Lord Liaden

Re: [storytime] Birth of RAVEN

Re: Villainous Matchmaking! Interestingly, Mirage has Utility as a Professional Rival in her Disadvantages, and one of her plot seeds in CKC has them in a friendly contest to see who can humiliate the most superheroes. It shouldn't be hard to justify them hooking up. The two of them would make a very effective team.

Re: Help with Slick from the Ultimates

Re: Help with Slick from the Ultimates

Re: Villainous Matchmaking! No one. Probably one of the reasons why they're always in such a bad mood.

Re: How would you use Gravitar? If you're going to accuse me of innuendo, at least spell my username right. It's "Liaden," rhymes with "lion's den." EDIT: That may have come out unnecessarily snippy. My apologies.

Re: Balance versus flavour I can't give any better advice than Theron Bretz provides in his excellent article from Digital Hero #3, "Pointless Champions," which deals with running characters in the same group who are not balanced as far as point totals and power levels. Although aimed at the supers genre, where you often see the greatest disparity in power level between team mates in the source material, IMO it's very pertinent to any game genre where this issue can arise. You can view a sizeable free excerpt from that article here. The key elements for a GM to remember in this situation are what Theron calls "schtick protection" - making sure that each character has at least one area of expertise or usefulness to the group that is his and his alone - and "spotlight management," or allotting each character time for his abilities or issues to take center stage.

Re: Help with Slick from the Ultimates The Special Effects of a particular Power may indeed occasionally trump the specific game mechanics of another Power's writeup. In the case of Slick, the SFX of his Entangle is that he makes a surface that an opponent is standing on frictionless, so that that opponent can't walk or run forward, and will slip and fall and be unable to coordinate himself. Now if said character has the Power of Flight, and the SFX of that Flight is some sort of psionic levitation whereby he can rise into the air just by thinking it, then logically he should be able to beat Slick's Entangle without needing to use any other force. However, if the SFX of the Entangled character's Flight involves having to orient himself in the proper position to fly - wings, boot jets, etc. - then he may be unable to do so while sprawled out on the frictionless surface. If the super is actually flying when Slick throws his Entangle, then logically it should have no effect. However, you could rule that should the flier land in an Area Of Effect where the Entangle was thrown he would immediately be affected by the frictionless surface, which is not the default for a basic Entangle. This is an example of the minor benefits and drawbacks of Special Effects balancing each other out.

Re: How would you use Gravitar? Well, we did stay on topic through 44 posts. Not too shabby. Considering this is a thread about a female supervillain on a forum full of comic/gaming geeks, I'm impressed that it held up that long.

Re: Villainous Matchmaking! Mechanon and the Engineer, though... maybe.

Re: Ego Boost

Re: Villainous Matchmaking! Could be interesting for Nebula to fall for Thunderbird. He has a black and white view of justice which is not dissimilar from Nebula's own. By the definition of his society Thunderbird is breaking the law, and is therefore a criminal who should be punished. OTOH his motivation is to punish those criminals who have themselves escaped the legal system, which is essentially what Nebula herself is doing. Nebula may fry a few neurons trying to reconcile that paradox.

Re: Firewing vs. Gravitar? Oh sure, bring in reason why dont'cha?!

Re: Firewing vs. Gravitar? Ditto.

Re: Villainous Matchmaking! Holocaust and Gravitar pairing up is already mentioned as one of Holocaust's plot seeds. They do have a lot in common, including massive egos and control issues which should lead to a brief affair and a very destructive breakup. Stormfront and Zephyr are both air-and-weather manipulators, and both lifelong thieves and con artists. They'd probably get along splendidly, as long as Stormfront doesn't try to boss Zephyr around. Zephyr has a serious problem with authority, and the power to kick Stormfront around the block. For those who own DEMON: Servants Of Darkness, I suggest a liaison between those two malevolent incarnations of Qliphothic energy, Demoiselle Nocturne and The Left Hand. They may be utterly evil monsters, but they're also male and female, of very similar nature and origin, and pretty good looking.

Re: [storytime] Birth of RAVEN To be honest, I'm actually thinking of a much cozier relationship between Zorran and Stingray. With her own background in the mystic arts, Stingray could be Zorran's chief lieutenant in the Dark Brotherhood (RAVEN's occult cabal), and his main intermediary to his minions. Her amphibiousness would greatly assist him in another project I had in mind for Zorran's territory, the construction of an undersea crystallos-domed base like the domes of the Lemurians. In fact, given the many similarities in background and motivation for Zorran and Stingray, I would readily accept their alliance becoming more than professional. IMO that could easily develop outside of introducing RAVEN to a campaign.

Re: Back by Popular Demand-The Batfox!

Re: [storytime] Birth of RAVEN Heh. I always liked Menton's line from Classic Enemies, although it's a little dated now: "Your mind will be a terrible thing to lay waste."

Re: The villain Holocaust In that case, Holocaust could use Flight to brace himself against Knockback and essentially leave himself open to someone blasting him - which revitalizes him. Simple but nasty sucker tactic.

Re: Ego Boost Well said, David. Ego is supposed to be a measure of strength of will, and some of the most impressive characters in comics in that area are not otherwise superhuman.

Re: Firewing vs. Gravitar? Considering the size of Gravitar's Defenses, CON and STUN, a good roll with Firewing's most powerful Flame Bolt attack could Stun Gravitar unless she's thrown up her Force Wall. If he knows about her before their fight, his best tactic would be to lead with his "Withering Heat" NND which she has no Defense against and would be very likely to Stun her with one shot. Once that happens her Force Field drops, and with his Speed advantage Firewing would probably get in the next shot and drop her. So I agree with you in that whoever gets in the first successful attack likely wins. If these two are using their standard tactics and Power choices, without advance knowledge of their enemies, I'd say that Gravitar has a better chance of doing that.

Re: Firewing vs. Gravitar? Gravitar has one particularly big advantage in this fight, her Gravity Alteration power. An Area Of Effect Telekinesis, Only to hold up or pin down. It's stronger than Firewing's own Strength and costs Gravitar no Endurance to use, so once she snags him with it she can pin him helplessly to the ground, where he'll be an easy target for her main 100 STR TK attack. Three Phases of crushing with that and Firewing is out.

Re: How would you use Gravitar? She has 40 STR, 30 CON and 24 PD. Good luck.

Re: The villain Holocaust

Re: The villain Holocaust I agree with CC's evaluation. Despite being fairly strong and having a small HKA, Holocaust really isn't that good at close combat. He has good tactical movement with his Flight, which doesn't cost Endurance, and he's very accurate with his Eyebeams, so he should probably stay in the air and maintain his distance from his opponents. With his Speed of 8, a good standard tactic would be to Half-Move away from opponents trying to close on him, then attack. Holocaust's Telekinesis is easy to overlook, but if he's using one of his less END-intensive Eyebeam attacks you could try to combine them in a Multiple-Power Attack against an opponent who isn't strong enough to easily overcome the TK. If Holocaust snares such an opponent he'll be a much easier target to blast with the full-power Eyebeams.