Supreme Serpent

Re: Characters you've always liked but who never fulfilled their potential...

The Flea - part of his powers were Str/Stun drains/transfers - down the road wanted to expand the powers out to more full-fledged Rogue-type power transfer, but the campaign didn't last nearly that long.

Re: Who is your favorite character?

(except married women -- marriage is revered by the gods as sacred -- widows are fine' date=' though, so just a matter of getting rid of the husband).[/quote']

 

Must spread reputation around...

 

I couldn't really pick any single one. Some are likely more memorable to other players, but for me whoever I'm playing and having fun with is OK with me. They're (mostly) all special in their own special ways.

Re: Desolidification and Teleport Damage

Well' date=' canonically, Steve Long says Desolidification provides no protection against the damage from Teleporting into a solid object.[/quote']

 

That's okay, eventually we'll have a ruling that Teleport doesn't actually move you, so you won't have to worry about it anyways.

Re: Deathstroke

My favorite Arrowhead moment was one campaign where he showed up and one of the heroes quipped, "Who are you? 'Up-man'?"

Yeah, I was a Teen Titans reader and always thought of Slade Wilson as Terminator, not Deathstroke. In fact I believe that's how he was listed in the earlier Who's Who books from DC.

Re: Deathstroke

Uh' date=' one question. Who's this 'Deathstroke'? I know of the DC Comics one, but I get the impression this fellow is not him.[/quote']

 

http://www.waynesbooks.com/SuperHeroRPGs.html

 

Deathstroke is an old Champions adventure from the early 1980's. The villain team, the Destroyers, was originally introduced in the Enemies books. They renamed themselves Deathstroke, and along with this new name the adventure took them in a new direction. They got yet another revamp in 4th Edition Champions Universe, but have at least so far been absent from the official 5th Ed. universe.

 

Created by Kevin Dinapoli, the original group was (left to right in the picture from the module) Deathsinger (mutant, sonic powers, megalomaniac, tone deaf) Frost (mutant, brother of Deathsinger, ice powers), Death Commando (ex-US special forces, psycho, special gear and weapons) Arrowhead (result of mob experiments to get superpowered operatives of its own, brick with 'secret' extra EB power) and Stinger (scientist who got powers from unusual insects, strong, HKA, glides). The adventure describes their change from just a villain team to more of an organization with agents and a support network.

Re: Do you use miniatures?

Some searches or a visit from TheQuestionMan should dredge up a number of topics.

My group uses figs frequently. Some from lines like Superfigs or the Living Legends figures from Lance & Laser, but mostly cheap Heroclix figs. Ordering singles from places you can get most of the figs for .10 to 1.50 each. We also use a lot of cardboard heroes, some of which you can get via HERO.

Re: Looking for Dirty Harry or Bullit

Might have more luck in the Dark Champions section.

Re: "Open-Source" superhero names

Black Knight is probably open.

Changeling

Cobra/Kobra

Morgan le Fey/Mordred

Circe/Sersi

Wizard

Jack O'Lantern

Re: SuperSquad America: Replacing Challenger

I like the idea of Joey. Tech guy who could maintain and improve the battlesuit, and see first hand what changes/upgrades he needs. I like the angle of the guy who was content to be in a support role and never expected to be a superhero suddenly thrust into the role of following the legacy of THE iconic hero for the setting.

As for gender/ethnic issues, have the battlesuit vague enough including altered voice that in theory it could be ANYONE in there. In fact, that could be a way to go about it down the road - make Challenger a 'team within the team' with different people wearing the armor at different times.

Re: What's your comfort range? (More Questions than question)

How many VPPs do we have in that game? It's not that many is it? Electron has one... Hip Hop has a gadget pool... I'm trying to convince Michael to re-write Iron Girl to give her one. Who else? Oh, Crusher had one too, didn't he? Oh yeah, and Journeyman, too. I guess there are quite a few, at least in the T-bolts game. I don't think there's any in the Avengers, though, and only one in the X-Men.

(Crusher had one, but generally wouldn't be used for terribly esoteric stuff anyways.)

Electron -VPP

Batroc -gadgets

Journeyman-magic gadgets

Black Knight-VPP

(Dynasty had gadgets)

(Kolbrandr had VPP)

A lot of the others, while they can't do technically ANYTHING, still have pretty wide capabilities.

In play it generally hasn't been too troublesome, and these are supposed to be top of the line folks, but every now and then I just think "Ah, whatever - if they 'break' the scenario in five minutes we'll just go on to the next one.":p

Re: What's your comfort range? (More Questions than question)

I'm running a couple of 600-point games right now. Actually' date=' at this point I think they're 630ish points. It's actually a little outside of my comfort zone (I'm finding it hard to balance the baddies against the PCs), but I'm actually playing pretty fast and loose with the rules so it works out OK.[/quote']

 

(GMing and playing in same universe)

 

The balancing is an issue with the baddies. I think the main variation is in ability to take damage - we've got some folks that can take tons of hits and some that will go down quick if tagged.

 

Overall though I'm pretty pleased with the power levels in the games. Most PC attacks are around 15d6, dexes aren't outrageous (I think the highest out of the Avengers/Tbolts is a 29 Dex, with most in the lower 20's, some even in the teens). The main issue (for me at least) is how honkin' flexible the groups are. Lots of VPPs and Gadget Pools floating about, and even the characters without them have lots of options. So far pretty much used in a straightforward fashion, but I keep expecting sometime to look at someone's post and go "Umm...yeah OK so they all fall down, you win, adventure over..."

