy a limited VPP. In some cases very limited.

 

This is what I did for my speed brick and my uber fire and ice blasters. They had a lot of powers, but they certainly didn't have a "solve anything" level of versatility. Just a ton of flexibility with their chosen SFX.

 

Some dude that has a Brick Tricks VPP, for example, is probably not teleporting himself out of trouble, mind reading the location of the BBEG or doing any other serious plot busting with his VPP.

 

Now that we've started talking about it, I think this is the biggest difference between a 400+400XP character is that they may have the same versatility as a VPP, but they've purchased the powers seperately one at a time. The VPP character buys that versatility in one chunk, then uses the points left over to beef up the rest.

 

We regularly respec characters (single power grows into an MP or set of linked powers, MP grows into VPP and so forth), but yeah, in general, characters that are played over time tend to pick up quirky odds and ends while starting at high levels tends to result in tighter, more focused builds.

Re: Only Breathe's Through Skin

That's cool, but depending on which way you went with it, some of my previous suggestions wouldn't necessarily be true...

Re: Only Breathe's Through Skin

...okay, but ant's don't actually breath directly through their exoskeletons.

Insects have breathing holes called spiracles.

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

I've really only skimmed this thread, so forgive me if some of this has been said before, but here are my suggestions:

 

The reason I dislike most games of this power level is that EVERYONE takes a VPP. You have the situation where

Hero 1: What can you do?

Hero 2: Well my Comsmic Dohickey lets me do pretty much anything. Why, what can you do?

Hero 1: Yeah, my radiation suit allows me to do pretty much anything.

This makes those types of games incredibly bland

This hasn't quite been my experience, but VPP's pop up a lot more at high levels at least in part because they actually save you points when you use them to replace the kinds of honking huge MP's that characters like Superman would otherwise have.

Not everyone goes the Cosmic Power/Sorcerer Supreme/Super Scientist route with it...

Re: The cost of Internet

Just as a test, using Google with auto-complete, it took me 4 seconds to get the name of the mayor of New Orleans. It took me 6 seconds to find out who Katie Holmes is married to.

 

I used Katie Holmes to simulate the kind of coverage someone famous would have, and assume that superhero/villain would have the same type of coverage. Google makes things even faster by guessing what you're going to type before you type it, and pulling up results before you finish. I don't need to click a link as the preview tells me what I need to know. I can type B-A-T-M-A-N-S-E and look down and see Bruce Wyane.

Did you use a decently modern computer?

Full sized keyboard?

How fast of a typist are you?

Was it with a fast connection to the internet?

Did you start the browser cold or was it already running?

We're you being shot at at the time?

Re: Only Breathe's Through Skin

This would not necessarily prevent them from swimming. Eels, amphibians and various worms breath through their skin. Frogs have simple lungs in addition to using their skin though.

They may need to live in a moist environment. Permeable skin means they will loose water and dehydrate quickly in a warm, dry environments.

They would be largely immune to choke holds and highly resistant to constriction. They may or may not be immune to strangle holds, as those holds works on a different biomechanical principles. They could still be smothered. HERO tends not to differentiate these sort of things though, treating most forms of choking attacks as pretty much equal.

Regardless, they would have a limited sort of Self-Contained breathing to stop various NND type attacks of the appropriate SFX.

Of course, if they can't control their breathing, they would have an extreme vulnerability to many gas attacks. Permeable skin will mean a similar vulnerability to various types of contact poisons and they can likely be cut easy.

With all that in mind, you probably have at least two or three disadvantages.

What exactly is this race supposed to be? Presumably they aren't warriors...

Re: Real Life Dragon Discovered

I would imagine a terrarrium would be a bit small' date=' they do like to run around a lot. And by 'run' I mean 'leap from a high place and glide.' I don't think one would be happy in anything less than a room-sized area.[/quote']

 

As I recall, the combination of their love of high humidity and need for ants (or other very small insects) are the main challenge to keeping them. And Humidity's not a big problem for a responsible, experienced owner.

 

Not sure exactly how much space they "need". The ones that I've seen at the shows were normally kept in a large chameleon vivarium. I also recall that they don't tend to glide in captivity, as it's primarily a defense mechanism. If they are gliding, it's probably because you've frightened them, which is not ideal for the health of your pet...

Re: Real Life Dragon Discovered

I could make one of these fellas an awesome terrarium.

I've got no first hand experience with keeping them, but I'm told they can be challenging to care for.

