Supreme Serpent

Depending on your group, I'd be careful about using "Doctor Doom". If you have big Doom fans/genre fiends in your group, they may not agree with your interpretation of him, even to the point of derailing the game. "Doom would never do that! In FF #blah blah blah..." etc. Be warned.

Might be better off with a blatant rip-off - change the name and outfit, keep the abilities/general thrust of the character. "Dr. Dread" or somesuch.

Maybe try "SANCTION" as a team name.

"General, SANCTION that airfield."

Let's see...

Special

Action

National

Combat

Team

for

Independent

Operations

deemed

Necessary

Baron von Rippenoff - German vampire or battlesuit. Not only is he "rippenoff" people, he's also a robber baron.

Red Rover - canine teleporter

Pool Shark - aquatic hustler who's afraid of the ocean.

Originally posted by Ghost who Walks

3) A "straight speedster" (Flash/Quicksilver) usually doesn't have martial arts or guns. In short...he doesn't do anything that you or I would do if we had super-speed. Consider ciolating this.

In V&V, one of the Crushers, "Mercury Mercenary" did this - speedster with lots of guns and grenades.

Could be fun describing the villain getting off 30 shots in one phase with a single 6-shooter.

(Assuming Hunted's attacks are based off of sharp things, like knives/axes/etc)

May want to consider just making the attacks normal damage dice with AP to represent the "sharp" effect. Instead of 5d6 Killing, make it 10d6 AP. Depending on overall defenses, could still do body damage, but much less likely to immediately smear characters over the battlefield.

"Auntie Bellum" - either:

a) Secretive head of the local Confederate-wannabe VIPER Nest, the CSA-Confederate Snakes of America.

or

brick

or

c) head of villain group along "Big Barda" lines.

Got into it through my brother's copy, probably about 1982-83. First adventure was actually me running "Island of Dr. Destroyer" for my bro and one of his friends. Highlight of the adventure was "Beast", the friend's character w/the 5d6HKA club whacking Dr. Destroyer, and me forgetting/not realizing that I should apply the good Dr.'s defenses...squish one would-be world-conqueror.

After that played on-and-off w/neighborhood friends for a few years along w/other games, until fell in with what has been (with various additions and subtractions) my main group ever since in '86.

"The French Quarter" - This Cajun Count of Crime has the amazing ability to shrink himself down to the size of a quarter! His criminal exploits have earned him much more than two bits!

"Muerte" from the movie "Undercover Blues"

Physical Lim or Unluck?

You could make a house rule about spending XPs to encourage more rounded characters/avoid the MP issue. Something like "can't spend XP on same ability/power twice in a row" and count the whole MP as one power.

So, you get 3XP and buy a new MP slot. Next time you spend XP, you can't put it in the MP, so you instead add it to a different power, bump a stat up, buy a skill, whatever. Third time you spend XP you can go back to the MP.

Originally posted by assault

I made "Dr Lirby Koo" (Dr Kirby Liu in my universe) the founding head of VIPER. But, of course, he's dead, isn't he?

Alan

Hmm, you know with a further slight switch, "Dr. Kirby Lee" would make a nice tribute name for a villain. May have to use that sometime...

Originally posted by farik

We're not including Animated characters since there would be way too many.

Ah. Going off of original post. Now I see your later clarificiation.

Make sure the powers are within conception, and I don't think it's that big of a problem. If the Human Torch keeps coming up with slightly different ways to use his fire powers, great. They're still limited by one SFX, and limited by the active points of the MP (so that autofire AP attack will only be around 4d6 vs his normal 12d6 eb). It makes the character more flexible, but not that much more powerful. However, if Human Torch wants to start throwing Ego Attacks, time travel, and other unrelated things into the MP, just say no - keep the powers related to the character.

Another thing is to make sure that not all of the scenarios are solved by combat. If they are, there's not much reason to buy anything OTHER than combat stuff. OK, you've beaten the villain - anyone got demolitions to disarm the huge bomb? Anyone got science skills to find a cure for the disease? etc.

Well, if a group like VIPER had been around for the last 40 yrs in the US regularly robbing banks, killing people, blowing stuff up, etc with superpowered operatives, high-tech weapons, tanks, etc. then there would be an appropriate response.

In the CU history, that has been UNTIL, which was allowed to come in and operate in the US heavily, then PRIMUS and SAT, both of which are heavily staffed by military personnel. You could have the group technically under the PRIMUS umbrella as far as org charts go.

If you wanted to, you could have the US legal system response evolve further away from modern-day reality given the 40-years extra of "War on Terror" in the super-verse. Patriot Act type laws long established. Restrictions on military use in the US, esp as police very different, or a large special force has been set up to respond (aka PRIMUS, but could decide that the "National Guard" is a very different creature these days, for example).

Don't think it's been mentioned yet - the android cop from "Mann and Machine"

Cartoon Network stuff:

Samurai Jack

The Justice Friends

Powerpuff Girls

Monkey

For an NPC, it just happens. No need to worry about a write up.

