Chuckg

True, the willygun is a nice weapon. They never did explain how they gave it a minimum safe arming distance, though. It'd really suck to fire it off, have the BB hit a twig two feet in front of your muzzle, and blow you up.

Play Any Musical Instrument -- well, there's always the Cosmic Skill Pool: 5 pt Variable Power Pool + 2 pt Control Cost, Cosmic (+2), Only For Musical Skills (-2), letting him play any instrument imaginable at 9 + (Relevant Characteristic/5) +1. I've seen cases made for PS: Play Musical Instrument to be either PRE-based or DEX-based.

Give Talisman a new boyfriend... and have him show up and start wailing on the player's skull with Crusher Of Hope and Eater Of Souls? (Yes, I /am/ talking about Black Paladin.) *g*

I prefer Dragon Branch to VF-1 and VF-2 because: a) The DM has more mix-and-match options -- it's not two set teams, it's a bunch of individuals who can be tapped for modular squads. (Granted, it'd help if they all had writeups, but that's what the prefab sections in the Champions sourcebook and the UNTIL Superpowers Database is for.) Less VIPER teamwork. It's entirely appropriate for VIPER agents to coordinate like greased gears(*) -- they're making up for their relative lack of power vs. supers with numbers and professionalism. But the VIPER supers are there to have the PCs do the same thing to them -- i.e., make up for a gap in the power curve against the villains by fighting with better teamwork. That's very heroic. The CU's resident 'less powerful than you but they coordinate so well that you should be sweating anyway' villain team is the War Machine. (*) Personally, I /really really/ like the thought that VIPER Elite Combat Specialists and Superhuman Combat Specialists have stats and skills that compare neck-and-neck with US military special operations elites -- it means VIPER is training its people to the highest professional standard, which befits 5e VIPER perfectly.

Baron von Darien -- wonder how the hell somebody managed to clone a vampire. Have the child tested to guarantee its paternity and whether or not Teleios has tampered with him. Foster the child out to a good family and see that it's provided for financially, but never let him find out about his heritage -- i.e., give him the chance for a normal life that the mortal son of one of the world's most notorious master vampires would never otherwise have. Starguard -- at age 18, try and become a single mother. Her friends would probably convince her to put the kid up for adoption, but she'd have to be talked into doing that. Dr. Pain -- again, have the child tested for genetic tampering. After that, leave the kid with relatives and visit frequently.

That isn't Armor at all, that's Summon Slavishly Loyal Follower. Build an automaton, figure out how many points it is, then give the girl a Summon for that point figure.

Forgot one of my characters... Dr. Pain -- 'Well *DUH*, I'm registered. I've got a god-damned public ID, I first manifested my powers on pay-per-view in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands of people, you really think I'm *not* registered? What are my opinions on it? My opinion is that I"m a human being, not a goddamned car. I shouldn't have to get a fucking license plate for my own ass. But it's the law, and this is a democracy, so the fact that I don't like it doesn't mean I get to blow it off. I mean, I don't like income taxes either, but I still pay 'em."

Baron von Darien -- *wordlessly steps forward, watches the kitten die, crushes the skull of the villain with a single iron-hard fist, assumes his mist form and wafts away into the night* Starguard -- "No! You can't! Not the cute little kitten!" (And then the stress of the moment lets her find out that she can use her Power Pool to disintegrate guns by looking at them.) (5d6 Drain vs. BODY, Ranged (+1/2), Only vs. inanimate objects (-0), if you gotta know. Dr. Pain(*) -- "What kind of [scatology] has to [profanity] *HIDE* his yellow-striped [obscenity] behind a *LITTLE FLUFFY KITTEN*? YOU STUPID WORTHLESS COWARDLY MAGGOT! FINALLY FOUND *SOMETHING* YOU COULD BEAT UP ON, IS THAT RIGHT?!?" (PRE attack, and then hope he gets at least a half-Phase of hesitation... which is enough for him to move in and apply a 70 STR Martial Grab to both the bad guy's arms.) (*) I liked the wrestler concept in 'Ninja Hero' so much that I changed the backstory and made him a good guy for a 350-point Supers campaign. Brick with a 'Pro Wrestling' martial arts package, of course.

Baron von Darien, master vampire -- 'I did not survive eleven centuries by being so foolish as to allow my true name and provenance to be placed in indelible record. Furthermore, the current law of the land acknowledges us as legally dead and without rights. Should my current cover identity be suspected of performing metahuman activities, *then* I shall register *it*... reluctantly, and only with that minimum necessary amount of data necessary for me to 'pass'. And the preparations shall be made to abandon that identity for a new one at any moment it might become necessary." Starguard, cosmic-powered innocent heroine -- "Ummm... it's the law. and I have to obey it. And I'm not going to do anything bad with my powers anyway."

Well, I can't do it in character voice, as neither of my main characters is married or likely to be married at any time in the foreseeable future. (One's an amnesiac 18-year-old girl who's channelling Year One Kitty Pryde. The other one is a centuries-old master vampire, who makes Batman look like Billy Batson.) Edit -- I just remembered Dr. Pain(*), my ex-championship-pro-wrestler brick. He *might* get married. Dr. Pain's answer to the above hypothetical question -- 'Honey, I told you this durin' the engagement, I told you this at the reception, I've told you this all along -- your brother's a bum. I tried to give him a chance, I tried to not hurt him too bad, and now he's gone and *killed* somebody. So I am gonna go out there, find him, and drop the Pain Injection on his head until he stops fighting, and then I'm gonna drop off what's left of him at the prison hospital and let them patch him up until it's time for his trial... and his eventual date with Jack the Dripper. And if you don't like that, I'm still gonna do it. This isn't fake like my old job. Somebody *really died* tonight. And the guy who kiled him is gonna pay for it.'' (*) Yes, inspired by the character in Ninja Hero 5e, admitted. Although I made him a hero and not a villain.