Re: Real Life Dragon Discovered

it's a draco.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco_(genus)

These are very well known animals, so while it's a nice picture i don't get the "discovery" aspect...

(seen this all over various social media sights this week)

Re: The cost of Internet

Oddly, I was just thinking on this topic this morning. It comes up in our games with reasonable frequency and I don't feel it's handled as well as it could be because there aren't any real good guidelines.

One really could do a rather in depth article on it...

- Ease of access: How usable is the GUI on that laptop of yours? Can you Google things while driving? How about while fighting super villains? Obviously things like voice control or mental interfaces negate many of these problems. Obviously, this can influence the amount of time a search takes.

- Speed: In a normal research situation, the difference between dial up and broadband is probably negligible for game purposes, but in a combat situation, every second counts. Obviously, connection sped influences how much Extra Time is involved in a given task, though there are other factors as well. The speed of the computer itself is a factor as well.

- Quality of Information: Pulling common facts off the Internet is fast and easy, but there's a finite limit to what you can find. Truly occult information my be hard to find and protected by layers of defense and secrecy. There's a big difference between raw information and useable knowledge, between proven fact and popular opinion. However, cinematicly speaking, the Internet can hold any and all answers...

- Skill: Once you figure out how long a search will take based on equipment and conditions, user skill plays a big factor. A highly skilled user can cut down on the time it takes to return info and/or get better info with their search time.

Obviously, I don't think we would want to actually time this sort of stuff to get super accurate figures, but it might be nice if we developed some sort of chart that people could reference to figure out roughly how long it takes to get good info based on some of the above mentioned factors.

Oracle is amazingly skilled, but I'm not sure that she can accomplish as much with an qPhone in a bad service area that Batman can do with the blazing fast crime computers in the Batcave. That sort of difference could be relevant to a game... especially when we have people who's superpowers basically come down to being 1337. And this isn't even getting into really sci-fi or super powered stuff like cyberware or being able to mentally connect to the Net with your mutant technopathy powers...

Re: Character Names You Don't Have To Feel Guilty About "Stealing"

Of course' date=' there are public domain characters that probably shouldn't use - the Phantom Lady and Blue Beetle are good examples - but there are plenty that are just fine.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in my Thursday night game group that actually knows both of those characters and everoyone there has read comics regularly at some point in their life.

You have to be reasonably well versed in DC comics to recognize the Phantom Lady. Somone might have heard of her recently if only for the internet outrage over her death, but that's probably a stretch.

Blue Beetle woudl be semi obscure too, were it not for the recent appearance in Batman: Brave & the Bold.

Try to use Black Widow though and I think everyone at the table would groan.

Re: Probability Manipulation

Overall Skill levles. Lots of them.

They apply to damn near any roll you would make anyhow.

Re: My new villain : Panzerfaust (comment welcomed)

He is supposed to be a lone villain and should be able to take on a full team of 4-5 heroes all by himself, or at least to be a serious menace for them.

 

PC are built with Champions 6th Generator so they have 60 active points limits and around 40 STR for Telekinesis, and 60 STR for the metal covered Brick.

This guy is a glass cannon. IMO, it's a bad design for a solo villian if he's intended to offer an actual challenge to the heroes, but that's hard to judge without knowing more about the team.

I gather there's a mentalist and a brick? How familiar are the players with the system?

I must confess I lack experience in what could be considered a valid opposition to a HERO team, but I fear his 20d6 area of effect HtH is perhaps overkill...

It's a 20DC punch that can only be avoided by diving for cover. That's a pretty brutal hit even without factoring in the AoE part (70 Stun on an average roll, before defenses)

It's going to be especially brutal against any lower PD, high DCV heroes, like most martial artists or speedsters.

The brick probably won't apreciate the antitank attack, as I doubt he has double hardend, impenetrable defenses.... that one's goign to hurt him.

Both those factors combined will probably be pretty intimidating but...

On the other hand with only 20 STUN he is quite vulnerable to mindblast and 50 STR isn't that much so he could get grabbed by the team. The idea is that he can crush them if they dont team up and coordonnate (wich I hope they will do).

The 60 STR Brick will be able to KO him in two average hits. That's not taking into account anyone else on the team helping at all. This doesn't require any particularly good tactics, like coordinating or anything of the sort. You just hit the (only) big scarry targert on the field with your biggest attack.

Barring bad rolls by the players, this guy will be lucky to get off a second attack unless he attacks by surprise or can maintain some other tactical advantage that we are presently not privy to.

Of course, that first attack might knock out or seriously injure one of the PC's.. not sure if that's what your going for...