Chuckg

Re: In The Cards That might work in other situations, but in this one as written? It doesn't. * If the odds suck that bad, then the scenario still assumes you're being an idiot -- in this instance, for attacking odds that lopsided by yourself instead of waiting for backup. After all, you followed them to their warehouse without them being aware that they were followed; that means you get to pick the time and circumstances of your assault. * In that vein, since you did have surprise, why didn't your first shot goes into the greatest probable threat -- which is the boss, not the mooks? Take a couple segments to build up some Aim modifiers, call your shot to somewhere sensitive, and put your biggest nonlethal EB right into the leader... and unless he has brick-level defenses that plus the x2 STUN for out-of-combat surprise is going to keep him out of the fight while you mop up on the minions. And if he does have defenses high enough that your best called shot from total ambush can't do more than momentarily faze him, plus a small army, then you either knew this before you went in solo (in which case you're being, um, tactically sub-optimal), or you didn't, at which point the DM is hosing you by hitting you with an encounter well outside your survivable Challenge Rating. So nah, no matter how you slice this cake, or what different frosting you put on it, it still tastes bad. Some genre conventions that work in comics do not work in comic book games. This is one of them.

Re: Australian Supervillains Speaking in ignorance here, but isn't one of the elements of Australian culture 'We hate our celebrities?' Maybe one of your villains is a former Australian superhero who got tired of that.

Re: In The Cards Errrr, could you rewrite the scenario so that it doesn't start out assuming that we crit-failed our Tactics roll? Because I think most of our rooftop crawling vigilantes would, if we followed some mooks back to an obvious villainous warehouse lair with an obvious theme-villain mastermind lording it over his mooks, make our skylight drop surprise attack on the mastermind first and then start thumping the lesser threats. As opposed to what we got here, which is to jump in, ignore the ringleader, focus only on the lesser threats, and then stand there and let this guy call out five unopposed attacks (if we're actually using Champions rules, that means we took a Wait action for five phases of this guy's SPD... well, either that, or he bought the ability to summon lots of peoples all at once and the calling each separate card is just SFX, I guess)... before we decide to do anything? Sorry. This one is another entry for the 'flip the table' files.

Re: Why do you poist WWYCD threads? My posts on WWYCD threads are largely 'gaming methadone fix', as mentioned above.

