Chuckg

Baron von Darien -- 1000+ year-old master vampires don't let little things like this stop them. Whether it be via his hynpotic gaze or his advanced postgraduate knowledge in the sciences of applied pain, that thug is gonna talk. Dr. Pain -- well, ex-pro-wrestler bricks are pretty much limited to the PRE attack and the arm twisting. But he's a good guy, so the arm-twisting won't get much above... well, arm-twisting. Starguard -- would so intensely concentrate on very politely and nicely asking the henchmen to speak up and save innocent life that she'd unconsciously manifest a +80 PRE effect from her Cosmic Power Pool, aka "The Belldandy Effect". The henchbeing would then be overcome with weepy remorse at his life of evil, tell the location, save the city, and enter a monastery.

In our current campaign, Lin Chow (Green Dragon's sister) has already showed up as an important part of the plot, and our team's billionaire has Rep. Shanna Armbruster as one of his Contacts.

Michelle Yeoh and Victoria Smurfit, to name just two examples, would beg to differ.

Something like 'Provider' or hell, even 'That Vision Thing'. (While she might be victim of the week in that latter one, at least she displays fortitude and humanity, as opposed to bimboness.)

I didn't remember exactly when he arrived, so I qualified my statement. But it is true that Tim Minear's never written a decent script for Cordy, *ever*, isn't it? And he became a producer in season 4, to fill the void left by Greenwalt.

Remember, Absorption that adds to Absorption cap maximum is a 'DM Approval Required' stop sign. And no sane DM would approve this power if 'Superman' *didn't* have a 'Kryptonite'. As for the arguments that it should be bought as obscene armor... well, if you are the DM, yes, you can make the call that the player must choose the most point-inefficient method of getting down the conception he wants. But if you make that call, you will either a) need a good reason or have a very disgruntled player. Now if *I* were the DM, I wouldn't approve this combo I just outlined unless there was at least one common way, or several uncommon ways, that I could put the character down anyway... or unless the concept was *supposed* to be "He's Invulnerable Boy -- he can't do much if anything on the offense, but wow, can he sure take one for the team!" Of course, even if we go with the full Physical/Energy combo here, there *are* such ways. (Anything that goes vs. Mental or Power Defense, Entangles, NNDs, Flashes, throwing a tablecloth over his head, you name it. )

The current absorption combo for 'Sebastian Shaw' is at the +1 level, so it simultaneously feeds four things: STUN BODY END Absorption cap And each one is fed with the full absorption point total, so that cap is not only being kept up with, it's getting further and further ahead in geometric ratio. (The first three are Only To Starting Values, natch) Plus the 75% Damage Reduction, natch. Basically -- do not punch this guy. Do not hit this guy. Do not even bother using kinetic force against this guy. Use an attack form that his special defense does *not* cover, and use it a lot. If you try to just beat your way through, you are gonna need the +50 Asteroid of Smiting just to make him feel it. You know, just like Shaw was. And it occurs to me that doing the same thing for both Physical /and/ Energy attacks, and then putting a limitation on the Damage Reduction of 'does not work vs. kryptonite or magic', gets you a damn close approximation of Superman.

Yeah, and it's not even 'inefficiency' that gets them so far behind -- it's the fact that, without exaggerating *too* much, we can say that damn near every pulse of transmitted data on the entire freaking planet is trying to fit through that one little bottleneck. They'd need about ten times their staffing in order to deal with the literal Mount Everest of raw data that they get flooded with, and not only isn't there that much money in the budget, there aren't that many qualified and security-cleared people in that field to hire!

> Reportedly, the Cordy epi will also be the series' 100th. > I really hope it's not her last (ever) appearance It almost certainly will be. Industry buzz last summer was very strong to the effect that Charisma Carpenter didn't actually quit, she got booted out the door. (Apparently, David Greenwalt was the only executive producer there who liked her character -- Tim Minear's wanted to drop the character of Cordelia over the side practically ever since he came on the show, and Fury's been "meh" on Cordy ever since season 1. And since Greenwalt left at the end of season 3, they've been writing Cordelia further and further into characterization hell, capping it off with the coma...) Needless to say, this torques me off. Cordelia was one of /my/ fave characters too, and I've never heard anything bad about Charisma Carpenter as a person. She didn't deserve treatment like this. As for Marc Blucas -- I have never, *EVER* liked the character of Riley Finn. OTOH, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Marc Blucas -- he's a nice guy, he did a competent job, and it's not his fault that they gave him a part that was apparently written by retarded monkeys and directed by cretins. Even Hayden Christiansen couldn't make Anakin Skywalker look good, so we all know that a good actor can be shoved into a horrible part and look really horrible. I've been hoping for Marc Blucas to find better work for /years/. And thus, I will hope for the success of MI:3, and maybe even go see it, despite the fact that I thought the MI franchise has been horribly handled on-screen.

