Lord Liaden

Re: The Seven Deadly Villains Sounds like you're already under his influence.

Re: [storytime] Birth of RAVEN Cool, dialogue. I think the coexistence of DEMON and the Scarlet Moon in the CU is due in no small measure to the differing objectives of the leadership of both organizations. The Edomite is very focussed on his final goal, to which all other concerns are secondary. As is mentioned in the DEMON sourcebook, if the Edomite turned the organization's resources to acquiring temporal power DEMON would be even mightier in that arena than it is. OTOH the Circle uses magic primarily as a means to acquire temporal power. I would guess that their interests don't clash enough for the Scarlet Moon to be a priority for the Edomite. Also keep in mind that DEMON has been cut off from the grapevine of the Mystic World for some time, since its true allegiance became known. Given that the leaders of the CotSM are experts at masking their activities, the Edomite may have no idea of who they are or where to find them. (However, IMHO the real reason they coexist is to give the GM in a modern-day Hero Universe campaign both a heroic-level and superheroic mystic foe for either class of PCs.) Now if one were to use my suggestion for the mystically-aligned Dark Brotherhood (need to find another name for that ) as a component of RAVEN, I'd expect direct conflict between them and the Scarlet Moon for world power in the magic arena. RAVEN would try to absorb the most magically-gifted of the Circle's members into the Brotherhood and co-opt their wealth and influence, while destroying those who would not join or who aren't "super" class. This conflict could be a good way to introduce RAVEN into a mystically-focussed campaign. If PC heroes are capable of bringing down the likes of VIPER, it would be RAVEN's style to covertly help them along, with information and maybe a little surgicaly applied force. Trying afterward to find out who was backing them up would be one route to bring the PCs into direct conflict with RAVEN.

Re: The Seven Deadly Villains Lust: Adrian Vandaleur. That immortal jerk hits on every good-looking woman he comes across, including his own great-great-great etc. granddaughters.

Re: [storytime] Birth of RAVEN

Re: 4e Champions Question

Re: Build Me A Villain Team Oooh... OzMike, this is a very interesting lineup! The idea of Black Paladin fronting Invictus on this team due to shared anti-Christian sentiment is extremely clever. There may be something in that which could lead to a focussing motivation for this team. I'll have look through my books and give it more thought.

Re: [storytime] Birth of RAVEN You're not alone. I realized shortly after I decided to incarnate this group in the 5E CU that it would become Enemy Number One to the IHA the moment they discovered its existence. This RAVEN is the Institute's worst paranoid nightmare made real: a worldwide conspiracy of paranormals dedicated to subjugating all "normal" humans. I personally would not want to have RAVEN provide limited support to the IHA - I dislike major superuniverse conspiracies manipulating other superuniverse conspiracies - but you could certainly go that way if you chose. You're right that there was another agency in The Mutant File, called IMAGE, that was the opposite number to Genocide - a pro-mutant force whose leader had the same vision as Magneto. That example highlights another reason why I would dislike trying to make the IHA a pawn of RAVEN: IMAGE tried to do that with Genocide, to scare mutants into joining them, but they helped make Genocide so powerful that it became a major threat to IMAGE. Not that there aren't plenty of real-world examples of pawns of the powerful coming back to bite them. Of course if you wanted that to happen, it is a great excuse to "upgrade" the IHA.

Re: Build Me A Villain Team

Re: Build Me A Villain Team I can see that you've put thought into your lineup. Your dual-leadership approach seems to be practical, but I have to question the inclusion of Ifrit and Obelisque in what's intended to be an effective team. No question that they have power, but Ifrit has Holocaust's problems with discipline, overweening arrogance, and rage over being offended; probaby to an even greater degree based on his textual description. Obelisque is an ill-tempered animal, with limited intellect and ready to fly into a rampage at almost any provocation. Even his creator Teleios had trouble controlling him.

Re: Build Me A Villain Team Hey, read further downthread - I included Black Paladin. It isn't a matter of worthiness IMO, but of the parameters that Scott set for this exercise. To be fair, though, most of the characters well suited to membership in a permanent team, pre- or post-5E, already are in permanent teams. Speaking of pre-5E, since in the current CU the name "The Conquerors" isn't taken, I nominate that as the moniker for this team. It's exactly what they're about, and there's something to be said for tradition.

Re: Build Me A Villain Team BTW for that last spot on my suggested field team, I think I'll second the earlier recommendation of the Black Paladin. He's treacherous and would have to be watched, but he's powerful, almost as versatile as Tesseract, and actually delights in bloodshed.