Depending on how you meant the phrase, none of my characters would have 'pulled my punches' wth him in the first place. Use minimum force? OK. Refrain from asking the DA and the judge to go 'Maximum Bob' on his ass? Probably. But actually let the little shitbird go scott-free? Not happening. If he was one of the tragically misguided villains, sympathy might come into play for some of my characters... but as you described him, he's just a thug in a mask. And if my spouse doesn't like that -- uhhh, honey, *YOU MARRIED A SUPERHERO*. You'd be going through the exact same process if you'd married an ordinary honest cop and your brother was an ordinary mugger. Then again, if any character of mine marries, they're going to marry somebody who knew exactly what they were getting into, so the issue shouldn't come up. (Granted, few of my characters are the marrying type anyway.)

You know, I liked Seeker a *lot* more than I like Nighthawk... especially Ultimate Seeker. At least his origin story was bleedin' original. I mean, Australia is not usually the first place you think of when you hear the word 'ninja', and yet they actually came up with an explanation that fit well within martial arts movie genre conventions.

Baron von Darien (elder vampire) -- vow to give the sorceror who cast this foul illusion the ass-kicking of the millennium. Starguard -- gape horrifically in shock, and then realize the true reason as to why she can't remember any of her past. Angst about whether or not she's really a person. Worry greatly if she's been programmed by her creator to be some kind of hidden weapon against the superteam she's on. Get on over to Dr. Silverback's and have herself examined for trojan horse programs, maker's marks, serial #'s, etc.

I was always a fan of the 4mm Gauss rifle loading hyperdense.

I don't recall insulting his *opinion*... just his *manners*. Which were lacking. Oh, and the part where he pretended that the pro-four-color crowd had been claiming that four-color was more realistic than his preferred opinion when we never did.

We never did pretend. J4y -- you didn't take a polite hint. *And* you straw-manned your opposition besides. *In addition* to giving us yet another repeat of the same broken record full of insults re: "schlock" and suchlike... Can you think of any reason why I *shouldn't* be telling you to put a god-damned sock in it at this point?

Speaking might be a 0-Phase Action. *Dialing* isn't.

> All violence is not evil. All killing is not "murder." Nobody's said that it is. We have said that heroes intentionally killing villains is not four-color... which is the truth. We have *not* said that everything that isn't four-color is automatically eeeeeeeeeeee-vil. OTOH, some of us have, as DMs, suffered through campaigns where everybody seemed to playing a psychotic tortured loner who cloned either Wolverine or the Punisher -- simultaneously -- and as such, we're not as desperately in search of 'realism' as some others. My own theory of gaming is that while I demand a high degree of verisimilitude and plausibility, if I want *realism* then I need to leave the gaming table and go open a window. I go to the gaming table to get *away* from the grimmer aspects of reality, not to indulge in them.

Look, if you want realism and not four-color, run your game however the hell you want. We can't tell you not to, and we can't tell you what to enjoy or not to enjoy. However, the same thing also applies going from you to us, so enough with the continual broken record about how one of our preferred genres is 'stupid', 'schlock', 'bad writing', or anything else. Now, do you have anything *new* to contribute?

> Just to be pedantic, that won't save the 100 orphans. As a > four-color player I feel obligated to point out that nuclear > weapons are triggered by conventional high explosives, [snip] Ah, but in a four-color game, genre convention is that doing something like this harmlessly disarms the entire bomb. In a game with a higher realism quotient, she'd do something like Major Transform (Implanted Device To Sterile Saline Solution). Re: "hostage situations" -- whoa yeah. There's a reason one of our current team took a Teleport (Usable As Attack) slot in his spatial manipulation multipower -- anybody tries holding a hostage on us, either him, his hostage, or his weapon's gonna end up standing a few hexes to the left.

Re: What Would You Do If..... The Double Cross I'm alone, shot in the back by the two people who are supposed to be my backup, and facing the master villain? I've already taken two hits with the x2 STUN Surprise bonus *and* they're coordinating attacks with each other and the villain. Odds are, I am quite thoroughly Stunned. So what I do at this point will involve getting hammered into the ground like a nail. Hopefully, the master villain didn't build a totally escape-proof dungeon.

My own opinion of Nighthawk is that it must have taken great effort to come up with a character so lame that it actually made Crusader look cool.

Well, my current PC would simply shift her Power Pool over to a Major Transform (radioactives to harmless inert materials) and spend 2 hours running around town like Kinetik on amphetamines. Either that, or the team can page a favor from Captain Chronos to whip out a time-stasis to put the little darlings in until something can be done. Failing that, there is the "Judge Dredd" solution -- handcuff the bomb-maker to his own bomb and *then* ask him if he can remember those disarming instructions now.

Unlike his mutant strenth and toughness, Power Crusher's draining abilities are based on Foci. Wouldn't need to give him a job, just confiscate his gear.

Re: Characters who Kill Redux: What would you do? Most characters I've played would answer "Commute his sentence to eternity in Hot Sleep if you have to, take him down to the nuclear test range at Alamagordo if you have to, build a fleeping rocket ship and send him into the fleeping sun if you have to, but there's no way I can do this." Granted, I had a couple who'd say "Let me get my stuff.", and I know one guy who had a character who'd say "You mean he was still alive when I left him? Damn, I must be getting old."