That's why I plan to Standard Effect Rule the Absorption dice. And thanks for that 2/3rds, 1/3rd idea... it's gonna rock the world.

Even if you use the +1/2 Advantage to simultaneously feed both?

Damn, I should've rephrased the question to... 'Does Absorption to STUN that serves only to ramp the STUN back up to its original starting value (at maximum) still suffer the max Absorption cap?' (I just looked at the Healing rules, and Healing /also/ has a max cap, darnit...)

Suppose I wanted to create a Sebastian Shaw type character, who got his STUN refreshed every time you punched him... forever and ever, amen. (i.e. -- a character you simply cannot beat down with your fists, but /must/ find a way to indirectly attack). Since I am not the DM, I can't make a house rule to just ignore the Absorption cap. I have the DM's permission to create thie type of character, however... if I can find a way to do it within standard FRED. How can I do this effect on a reasonable point budget?

Re: Re: Re: Ruining plots You don't wanna know what almost happened the time our team mentalist forgot about that part and tried to mind-read Firewing...

Is Kaufman still the Golden Avenger in your world's timeline? This sounds like one of his nutty ideas. (Seriously, draftees don't work as well as volunteers for small, elite forces that must operate with a high degree of initiative and motivation... i.e., superhero teams.)

In our current campaign... In our own continuity, the flying brick and resident 'Superman' figure, Horus-Re, is one of the last two survivors of the Sentinels, who all died at the Battle of Detroit. (The other survivor is Dr. Daniel Collins, aka 'MicroMan', who had already retired before that and is an NPC friend of Horus'.) The other PCs include one novice just starting out (my character, Starguard), one local hero who works for the Millennium City PD (Streethawk), one mutant who's been operating solo for a while (Warp), one extra-dimensional hero who suffered a drive accident and is stuck in our reality and is currently performing public featas of herodom (Psi Legionnaire), and we have just been joined by one AI robot that Dr. Collins has built to carry on his legacy, as his Shrinking Ray doesn't reliably work on any /living/ matter but himself (MicroMan II). We haven't formed the new Sentinels yet, although that will happen next session... How the team met is... * The Champions had given notice to Mayor Biselle that they were going to have to leave the city for a while on an extended trip * Mayor Biselle called Horus-Re and a couple local operators (Streethawk, Warp, and Psi Legionnaire) down to City Hall to ask them to patrol the local area a little more heavily while the Champions were gone * Then Firewing showed up outside during the meeting, challenging Horus-Re to a duel of honor... * To move the fight away from the city, Horus-Re challenged Firewing to solo aerial combat at 10,000 feet, and the rest of us prepared to watch... * ... until Starguard, who was in her civvies as one of the gawking crowd outside, noticed the Ultimates sneaking close to City Hall, prepared to attack, and used her powers to broadcast an alert on all police radio frequencies... * ... leading to a massive brawl. During the brawl, Warp and Starguard noticed that an invisible probe of some kind was hanging around the fight, recording everything. The probe was eventually captured and the bits put into the custody of Warp. * After the brawl was over, most of the team stuck around to discuss things (except Starguard, who ran like hell back to her job before anybody noticed she was missing). However... * ... later that evening, Starguard showed up again to track down Streethawk, who in a chance encounter earlier that morning had inadvertently said something that gave her the (mistaken) impression that he knew who she was... which, since Starguard has amnesia, is something she *doesn't* know. * But by this point, Streethawk had gotten the news that his old enemy, Green Dragon, was back in town and was threatening his fiancee, which sent Streethawk off to Chinatown, obsessively working the streets, hunting his foe... * .. where he met Starguard, who immediately pitched in to help him do it. After finding out from some street gang members that Green Dragon's sister was holed up in an apartment, heavily guarded by the local Triad boss's men, Starguard volunteered to go in -- in civilian clothes. (In her civvies, Starguard is an 18-year old waitress, and looks less threatening than a smurf... she walked right past the bodyguards as a normal visitor, although Lin Chow had to order them to let her in, and they never knew she was a superhero until the very end of the interview.) * However, by this point, Horus-Re had taken the bits of the probe from Warp, and flown them to Dr. Collins' laboratory to have them analyzed... where he he was introduced to MicroMan II, who had just been completed. Dr. Collins asked his old teammate Horus-Re if he wouldn't mind showing MicroMan II the ropes for a bit... * ... and then returned his analysis of the probe -- and it was bad news. The probe had been built with Istvatha V'Han's technology. Meanwhile, the results of the interrogation of Binder had been concluded -- their mission had been the capture of Horus-Re, after Firewing (who had been decoyed into the fight by working on his ego) had worn him down enough. * Concluding that Istvatha V'Han was likely preparing for a renewed assault upon Earth, and was working to take out Earth's Mightiest Hero (and by extension, presumably others), the decision was made by the last two surviving Sentinels -- it was time to reform the team. * And first up on the list of people to be contacted and asked... was the impromptu gathering of heroes who had helped stomp the Ultimates earlier that day. * So Horus-Re and Microman set out to find us all, and MicroMan II had been invisibly riding Starguard's shoulder in microsize during her interview with Lin Chow (which is how Starguard got tapped, despite being an obvious novice -- she'd displayed great power earlier that day, and was now displaying great restraint). * And just as the team-to-be was about to all get their phone calls to meet at Memorial Park and discuss things... * ... several of us got teleporting killer robots entering our lives... which was really inconvenient to Psi Legionnaire (as they'd materialized *inside* his ship/base), and Warp (who was in his Secret ID, in the fanciest restaurant in town, with a date!) That's where the session ended. We find out tonight how it's gonna go down. But as team formation goes, I think this one was *fun*, especially since it took 4 sessions to get this far.

