JeffreyWKramer

Re: Champiosn Destinies -- Spoiler Request

Re: Superleap UAA??? Especially if you buy it with the "fill in the tunnel behind" Adder.

Re: Superleap UAA??? For the effect gained, it would be far too cost-effective. Cost out how much it would cost to do the same distance with other forms of motion and compare the two numbers. That gives you the reason right there, in my opinion.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Re: How would you build Temporal Immutability? You know, this thread has me remembering a Season 7 episode of STAR TREK: TNG, in which Worf gets stuck in some sort of temporal effect and keeps bouncing around to these alternate Enterprises...

Re: How would you build Temporal Immutability? The Detect/Sense thing is probably going to be it, and maybe the Power Defense (35 or so, only against Temporal Effects, -1). If the immunity is due to some sort of immortality power, appropriate Life Support would also make sense.

Re: Fate of a Champion (no Mitch) Thankfully, splitting up seems to work pretty well in my campaign, just because everyone is into the role-playing, and people don't mind watching while one PC has the spotlight. Each of the characters has their own interests and story arcs going on, and right now we're doing a few weeks where I alternate between who gets the spotlight. Last night featured a great scene with Horus Re doing some investigation into Starguard's past (and making a huge discovery), which was a carry over from the previous week, while the rest of the session involved Warp fighting a group of villains who were after Cateran - all of whom crashed his penthouse condo while he was in his civilian ID, meaning he had to deal with the situation while protecting his civilian identity. Next week will probably feature more solo stuff with Warmaster Fielan, some with Starguard, and Princess Cyrande and Microman II going out to dinner with Micro's "dad", Daniel Collins, and Dr. Silverback. It's sort of like playing some "solo issues" in between the group story arcs, and it's fun because we can do these bits on a smaller scale than the whole group (like last night, when Warp went up against a group of villains that were a bit challenging and entertaining on their own, but whom would have barely registered as speed bumps for the combined Sentinels. I've also run split-fights to a small extent, with no significant problem.

Re: Saving the World It depends on the campaign in question. In my past campaigns, it was about a once-a-year thing that the heroes got involved in an adventure in which failure would mean either the end of the world, or the world changing very much for the worst. Over the years, such stakes have included stopping Dr. Destroyer from detonating nuclear devices simultaneously in 30 major world cities/capitals; thwarting alien invasions; stopping the Masters of Darkness (an evil mystic group) from altering the physics of Earth's dimension such that any technology at or above the level of gunpowder could not function/was not possible; saving the world from a future strongly resembling that in the Terminator movies and stopping an invasion from a dimension where Hitler had won WW II and his extradimensional invasion force included evil versions of most of the PCs. My street hero campaign never involved "save the world" sorts of actions, but they did do a couple of "save the city" scenarios, including one in which a group of villains were going to release a deadly plague in the city unless they received $500 million in ransom and another in which an evil cult was got about 11 seconds from summoning something very bad to this world. In the current, New Sentinels campaign, they are involved in lots of plots that have the potential to be epic in scale, and they have in fact saved one extradimensional world (a magical microverse) from being destroyed by invaders from another dimension. Currently they're looking into things such as another invasion attempt by Istvatha V'han, and I've got a cross-time epic in the works. Then, of course, there's the CRISIS OF INFINITE FOXBATS miniseries, but I can't talk more about that one yet.

Re: AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED opinions

Re: What's Busiek done lately? Busiek writes a very good Conan, both true to the original RE Howard stories and very much in the spirit of the heyday of the old Marvel version. The art has been top-notch as well. Highly recommended.

Re: What's Busiek done lately?

Re: AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED opinions I can relate. Cap has been entirely awful and painful outside Avengers for several years now, as has Iron Man. At this point, I'm starting to feel the characters Marvel kills off are the lucky ones - they don't have to continue to have indignities heaped upon them. But who knows, at this point they'll probably do a post-Dissembled story where the Red Skull and Vermin unearth Diamondback and Hawkeye's corpses and commit necrophilia upon them.