Re: Public vs. Secret Identity In the games I've run, I got a lot of PCs with Public Identity. Most of them had also partially or completely 'armored' their lives against the common ptifalls of Public ID. (Such as being from an equivalent of the Empyreans, or not having an extended family, or being wealthy and powerful enough to afford the best of security, or etc.) Nobody seemed interested in RP'ing the standard Secret Identity tropes.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill Now, having posted that, I move on to discussing the lethal force topic as in the superhero games I have played in and DM'ed... Hokay, first up, none of my players has ever taken a CvK past 'moderate', if that high. Many of them stick with the 0-point 'Reluctant to Kill'... and a few have gone all the way down to borderline Dark Champions. This is because the Silver Age 20-point CvKs only work in a Silver Age world where narrative causality chooses to reward your total non-lethalness by giving you villains that never actually manage a successful massacre of innocents. The bomb will always be defused, the nerve gas will always be blown out to sea by a lucky wind, etc, etc. Because, yes, if villains are always going to escape jail (and they are; DMs most often take the same solution to a finite supply of supervillainy that comic book companies do, i.e., recycling), then its just not fair to continually drown your players in bloodsoaked massacre after bloodsoaked massacre while they fight with STUN Only as a mandate. For those us who know Final Fantasy X, Yuna's speech to Yunalesca when the lie behind the Calm was revealed? That's what I'm saying, right there. If you keep asking heroes to die, and hordes of innocents to die, for nothing more than a temporary respite to a problem that will inevitably recur because the only action capable of permanently solving it is one you are refusing to take, then you're asking too much. Or in summary; 20-point CvKs only work in a world where the genre conventions are unrealistic enough to support them. Now, flipping over to the other opposite extreme, notably, killing a dude judge, jury, and executioner style... Again, no. My players don't usually go here, either, and neither do I. Who wants to live in Mega-City One? You can't give infinite second chances to murderers, but neither can you just go around going 'An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of legalities!' *blam blam blam* One of the most important sociological advancements in the history of our climb from barbarism to something approximating civilization was the idea that you actually needed a reason to kill someone that would be given to you by someone or something else, as opposed to being justified just by your personal desire or your personal grudge list. This was hardly the only mental leap required to create modern civilization, no, but it was the first step... and its still a necessary foundation. So yes, fighting might be necessary, killing might be necessary, war might be necessary... and because they are necessary then they should be done, even though they are unpleasant and sometimes ugly. But 'I need to do this' should never become 'I want to do this', let alone 'This should be my first option, all the time! It solves everything!' tldr; Superheroes I have both run games for and played tended to act like policemen the vast majority of the time (lethal force as a last resort and only to stop an immediate threat to human life a lesser level of force would not stop in time), and soldiers in the (very) few situations where the situation had gone so far into the 'aw shit!' zone that it had become warfighting instead of peacetime law enforcement. In conclusion, I leave you with this quote from a John C. Wright novel, and a follow-up quote from the Two Towers movie; Both of these statements are simultaneously true. And this is why you can neither be 100% in favor of killin' all the time, or 100% against killin' all the time... because unless the DM is writing his storyline with a set of genre tropes that are unrealistically flat, the situation will never be one-dimensional enough for a total 'for' or 'against' to always be the right answer.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill Belated entry into this thread... Well, the part where he openly admitted to doing it, for one. (Note: That wasn't his first statement on the topic, just his most explicit.) You will never see that happen with terrorists of bin Laden's stripe, for the simple reason that it would require disclosing in open court not only exactly what evidence we had, but who gathered it when and where. Remember, you can't use hearsay in court; you have to link every bit of eyewitness testimony to an actual name, and every bit of forensic evidence to a fully-documented chain of evidence all the way back to the technicians who originally gathered it. Which in this case would mean publicly revealing the identities of undercover CIA officers and other intelligence sources in the field. Which is itself way, way illegal. So yeah, until and unless the legal system is rewired so that we wouldn't have to give a copy of the full roster of CIA informants in or near Al Qaeda to bin Laden's lawyer, which would require repealing the disclosure rule, which would itself be a horribly bad idea... you ain't gonna see Al Qaeda leaders in civilian court. (And now you know where the promised 'civilian trial' of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed went. It went straight into the memory hole as soon as the Justice Department was finally able to explain to the White House that 'no, there's really no way we can do this without either him walking free or violating our own intelligence agents wholesale'.) We do, however, wage war on organizations, even non-state ones. The precedent for that goes all the way back to the Barbary Pirates. And as the leader of the organization we were at war with, well, that's what fingered him. Notice that, having killed Osama, we didn't then just stop and go home. We're still out there trying to find and kill his replacement. Hell, we went through, what, four? five? second-in-commands of Al Qaeda on our way to finding bin Laden? That job had the life expectancy of a Spinal Tap drummer for a reason. So, yeah, it wasn't just 'an individual' we were after. He was the first item on a long, long checklist of names. And so it will continue until Al Qaeda, the enemy we are at war with, either surrenders or ceases to be... just like any other war. tldr; To quote Tom Clancy, "You can be a policeman or a soldier, but not both." War and criminal justice are two different things that will never be the same, and never even really overlap. This is not the same thing as saying that war is always unjust or unnecessary. It's just saying that you can't try to treat the one like the other, not without setting yourself up to fail horribly at both. Edit: Oh, and both the war in Iraq and the one in Afghanistan were in fact legally declared wars, as per US law (specifically as per the War Powers Act of 1972). Protip: Anytime Congress passes a resolution authorizing the President to use military force anywhere, that qualifies as a 'declaration of war' for legal purposes. The words 'Declaration of War' do not actually have to appear at the top in explicit language, 'Authorization For The Use of Military Force' or etc. is accepted as a legal synonym. And yes, they took that argument to the Supreme Court (in Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld, 2006, to be precise), and the Supreme Court came back with just what I said here.

Re: Why Don't The Villains Kill? Because for Dr. Sivana, its not about surviving, its about winning. Shooting Billy Batson is admitting that he doesn't have the mojo to take down Captain Marvel. Um, being fair to Lex Luthor, he's tried to kill Superman with Kryptonite and without more times than I can count. His 'Kill Superman' R&D budget ran to literal billions of dollars. Superman is just that competent at not being killed. Movie Bane actually said it most succinctly -- "Your punishment must be more severe." Of course it ultimately depends on which villain, which hero, and which storyline, but... more often than not, my general run of NPC supervillain tends to be goal-oriented rather than personal vendetta. They use as much force as necessary and/or they're comfortable with to get the heroes out of their way so they can get what they're after -- and yes, a lot of the time that's lethal force -- but they'll stop shooting once they've got a clear path to where they're going, instead of 'no, this does not stop until one of us is dead'.