Re: Looking for another character name

Forward Operations Reinforced Combat Exoskeleton: FORCE.

 

Did not read whole thread thoroughly enough; although it's a sequence of borrowings, I missed the part where SS put up his initial one. Mea Culpa my serpentine associate.

No problemo, all about tossing out and refining ideas. This sounds better to me anyways.

Re: Strangest "Plot Generator"

Illuminati cards are good. I have a friend who used those, and also kept a large collection of Weekly World News headlines clipped out to use. "Ok...giant bugs...aliens...Graceland! Check!"

Haven't seen the Fortune Cookie idea used yet.

Re: Game Design: Champions Online

Skill Levels are allocated by drag & drop tokens. The tokens can be moved between OCV, DCV, and Damage buckets and automatically apply appropriately to eligible Powers and Maneuvers. Not sure how to make different types of skill levels quickly differentiable to the player who needs DCV in a hurry.

I imagine could have hotkeys for quick level allocation. F1=all levels DCV, etc.

Re: Deathstroke

I believe they are ALREADY Canadian. You might want to double check' date=' though.[/quote']

 

Deathsinger and Frost are Canadian...or half-Canadian...or Alaskan...or Santa's Elves or something. The rest were originally Americans.

 

OP: Do you plan on re-doing SAT as a Canadian organization? SCT? Super-agents of the RCMP?

Re: Looking for another character name

WARRANT - Well Armored Rapid Response Answer to National Threats

(could be better, especially the ANT part)

"Hold on fellas, can't go in without your WARRANT!"

ACE - Armored (or advanced) Combat Exoskeleton

Could be fun if were originally four members of the team.

SIDEARM - Sealed Infantry Device Engaged for Armored Response Missions

FORCE - Federal Officer Response (or Reinforcement) for Combat Environments

"Come out and surrender or we'll have to use FORCE!"

Re: Deathstroke

I shudder to think of what Stinger could do with Canadian mosquitoes.

Re: A weird alien boarding vessel

What I'm also concerned about is simulating the airtight seal between the two ships' date=' though based on what I see in [i']Star Hero[/i] I'm inclined to handwave it as a "Special Effects" factor of the Clinging.

Maybe a small advantage on the Clinging +1/4 or +1/2 "Airtight Seal". Or just a small adder.

Re: Most Oscure Reference You've Ever Worked Into a Game

Supreme Serpent came up with the idea of using Big Wheel in our New Thunderbolts game. He's pretty dang obscure' date=' if you ask me, since my Marvel-Trivia-Fu failed me on first mention. [/quote']

 

I've always had a fondness for those types of contraptions, like the War Wheel from out of Blackhawk or the wacky things OMAC tended to run into. And Big Wheel vs. Stilt-Girl in an urban setting seemed to offer the opportunity for lots of fun and weird visuals.

Re: A weird alien boarding vessel

I would think Tunneling as an attack would just allow you to make the enemy ship bore through something else...

Re: A weird alien boarding vessel

Which makes sense. The bore can open a hole and breach a small section of the ship (if the boarding shuttle pulls back from the hole) and can probably kill people in the vicinity of the cutting tools' date=' but unless the crew is really unlucky and the boarded ship is very poorly designed it isn't likely to hit anything that could cause it to blow up, heheh.[/quote']

 

"Damnit! I told them to never try to board at the warp nacelles!"

Re: Palladium's Nightbane for HERO's

Killer Shrike has a great website for d20 conversions that may be of limited use in this case; QuestionMan and Lord Liaden also have a boat load of various links, so one of them may have something that's more directly relevant to a straight Palladium conversion.

QFT. Using search terms combined with these poster names will likely bring up some good stuff.

For example:

http://herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23298&highlight=converted+System

Not Nightbane specific, but some of the conversions (assuming links work) to other Palladium-based systems might prove useful.

Re: A weird alien boarding vessel

You may want to mod it (I couldn't think of how to do it off the top) so that it "stops" instead of just boring through the whole freaking ship. Even at 2", eventually it'll plow through.

Charges could be appropriate.

Re: Palladium's Nightbane for HERO's

Guys? Dial it down a few notches perhaps?

Re: A weird alien boarding vessel

I agree I'd probably do it as an attack myself, if nothing else because someone or something else might get in the way.

(Really it should be both, but HERO doesn't handle 'effect dependent on target' effects very well without handwaving or custom limits/advantages which is just another form of handwave...)

Partly I'd say it depends on how it's envisioned. If it cuts a nice clean hole in the hull and won't hurt anything next to the wall, tunnelling might be more appropriate. If it also might fry whoever's on the far side then an attack is more appropriate.

In order to show that it's not just a way to drill holes and leave a swiss cheese enemy behind, could put limits on it that stipulate the Battle Borer gets stuck in the breach afterwards - can't just pop back out on its own, serious undertaking to remove.

Depending on the alien tech available, also other ways to deliver the cargo. Temporarily make the section of hull desolid, allowing the troopers to pass through it (or 1-phase desolid devices for the troopers, allowing them to pass through the hull), or a short-ranged teleport.