Re: WHy does everything have to be by the rules? I've been playing and (mostly) running RPGs for well over 23 years now, and during that time I've learned to wing it pretty well, but that said, I still tend to stat things out if they are going to be significant to the story or have the potential to interact with the characters in a major way. In DnD, I don't generally need to know the Constitution score of the Duke who's game role is mostly to hire the PCs or pass out information. I certainly don't need to know the Strength of every tavern wench, shop keeper or stableboy. But I do need to make decisions about how tough the bugbears are or how much damage a given trap might do, and it's better to make those decisions ahead of time, to help with the consistency and flow of the game. Similarly, in CHAMPIONS, I don't need to know how many character points a long-retired golden age hero used to have if his only role in the current game is to act as an advisor or to pass along an important clue, but I do probably need to know the stats on the villains the PCs are fighting this week - especially if the villains are to become an ongoing part of the campaign. If a guy has a 23 DEX one episode and an 18 the next, that isn't very consistent. I don't write up one-hit mooks and low-level underlings of the sort Daredevil pounds by the dozen when he goes out looking for leads among the hoods, but I do need to know how the size and Advantages on a master villain's RKA if the plan is for the villains to fight him this week. Beyond that, I really have an aesthetic appreciation for a well-done character design. Maybe that's geeky, but it's there. I have never bothered figuring out how a Ford Taurus and a Dodge Intrepid would differ using the HERO vehicle rules, and I've certainly never statted out something like an electron microscope, but I always know what speciic science skills a given mad scientist has - and whether or not he has access to an electron microscope!

Re: AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED opinions The old Marvel game often gave extremely popular characters stats that were out of line with actual performance/benchmark feats in the book. I think listing Spidey one Strength ranking below the Thing is an obvious example of that. Luke can punch through steel-reinforced concrete with minimal effort and has damaged/lifted things Spidey wouldn't be able to heft on his best day. As for the Goblin and Mary being laughable by Avengers standards, well, that's certainly true if you want to compare them to the Mandarin, the Enchantress or Ultron, but I think most of the time (i.e. - straight fight, barring unusual situational factors) either Norman Osborne or Typhoid Mary would paste someone like Baron Zemo in a fight. Mary is good enough to tag Daredevil in HTH, and DD and Cap are evenly matched... plus her pyrokinesis means that purple sock Zemo wears on his head spontaneously combusts, and Zemo becomes a very unhappy guy. For that matter, I think Cage handled the Goblin a lot more easily than Cap could. That doesn't mean Cap sucks or that Cage is better than Cap, but it does note that Luke isn't exactly dead weight. Cage has also pounded the living crap out of Sabretooth on multiple occasions - people these days forget that before Sabretooth started his career as an uber-XMen villain, he used to be a frequent sparring partner (often teamed up with the Constrictor) for Luke and Iron Fist, and Luke used to pretty much laugh at him. What Luke lacks in terms of being an Avenger is big-picture status. He's mostly a street-level guy who thinks about protecting his neighborhood. He isn't used to thinking about problems on a big scope - national, planetary, etc. In that regard he isn't a good fit - though he's still ahead of Rage or D-Man in that regard, at least.

Re: AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED opinions Ignore the OHTMU listings. They are not very accurate. If you compare their average portrayals, Luke Cage is a *lot* stronger than Spider-Man. He's not in the She-Hulk/Thing class - or even close - but he's well above Spider-Man's strength level - almost as far as Spidey is ahead of him in agility, really.

Re: Fate of a Champion (no Mitch) In general, the two most vulnerable members of the Champions are Nighthawk and Witchcraft, so they'd be naturals for getting killed/knocked into a coma. On the other hand, Mechanon might easily see Defender as the greatest threat, given his tech skills, so he might target Defender with his worst attacks.