Re: Evil We've gotten this far without the Pratchett quote? Its from Carpe Jugulum, and Granny Weatherwax is speaking with an Omnian missionary.

Re: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury #1: Security Robot Zaps Burglar Back to the original question: Legally, this is a case of a principle I like to call on "Don't pee on the electric fence, you moron." The only area of doubt is whether or not the zap gun he was hit with was safety-certified and legal for sale, like tasers in real life are. If it wasn't, then the owner (if it was an illegal home modification or home-made) or the manufacturer (if it was something legally sold off-the-shelf, but built or designed unsafely) is liable. Even so, the burglar's continuing to advance past the 'no trespassing' signs, attacking the armed robot, and having no legal right to be where he was is going to be a lot of contributory negligence on his own part that his case has to hurdle over before he can expect to get much in punitive damages.

Re: Immigration into the USA - legal, or making illegal legal If she is willing to take a government job I'm sure getting a green card or even fast-track naturalization wouldn't be any problem; any government has a vested interest in making sure as many friendly metas are available to them as possible. And governments gladly do things if they think they're getting ahead on the deal. And this doesn't necessarily mean 'Welcome to the Weapon X project' either; depending on the DM, something as simple as 'Is a DOSPA-sanctioned hero' could qualify. After all, the government knows their secret ID and can potentially call on them in time of grave crisis; what more do you need?

Re: Istvatha V'han - why can't she conquer Earth? In order for the Quaternion Banishment to work on her, she would need to be from a dimension among Hod or Netzach, or farther out, on the Sephiroth. Tyrannon and Skarn are from such places; V'Han very likely is not (as all the 'mundane' alternate universes of the material universe are still Assiatic planes, way down on the Sephiroth's bottom along with Earth). Indeed, since part of the definition of an Outer Plane is one where the reality runs primarily on magic as opposed to science, she's likely not from one. The point is moot, however; the bulk of her Dimensional Legions are definitely Assiatic natives, being from 'ordinary' alternate dimensions that run on science, and so the Banishment won't do a durn thing to them. Furthermore, the Quaternion Banishment expires the instant any single native of any of the Inner Planes invites the banished one to return from the Outer Planes, so even if she was susceptible to it in the first place, any one of trillions of her loyal subjects can turn it off any time they feel like. (This is why Tyrannon keeps getting un-banished; as soon as he gets another cult of idiots worshipping him, bam.)

Re: Would your Hero endorse a politician? Kaian: Has (despite his many many tarnishes, most of them known only to him) the public reputation of Captain America, and knows perfectly well what goes along with having that. He's ducked being drafted for public office on his own hook, he is like heck getting involved in that mess for anyone else. Unless someone like Lex Luthor is running, in which case he'd do whatever it took to keep the guy out of the Presidency.

Re: WWYCD- April Fools are everywhere Kaian: 'Good morning, Mr. Mayor. You're on TV in two minutes. Please come this way to the press room, the cameras are rolling, here's a copy of the speech you're going to give. I typed it all up for you.' 'Do I know you?' 'Your regular assistant had to go home today. I'm a temp.' 'Oh, all right. This way, you said?' 'Yes sir. And here's your speech. Remember, you're going live, so we have to get this done in one uninterrupted take and save the questions for after the end. That's vital. And on in 3... 2... 1... go!' Mayor (into the camera): 'People of Campaign City, this is the mayor. Due to the ongoing civic emergency, the following measures are required. All places of business save the police, emergency services, hospitals, public utilities, and other essential activities are hereby closed for the duration. All permits for public gatherings and demonstrations are hereby cancelled. A curfew is in effect and all citizens are requested to return home immediately and stay there unless required for the aforementioned essential public activities. Also, due to an outbreak of pranking and hacking against the public news networks, the public is reminded that any news seen on any news outlet other than the Emergency Broadcasting System is to be ignored. So it is vitally important that you leave your TV or radio tuned to this emergency public services channel and not watch or read any other channels, newspapers, or websites until the all-clear is given. Also, the disturbing spread of dangerous public rumors is becoming a health hazard, and for the sake of your own safety, you are strongly advised to not do anything in response to any rumor that requires risk, spending money, giving away possessions, or otherwise leaving important or valuable things unattended. I will now turn you over to my assistant Kaian, who will give more detailed instructions on how to manage this public safety and health crisis. Everything he says is true and should be believed even if it contradicts something else you've heard or might hear. Thank you and stay tuned for further developments." *click* Kaian: "... and so to keep this city from killing itself while the gullibility rays are on, I've had to turn it into goddamned Alpha Complex with myself guest-starring as Friend Computer. I find this villain I am so putting his gonads in a sausage grinder."

