Chuckg

Neither would I... if I were physically able to, which I'm not. /sigh/

Starguard -- would have told the team about her disturbing dreams as soon as they were obviously not just normal pizza nightmares, so we wouldn't be going into this blind and have been doing our best to mystically check it out beforehand. She's too innocent to be afraid of being embarassed. Much. And even if she /knew/ with 100% certainty that she wasn't coming out of there alive -- innocents are in danger? She's going in. (And praying for a miracle.) Dr. Pain -- is /very/ afraid of embarrassment, so he'd write the dreams all off as bad pizza and too much beer. And Lord knows he'd never mention them to a living soul. OTOH, when push comes to shove, he really is a hero, not just a blowhard. And he's not very superstitious anyway, so... ... go on in and pray that being the brick means he'll survive. Baron von Darien -- again, 1100-year-old master vampire. He /does/ believe in prophetic dreams.. Lord knows he's seen enough of the Mystic World in his time to accept something like /that/! So by the time D-Day rolled around, he'd already have known a lot of WTF was going on from his researches and the researches of those he can hire...

Hmmm... Horus-Re has the default 'Reluctant To Kill' -- he virtually never does, but he's done it before, pre-godhood. Turakian warrior champion and all that. OTOH, he's also had a decade-long career on the original Sentinels with their team charter, and he has no Enrageds and a sky-high EGO, so it would probably take something really extreme to bring out the 'Grog smash!' response. Psi Legionnaire is /supposed/ to have CVK, but his player is occasionally a bit 'off' in RP'ing his disads. *muttermuttertookmeHOWlongtofinishhealingSlick'sinjuriesmuttermuttermutter* Warp has a four-color CVK, but he also has an Enraged when innocents are badly hurt/abused... so it's possible, but not oikely. However... Warmaster Fielan's last job was as the CO of Istvatha V'Han's Praetorian Guard, and before that he was a Sky Marshal in her conquest forces. The only thing that keeps him from /routinely/ using lethal force is that he swore an oath to obey the laws of the US when he accepted asylum here, and he's got 'Honorable' at Total Commitment. i.e. -- if it could be done under circumstances that would legally be justifiable homicide(*), Black Harlequin's a dead man. (*) /Really/ be justifiable, not just 'made to look like justifiable with stretching' -- he's too honorable for that. Edit -- Monolith, meta and I are in a 'New Sentinels' PC campaign with a different lineup than the canonical one, which is why you might not recognize the names. Sorry, talking about the campaign you're currently in is a gamer disease.

OK, despite the word 'Christian' in the title, I wouldn't mind fictionally beating the hell out of them, either. AAMOF, I'd enjoy it.

I generally let my DM know early on that given a choice, I'd much rather not see my own religion, or its affiliates, or etc., as the bad guys, thank you. If the DM does not respect that request, I either grit my teeth (if it's mild) or take a walk (if it's blatant). OTOH, if you want to do something that's classic in fiction -- such as Cthulhu cultists, DEMON, etc. -- that doesn't bug me very much. Given recent events, I wouldn't get too bent out of shape over pummelling the hell out of a fictional Osama bin Laden, either.

Starguard -- little change, except her VPP is used less for 'flying energy blaster' things and more for 'underwater sorceress' type things. Dr. Pain -- little change, except he swims like Attuma. Atlantis is famous for its bricks. Baron von Darien -- little change.

Starguard -- whip out her Power Cosmic, try for an exorcism. Baron von Darien -- call the Trismegistus Council, tell them there is a crisis situation about to break loose in a few months, and would you please send your best mystic specialists for dealing with this kind of thing over? Dr. Pain -- "OK. Normally, I'm pro-life, but I'm finally gonna make an exception... lady, want to come with me to the clinic?"

/ponders/ Starguard has cosmic regeneration (limbs too), so while I get to RP pain, shock, and fear for a while (she has yet to be seriously injured), the hand is coming back. Baron von Darien -- *blink blink*. He's got vampiric regeneration at the 'restores limbs' level, and in the course of a long lifetime has had everything to him short of being burned alive. He's even had to pull stakes out of his own heart, and that hurts a helluva lot more than just losing the hand. His attitude would literally be "Damn it, /again/? I had appointments to keep this week!" Dr. Pain -- would hate it, wouldn't whine about it, and then would probably go get some badass metal prosthetic fist that was even handier for pounding people. Dr. Pain, with new optional steel action hand! YES! THE DOCTOR IS BACK IN BUSINESS!