Re: How does this VPP look? I'd give that build a -1/2, personally. While Linked to Mind Link would usually be a -1/4 Power Limitation, as Silbeg noted, Mind Link does have the limit of working only on willing targets - and I do consider that to be a pretty big limitation on a VPP, as it essentially means you can't do anything that someone in the team can already do effortlessly. Now, if the character had a bunch of followers/allies with lots of useful skills and bough Mind Link/Any Target/Up to 8 Targets At One Time, well, then I'd give it a -1/4 Lim. This construct isn't much of a Limitation if your team and circle of friends consists of Tony Stark, Reed Richards, Batman, Mr. Terrific, Doc Savage, Indiana Jones and Shang Chi. If it can be either Mind Link or Telepathy, you still have some limits but you also gain flexibility, so I'd be inclined to go with the lowest value of the two (-1/2 would be my call in this case, or -1/4 if the character has ready access to very skilled/competent NPCs or companions and/or an exceptionally thorough computer database.

Re: AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED opinions Re: Luke Cage in the Avengers. He's experienced and pretty tough - much tougher than a lot of people who have been Avengers over the years. Compared to some of the Avengers' bricks, he seems pretty lacking, but match him up against the likes of Hellcat and Stingray and in a lot of situations he looks darn impressive. Bendis has done a lot to rehabilitate Luke as a character, and to demonstrate just how impressive a guy should be if he's bulletproof and able to toss cars around. He totally outclassed the Green Goblin (no lightweight) and Typhoid Mary (among Daredevil's most dangerous foes) in recent stories.

Re: How does this VPP look? Only Skills, Martial Maneuvers and "Super-Skills" at up to the level possessed by the target = -1/2. I base this on the Mimic Pool approach (Only Powers The Target Has, -1/2) with "Only Skills, etc." balancing out the fact that normally VPPs don't allow one to access Skills at all (Skills as Powers = Special Powers). Telepathic link is a reasonable Special Effect allowing for such a construct. If you do it as "Must Follow Establishment of Telepathy at EGO+0 Level", that's a -1/2. If you have to acheive a higher level of Telepathy, the value would change by -1/4 per EGO+10. If you do it as "Only while Telepathy Is In Effect", that adds -1/2 to the Limitation value (though I'd probably top it at -1 1/2). If you base it on Mind Link, the value is -1/2 whether or not continued contact is required, unless the Mind Link is itself Limited in some way (LOS Needed to Maintain, Costs END to Maintain,etc.) that makes continued contact difficult. While Mind Link is limited to willing targets, it is a Persistent Power that at default has a planetary range, which = not much of a limit, particularly if you link to one or more targets possessing lots of useful skills.

Re: I'm building this power... No range for a Radius Power is defined as the character being in the middle - the effect "radiates" from the character. That is not necessarily the case for all No Range AoE Powers, though. AoE Line/Cone with No Range is one way to duplicate effects like a dragon's breath weapon or Cyclops' wide-setting energy beam.

Re: AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED opinions

Re: AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED opinions Well, to be a bit more correct, it was during the exceptional AVENGERS run by Roy Thomas and John Buscema that Pym first started showing signs of breakdown, with the creation of Ultron and the original dissociation into his Yellowjacket persona. He was pretty stable for well over a decade after that, until pretty much out of nowhere Jim Shooter decided to turn him into a very unstable fellow - an insecure, attention-seeking, needy goof who committed one act of domestic violence (he slapped Jan one time) that contributed to his getting booted off the team. Even then, he ended up redeeming himself somewhat by the time that whole arc was finished (helping the Avengers defeat Egghead's Masters of Evil). Steady progress toward full rehabilitation occurred through his Dr. Pym personal in WEST COAST AVENGERS and through Kurt Busiek's exceptional run on AVENGERS and the AVENGERS FOREVER miniseries. Now, with the success of the exaggerated, over-the-top version of Pym in ULTIMATES, the mainstream Hank Pym lost about 30 years of character development at the hands of Chuck Austen and Brian Bendis. Pretty sad, really.

Re: Would you allow this VPP? Don't forget the 9 I suggested - or did the Thoth-Priestess have some overlap with my suggestions?

Re: AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED opinions

Re: Would you allow this VPP?