Re: You ARE Dr.Destroyer Kaian/Striker-One: Assuming that his curse of immortality even allows this to happen (as its been pretty damn stubborn about allowing him any escape from having to be himself for eternity, however exotic), he pisses himself laughing. Then spend a horrid several hours wrestling with temptation. Does he try the benevolent supervillain mastermind thing? Of course, that would require immediately killing off 'Doctor Destroyer' in a grandiose public manner after first setting up the bulk of resources to be reclaimed by a newly-crafted false ID he's going to vanish into next, complete with radical cosmetic surgery as needed, but that's routine administrivia he could easily handle even before getting Destroyer's augmented IQ (which is the main incentive for Kaian to keep this; his own IQ used to be in the supervillain supergenius range, then got mystically cursed back down to 'peak human normal', and even though its been so long he's largely forgotten what it felt like... it felt good...). Not to mention informing his... well, the closest thing he has to a best friend... the ancient alien superhero Exemplar as to what just happened. (Kaian is more than genre savvy enough to know that you always, always, tell at least one trusted friend what you're up to when you intend to pull a 'Face Off' style gambit; the other way around is just so damn annoying.) He'll probably eventually come to the conclusion that the whole 'trying to be a supervillain mastermind with an idealistic goal' is too close to how he originally fucked up his life in the first place and give the whole idea up as a bad job. This would be after he'd already drawn the first operational flowchart of exactly how he was going to do it, though. And then quite cheerfully dump Doctor Destroyer's tech base out on the world in a way calculated to optimally split the difference between 'Get this done ASAP' and 'Not terminally disrupt the planetary stability'. Which would probably mean holding back the weapons tech for AEGIS/UNTIL use only, but, meh, the noncombat heals, logistics, "clean" pulson power generation, and other support techs alone would still be awesome. As to how he ends up back in his own body? Simple. Shoot himself in the head. Either his immortality curse will kick back in and his soul will end up stuffed back in the same undying shell its been stuck in for twelve millennia (99+% probability), or it won't. He really won't be that upset if its "won't". Its been a very long weary slog.

Re: Greased Is The Word Starguard: *wraps Gomer in a protective force field, then TKs the weapon out of his hand* Baron von Darien: *Chuckle inwardly, keep walking by. Adios, Gomer.* Kaian/Striker-One: "Gomer? If you, very very slowly, raise your weapon until its pointing at the ceiling, they won't shoot you. Then I'll come up and take it from you and put the handcuffs on. All right?" (looks at everyone else) "Got that?"

Re: Have a player wanting a Peter Petrelli Like character Don't forget his "Physical Limitation: Complete Idiot".

Re: WWYD - Raising You Starguard: None of her power has a genetic component, so her young clone will just be an ordinary, very sweet-natured girl. Given her age (17), she'd probably take her kid back home to be raised by her parents, and spend as much time there as she could when not superheroing. Kaian: This is perhaps the single worst thing that could possibly happen to him. His clone, not being cursed like him, will be mortal... but will also have mystic potential exceeding that of any Archmage in the past couple of millenia. (Kaian, before being cursed with immortality and loss of power, was one of the highest mage-lords of ancient Atlantis). So, since "put a bullet in the kid's head" is not an option, because even Kaian still has a few things left he won't stoop to, that means having the kid raised. Kaian 2.0 is just too damn mage-talented... when he grows up, he will become the Mystic World's greatest champion or its greatest villain, and he has to ensure the right outcome. It's just, Kaian remembers what an evil little shit he grew up to be the first time... which means he has to do something he swore he'd never ever do, which is actually tell another living being about the truth of his past. After all, whether or not Kaian chooses to raise the kid himself or not, he's still going to at minimum need help to do it, and not telling the other caregiver(s) about the true stakes and consequences of what they're up to is just setting things up to fail. Of course, this presupposes that the kid actually is his clone, something he will make damn sure to have tested both genetically and mystically. After all, the curse on him (which is so powerfully bound he hasn't even found gods that can break it) is supposed to ensure he never has progeny, either with or without scientific assistance.