Nightfly -- IIRC, another reason Wood was able to pound on Spike was he had Spike in a room full of crosses?

Remember, in UNTIL Superpowers Database under 'Speedster Tricks', they go into buying Skill Levels with the Limitation "Only To Avoid Penalties For Hurrying" (-1)... and in the Big Black Book, it's -3 to Skill per level of the Time Chart you rush it. So, reducing 10 minutes to 1 minute would be two steps down the Time Chart, or -6 to skill. 10 minutes to 1 Turn would be 3 steps, or -9. +9 levels with Navigation(Space) or Systems Operation is 18 points, with the -1 limit, 9 points.

As I said, it was pretty much made explicit in season 3 that Mayor Wilkins -- who was the supervillain Big Bad *of* season 3 -- had been deliberately hand-picking the Sunnydale PD for years, to find just the right mix of apathetic schlubs who'd never bother to actually serve or protect the town. Made it much easier for the Mayor to hide his own goings-on. That's the same reason the sewer system of Sunnydale is such a convenient underground highway for vampires... Sunnydale was *built* to provide vamps with a town that they could more easily prey upon. (Mayor Wilkins' being about 100 or so years old, after all)

I always thought that the most valued skills a career supervillain could have were... KS: Prisons and Prison Procedures KS: Stronghold After all, he *knows* he's gonna have to bust out of jail at some point in his career anyway... might as well be prepared. (Contact: Stronghold Guard at the 'highly reliable' level don't hurt none either.)

1) Anybody with enough of a security clearance to know about the US Army's anti-supernatural activities 2) A lot of the cops in LA, who have seen shit that's even weirder. (Seriously, the show 'Angel' has gone into some damn-ass weird places...) Edit -- and after season 4 of Angel, well, the *entire damn world* ought to know about the supernatural... what with the sun going out over LA, and Jasmine taking over the world temporarily, and all...

Even worse, IMO. Chief Gates' people at least actually went to crime scenes. They might have acted horribly incompetent once they got there, but at least they still went.

OK, /that/ one I hadn't seen. My mistake. Still, the same reasoning that was gone through with Riley's surgeon applies... they shut down the Initaitive project and debriefed all the people, but they didn't *eliminate* all the people, so they'd still have the surgeons around.

Actually, the modern WW has no problem with killing demons and mythological creatures, but shares Superman's code when it comes to killing humans. Superman, however, extends his code to pretty much everything short of outright machines... hence his argument with Diana.

I suppose that could work. Thought that occurs to me -- Did PRIMUS tell the local cops, so that cities without Slayers can at least have police response that knows when to grab the holy water, the wooden stakes, and the cross?