Actually, if the Doctor throws the turnip spell but Kyle's extending the ring's coverage over the entire JLA, it might very well occur that there are no turnips. Granted, the Batman is useful in a JLA/Authority fight only if there's prep time -- otherwise, there's nobody here his unaugmented fist can seriously damage. (Give him a few weeks to research his opponents, though, and he'll come up with Henry Bendix's old override codes and turn Apollo and the Midnighter off with a remote control... ... yes, Bendix /did/ gimmick their cybernetics that way. Midnighter got the crap kicked out of him when Team Achilles used the same trick, and I don't think the Engineer's bothered to debug them yet... not that she'd have certain odds of doing so even if she did try, given that it's 50-50 odds that Midnighter's combat computer was built by Randall Dowling, aka 'Angie's never getting this good on the best day of her life'.)

Well, actually... Even if we spot the Authority a free attack, the Authority cuts loose with every attack it has, and... ... at least half the JLA is still standing. They've got some of the most outrageous damage soaks there is. (Yes, even the turnip spell -- J'onn and Diana, at least, are withstanding that one. And maybe Green Lantern, if he has the ring defenses up. And nobody can predict what Flash's extra-dimensional 'Speed Force Aura' is going to or not going to stop this week...) And Superman can single-handedly take out the entire Authority lineup if he's feeling particularly pissed. Not to mention that "the JLA stands still like target dummies" is not a valid assumption. If they're assaulting the Authority cold, they will not attack without doing at least a moment's worth of recon -- Batman, if nobody else, /loathes/ going in blind. That means J'onn at least does a scan, the results of which will be...? And if the JLA /does/ know what their opponents are... they're gonna get blitzed like the Pop Warner league playing Green Bay. Edit -- as for "nobody can match the Engineer's VPP"? Kyle can damn near match the Doctor's VPP... that ring is the most powerful weapon in the DC universe!

Ah, but you can always have an 'Acts of Vengeance' arc. /ponders/ Then again, Takofanes always could happen to wander by a grave site or two and do his "Animator" shtick...

The Church of Foxbat, of course! (The Divine Willis was a pansy.)

Yes, but what Mayfair called Body, Champions would call Armor.

We are talking about the same Cap who the Punisher once shot in the sternum with a rifle bullet, and who still walked out of the hospital less than 2 days later, right? (Granted, Cap had body armor on, but still -- it was a freaking 7.62x51mm hard-tip!)

Monolith -- none of the ones you listed are explicitly and rigidly defined as *THE* peak of human physical perfection. Cap and Teleios both are. Otherwise, I could say that Cap can't possibly have a DEX 30 SPD 7 because the original Star-Spangled Kid or The Patriot or etc. didn't either. Not all flag-wearing patriotic fisticuff artists or super-soldiers are created equal.

I've read a few on the shelves, but never took any home.

Re: making the Baron a bat... 1) I didn't think of that. 2) Now that I have been reminded of that, it still doesn't appeal to me. Too damn /ugly/! How do I get in that elegant old-world veneer?

The sad thing about Black Harlequin is... a) He's most appropriate for Dark Champions campaigns... If he ever lives through more than one encounter in a Dark Champions campaign, it /won't/ be because the players weren't trying. There are some villains who make you have to remind yourself very sternly to RP your "Code vs. Killing" disadvantage, and he's two of them. And once freed from that constraint, it's time to serve the great heaping dishes of hot tasty *BLAM*.

Supports it? *Nails* it. Teleios *IS* the peak of human physical perfection without actually going metahuman in Champions, by defintiion -- that's his concept!

Ah, yes, but the special effect is that you didn't hit the heart on the first try, you just wounded him again and again until the BODY was finally all gone.

I thought you said the choker was bought as IIF, not IAF? If it can be taken away with a simple Grab maneuver, then you can save some more points.

Having actually /been/ to an SF convention or two, I can say that even with a COM 20, while she would still have been the most beautiful woman in the room, she wouldn't have been the /only/ beautiful woman in the room... And that was in the states. In Oslo, you'd only expect that ratio to go /up/. (Sorry, I just get mildly annoyed by certain stereotyping of SF conventions.) OTOH, yes, if you have zero interest in science fiction, they're slow torture. (Helene's a bit of an otaku, though...)

Neither Starguard, Dr. Pain, nor Baron von Darien have technological conceptions. The Baron's already a magical creature (vampire), Starguard's got the Power Cosmic and that ports equally well to all superhero worlds, and Dr. Pain's a brick... there are many possible magical origins for bricks. Of course, on Magic World, he wouldn't be a former WWF champion, he'd be a famous bare-handed pit fighter or pankrationist (non-lethal matches, of course).

The characters in CU are not to benchmark the highest prodigies of the Champions Universe, they're just a random selection -- mostly at the beginning or moderate levels of experience, to boot.

A possible expression of tragedy, if you want Zl'f to still be Western, is for her father to have been one of the countless victims of Stalin's unjust military purges, and Zl'f reacted to that by high-jumping the border fence.