Re: The Collapse Of Dark Realm I agree. One character of mine (Starguard) has enough mystic power to open her own D-gate out; everybody else is going to have to run for the portal and take their chances. Kaian would first estimate how much time before the dimension collapsed, though, and if there were enough minutes left to kidney punch a shadow wraith until it felt truly repentant and wanted to reset the gate to a specific destination of his choice, he'd do that. Otherwise, he'd take potluck and like it.

Re: WWYD - Battlefield Starguard: Start using Force Walls to keep civilians safe. Also ask/yell at the combatants WTF is going on here. Kaian: Has no powers for protecting other people, or powers at all, really. Time to start taking down combatants as swiftly and effectively as possible, even if that means checking a plasma cannon out of the AEGIS armory and sniping people in the head with it.

Re: World Without People! Kaian: Well, this is a rare occasion; he's actually going to freak out. The "I Am Legend" thing will trigger flashbacks to a period of his life he really tries not to think about. After getting over that (at least for now), its time to start figuring out what the frig happened. Oh yes, and getting the people off the International Space Station. Fortunately, if Kaian was on a mission offworld by himself, then he had to have been flying a spaceship, as he has no travel powers. Time to use it! (Or the Vanguard team spaceplane, which started off life as a Haud orbital assault shuttle). Edit: Agh, forgot, the Star Knight corps exists in the Vanguard setting. Our last session before the campaign folded included an intent for the team to introduce themselves and set up a liasion thing with them for cosmic problems. Time to use that! After doing that, possible lines of investigation for Kaian and his team of astronaut scientists will include: #1 -- OK, the people vanished. Did the non-people vanish? Put out some quick radio calls to the Vanguard team AI on our own team satellite HQ (I know that Mechanon vanished, but the team computer is on the satellite), the hidden city of the Asurans (which, being hidden behind a temporal phase barrier that renders it half a step out of sync with the real world, is likely to have escaped this shit -- and yeah, that kind of place doesn't normally have a radio to answer, but its ruler the Exemplar is a superhero who needs a way to check back in with home base, and Kaian is one of the very few people who knows about it), and ask them what the frig they know. Also, check the Vanguard team logs to see if any other member was offworld at the time, which Exemplar at least was quite likely to be, and if so send them an FTL page to get the hell back. #2 -- Meanwhile, the ISS crew is going to various places (the NSA mainframe, the SETI antenna, the STAR labs equivalent, the Pentagon, CNN, etc.) that had the tape machines running 24-and-7 to see if they can pinpoint down the moment of 'vanishing' and any observations recorded at the time -- security camera footage, weather satellite data, radio telescope data, live TV broadcast, energy readings, etc... there's lots of place in the world that have various sensor arrays up and continuously feeding the data to storage servers for later review and, well, no reason not to help himself. #3 -- Mystic World. Kaian knows it quite well (when you're an immortal guy living under a curse for thousands of years, there's really no way to avoid it), even if he himself can't use magic, even ritual sorcery (its part of the course). This does not, however, stop him from going around to every place he knows that one can naturally get in contact with spirits, bound elemental guardians, etc, etc... i.e., entities who might know what was going on, and were around at the time of the Vanishing. #4 -- All else having failed, 'All right folks, we just entered Case Omega. Let's grab some survival supplies, machine tools, and infrastructure, pick a spot, and do the Adam & Eve / Colony Alpha thing. Good thing the ISS had mixed crew, isn't it? Me personally, I'm going to make sure you guys are set up and then I'm going to get on with Walking The Earth and check back in with you guys only occasionally... ok, short version, I've lived long enough for this not to have been my first time having seen human civilization end and it having to be rebuilt from a few scattered survivors and, well, let's just say that I'm going to need a lot of time by myself for a while. It's taken a lot of willpower for me to hold it together this long, and I really need to go vent.'

Re: Replacing Destroyer with Teleios As to why he chose such a slow method of killing off Zerstoiten -- well, INT 35 Zerstoiten was more intelligent than even Spregen back then (although Spregen has since used the intervening decades to genetically augment his brains to past even Destroyer's level, in addition to making himself unaging and etc.), and it wasn't the time and place to pick a fight at the time, especially since he couldn't be sure who'd win. So, that plus inventing longevity meant Spregen simply chose to take a very slow and steady approach to killing Zerstoiten off. In addition, the emergence of superhumanity meant that the world was entering an era of change where no prior precedents would or could apply, and Spregen wanted a couple of decades to see what new pattern the world would settle into before trying to conquer it; you shouldn't fight on uncertain ground, after all. Besides, Albert made such interesting toys...