Re: Build Me A Villain Team

Re: Build Me A Villain Team Hmm... intriguing idea, but that tension leaves a lot of potential for the team to break up in the near future. Scott seems to want a team with Eurostar-level staying power. I don't think we're quite there yet. Still a darn cool suggestion, though.

Re: Monsters Unfortunately I'm not very creative at coming up with new character concepts , so I really appreciate being able to work with designs from people who are.

Re: Build Me A Villain Team

Re: Build Me A Villain Team Wait a minute, I think I had a flash! Scott's request was for a six-member core combat team, with allowance for two more "reserve members" for "major operations." There's been quite a bit of concensus that Mechassassin would make an excellent team field commander, but the sticking point has been finding an appropriate overall leader for the group. Several of us favor Molnya for his competence and stability, except that he prefers to work from behind the scenes. Well, who says the leader always has to be on the front lines? That's not the way most generals run their armies. What about leaving Mechassassin in charge of team field operations, but putting Molnya into one of those "reserve" slots? Molnya can decide overall objectives and tactics for the team, but assign Mechassassin to carry them out while he remains at headquarters. Rather like the relationship between Professor X and Cyclops. That would just leave us to fill out the rest of the combat team, and the additional reservist. Would that be acceptable, Scott?

Re: Build Me A Villain Team Scott, how long does this group have to have a stable membership for it to count? We've all come up with solid candidates, but not any combination that won't eventually crumble from personality conflicts.

Re: Monsters

Re: Monsters Haven't been able to afford the Asian Bestiaries yet. So many other HERO books still waiting in the queue. OTOH I have long availed myself of Susano's numerous and diverse quality creature writeups on his website: http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptionscreatures/creatures.html Of course my RPG conversion list (link in my sig ) leads to a host of races and beasties from many sources.

Re: [storytime] Birth of RAVEN Here is another element to the new RAVEN which draws inspiration from the older material, but takes it in IMHO a fresh new direction: RAVEN Infiltration and Subversion Corps (RISC). Like RAVEN's elite combat force, the Praetorian Guard, RISC is a specialized corps of superhuman operatives. Unlike the Guard, however, the members of RISC are chosen for powers and abilities which emphasize subtlety, deception and manipulation, including the shape-shifting spy and assassin Masquerade, the cyberkinetic "super-hacker" Cybermind, and the mind-controlling Esper. While the Praetorians are known throughout RAVEN, the inspirational symbols of superhuman superiority, the very existence of RISC is known only to the highest leadership of RAVEN. If the Guard is a sword, RISC is a scalpel. It exists to spread distrust, foment conflict, and eliminate opposition which cannot be practically destroyed through force. It specializes in acquiring closely guarded damaging information, and in spreading disinformation; in manipulating or coercing people into performing "services" for RAVEN; and in controlling or impersonating individuals who are obstacles to RAVEN's objectives so as to destroy their credibility and effectiveness. When RISC performs a theft or assassination it is either of the "locked room" variety, unexplainable without knowledge of the superpowers used, or else it leaves deliberate clues leading to a predetermined scapegoat.

Re: Cyberpunk resources? It's called Robot Warriors, and it's a pretty cool little game. A trifle dated in terms of the source material (mid-1980's), and it's one of the pre-Fourth Edition HERO games with its own unique iteration of the HERO ruleset. The whole thing is self-contained in the one book. OTOH our colleague Chris Goodwin has created an inspired update/integration of the original RW rules with Fifth Edition: http://home.comcast.net/~archer7/rw2hero.html

Re: CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE II - What Do You Want To See? It's true that Grond is still being referenced in CU books like a Hulk-level powerhouse, when there are several CU bricks who could take him apart. The Ultimate Brick boosted him a little, but not that far. FWIW in my own campaign I grafted most of the character sheet for Fracas, from Galactic Champions, onto Grond. STR 120 seems pretty respectable for him.

Re: Just For Fun: Cartoon Network All Star Team Ups I know it's dating me, but since these shows have been rerun on modern cartoon channels: I've always wanted to see a teamup of the great 1960's Hannah-Barbera space superheroes - Space Ghost, the Herculoids, and the Galaxy Trio - against some major interstellar menace.

Re: 4e Champions Question But the one in Ultimate Mentalist was significantly more powerful.

Re: [storytime] Birth of RAVEN Or is that just what Menton wants him to think? :eg: (I'm getting dizzy.)