For a PC, I'd allow it for oh, $5.00 a use.

THE BROWN HORNET!!!!!

Birdman

(more space supers, but...Space Ghost, Herculoids)

Blue Falcon (?)

Wondertwins (originated on TV I believe, even if their buddies didn't)

Originally posted by Hermit

Hope no one has killing attacks, it would be unfortunate if you had to Nick the saint

Yeah, then we'd be left holding the bag.

BTW, is "Belly like a bowlful of Jelly" good enough for Physical Damage reduction?

We've had a few groups with symbols, but it usually doesn't come into play; it's normally for the "issue covers", meeting tables etc.

I put symbols on costumes alot. Lightning bolts, sun symbols, etc as appropriate to help get power idea across.

Omega has, well, an Omega symbol. Sometimes bends pipes/etc into that shape as calling cards. No deep reason.

Jack O'Lantern, with his big flaming pumpkin head, had all kinds of Halloween themed nuttiness. (1930's character) He would sometimes leave real Jack O'Lanterns around, things like that. More disturbingly, he stashed weaponry all over the city - under street sections, in warehouses, in mobster's houses...all over. Very disturbing when the vigillante pulls out a pumpkin bomb from behind your headboard. (Of course, sometimes it was a sleight of hand effect.) Reasons done: to scare the criminals, who normally DO the intimidating, and to keep the opposition off balance. He did a lot of acting nutso, but was actually very methodical in planning everything out and preparing for contingencies.

Oh, and the freaky laugh could count as a calling card too, I guess.

To paraphrase Champions II :

Pound "Santa", pound the elves, rescue the city and grab the first sleigh outta there.

If your players don't have much traffic with mystic stuff, why not use something else? Alien invasion? VIPER makes its big play for power?

Or, to tie the players in to the mystic war - maybe they're the reason behind it. Got an old mid-level villain they haven't seen in awhile? Thought he was dead/retired/whatever? Nope, he got sick of being beaten by heroes, turned to the dark arts to get an edge - is now a powerful mage, and starts letting things loose that should not be, at first in an effort to destroy the heroes, but it quickly escalates into a general mystic conflict as this upstart has tilted the balance. Sure to be good looks on the player's faces when they realize the evil archmage is Binder or someone --- you know, "Binder" works really well - binding demons, binding souls, etc. to his will...

Well, what would really happen in a comic is that all the telepaths quickly figure out what's going on, and the two teams work together to beat Thanos/whoever's behind it.

Barring that, one of two things happens. Either Xavier and Co manage to flatten the JLA mentally (think Xavier could beat out GL for control of the ring? Ewww...), or Supes and Co walk over the Xmen. I mean, c'mon, it's not like Spider-Man is there to help or anything!

Originally posted by keithcurtis

Even his accent was too "Alpha". I used a Scottish brogue on him that was unimaginably infectious. By the end of the evening, people were all talking like natives of Edinburgh. We called it the "Cody Mactavish Syndrome". It survives to this day whenever players start imitating another character's mode of speech.

We run afoul of the accent issue sometimes too. Another player in a Victorian-era game I was in had a Scottish character, and we all would slip into that accent over the course of the game. In a Golden-Age supers game, my "Captain Incredible!" voice almost took over everyone else's characters. Imagine a less-silly Tick that was more full of himself, and you're pretty close.

(in loud, arrogant, advertiser-like voice) "Halt, EVILDOERS! Drop your weapons and surrender, or I shall be FORCED to thrash you with my INCREDIBLE strength! Your guns are useless against me, for I...am Captain In-credible." (smiles, nods)

I usually end up as an Alpha character. I want things to get done, for the plot to progress, for the villains to get efficiently stomped into the dirt and sent to Stronghold. (adjust goals for other genres )

I've tried taking the back seat lots of times, but often find the groups milling around, and end up in an Alpha role to get the game moving again. Sometimes I can do this through subtler influences/suggestions, sometimes need to lead more directly.

As a result, over the years with the same group, my ideas/directions are often followed. Has led to some frustrating, some entertaining moments. One hero game, we were doing a mutant school thing, and my character was the head of the school. We had started running into BGP, and in real life I was going to be heading off to college. So, to write myself out, I turned my character more into a Magneto-type villain, giving up on reconciliation with humanity, set on taking over, so the other PC's could have fun and angst fighting their old mentor. Unfortunately, the whole group wanted to follow him, and the game died off.

Another game, (Shadowrun), I had a character who was a major action junkie, violent a**hole bull-in-the-china-shop. The GM even gave him extra Karma (XP) for bad plans. Unfortunately, the group didn't really pick up on this. Sad thing was, I didn't come up with the plans, but when I heard someone else come up with a horrible plan, I threw my support behind it and the character bullied everyone else into going along. We had a lot of action, but didn't get much accomplished. But in most games, I use my powers of Alpha-ness for good. After all, with great power...

John Spencer, who plays the Chief of Staff on West Wing, would be good for older Bats.