Re: Super powered Nation-The Gathering storm At this point, Kaian is utterly cursing the fact that every time he resists the impulse to do the pragmatic and ruthless thing, and instead chooses to not a bullet in someone's face, the universe then goes out of its way to make him regret it. At least he can say that he didn't let the UN confiscate the gene bomb in the first place. Kaian: "... well, I admit, this plan is at least somewhat more workable. Can you control which powers the person gets? Have you considered the possibility of indirect action... agreeing to empower, for example, several people in US service in return for the US' aid to your nation, as a nation? There are things superpowers cannot do, that governments can. As far as me being a judge of character... no, no, you want my friend Exemplar(*). He's notably less cynical than I am and has enhanced awarenesses." He says this while measuring distances and angles for a quick sucker punch if necessary. (*) 'He's also the most powerful metahuman on the planet and entirely capable of holding off your goon squad while I shut you down hard, if necessary. And no, I did not say that out loud.'

Re: The Golden Apple Kaian: #1 -- 'I already have a public identity... as a serving officer in the United States military. I regretfully decline your offer. Also, the part where you asked for the files intact rather than asking to witness their destruction makes me think that your government is less concerned about keeping other people from using them for blackmail than they are in using them themselves... and no, I'm not saying you want to do that, I'm certain you believe every word you just told me. I'm also certain that at least one of your superiors is less idealistic than you are. Trust me, I've done the government superhero thing myself, it happens.' #2 -- 'You at least made an offer appealing to rational self-interest. However, minus ten zillion points for being a person of totally unknown identity as well as being virtually certain to resell secrets from this cache to somebody who'd then go on to make life massively inconvenient for me, my team, my nation, or the general welfare of the planet. So, no.' #3 -- 'No. Also, I'm not Catholic. And last but not least, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and render unto God what is God's. This is Caesar's. Good-day.' #4 -- '... seriously? Seriously? I am the most experienced warrior in the world, I've fought actual gods to a standstill with a .45 and a lead pipe, and I have the Exemplar on speed-dial for metahuman problems that far out of my weight class, and you're... ok, I'm gonna have to clear my entire afternoon here, because beating the stupid out of you is going to take a long, long time.' #5 -- '... you are muckraking scum.' #6 -- 'I already handed over a copy of the files to the Director of Central Intelligence and General Falcon this morning! Why are you even here? Let me see that ID again...'

Re: A Super powered Nation Kaian (after staring at the scientist speechless for a while) -- "... first off, let me congratulate you on having an unwavering optimism and faith in the innate decency of humankind beyond anything I've ever been capable of, or wanted to be capable of. That having been said, its entirely misplaced -- no, no, lets not get bogged down in an ethical debate on the topic, there's no need when your plan has a massive practical obstacle preventing it from ever being fulfilled. Which is to say, the very warring generals that you hate so much, and all their followers, will be empowered also by this thing. Two teams of warring supers routinely tears up a city block. You propose to let loose armies of them on your home -- all of them fighting each other, and then all of the roused civilian population fighting them simultaneously. You might as well attempt to bring peace to this civil war by indiscriminately arming everyone with powered armor and man-portable plasma cannons. This scheme of yours is insanely over-optimistic, and it's just not happening. That having been said, an archive of DNA collected from hundreds of the world's most powerful metahumans is a priceless potential future asset for the welfare of the race. I can think of several contingencies, from some supervillain inventing a mass depowering process and using it on the world's heroes, to the arrival of some cosmic menace, where it would be very useful to be able to re-empower the world's heroes en masse, or else mass empower a selected group of people to bolster our ranks. Which is why I am calling my teammate Exemplar on the radio to pick up your bomb and immediately fly it away to his race's hidden city of Tir Numen(*), where it shall be carefully studied by Asuran scientists, and preserved in stasis away from any other who might misuse it. And rest assured, in all histories regarding it, your name will be given full credit. And now, Doctor, I'm afraid its time to go." (*) Think sort of like Arcadia, only they're not so much Eternals/Empyreans as they are the last survivors of the ancient Precursor race.