Lord Liaden

Re: THE ULTIMATE MENTALIST -- What Do *You* Want To See? Presence Attacks have so many similarities to Mental Powers, and in fact could be given the same SFX in some characters, that the differences and interactions could justifiably be explored in this book. It's something I've been asking for for years. IIRC Steve explored more about PA in a Digital Hero column, but that should really be brought forward in an "official" book.

Re: Build Me A Villain Team My mistake. His CKC "Campaign Use" text suggests that "He works well with groups, whether as a leader or follower." Not that he had done so in continuity. I misremembered, sorry.

Re: Build Me A Villain Team As I've said before, very cool group. Sadly, the request from the Bennie is for official 5E CU villains. I'll tell you this, though: since the CU has Kings of Edom and Elder Worms, there's no reason why it can't have the Worm Scepter, so I say bring back The Seven Horsemen! Now there was a scary pack o' mofo's!

Re: Build Me A Villain Team

Re: Build Me A Villain Team

Re: THE ULTIMATE MENTALIST -- What Do *You* Want To See? Don't have to. I've been a quarter-mile downwind of my brother's socks.

Re: Build Me A Villain Team

Re: Build Me A Villain Team

Re: Build Me A Villain Team The leadership issue is a telling one. Holocaust has everthing he needs to be a great leader/sponsor of a world-conquering team: tremendous power, intellect, charisma, vast wealth, plenty of political clout. If only he weren't such an a$$. Trouble is, the next most appropriate candidate, Zorran, isn't much better, being massively arrogant and condescending. I ran into the same issue using these villains as part of my new RAVEN. I think anyone incorporating them into a group would have to be willing to stick just to the letter of their Psych Lims, and tone down the behavior described in their flavor text. Otherwise the group would never last.

Re: Build Me A Villain Team Wait a minute, don't the Crowns of Krim count as a "world-beater villain squad?" At least as long as Dark Seraph is around.

Re: Build Me A Villain Team Now that I think of it, if Tesseract can't be on the main combat team, put her on the reserve list instead of Esper. She'd still make for excellent backup on non-killing missions, not to mention phenomenal team transport. I should note that I'm avoiding drawing on villains that are already part of teams or organizations. Otherwise Viperia would already be here.

Re: Build Me A Villain Team Excellent! In that case - assuming you're not willing to make allowances for Tesseract, who remains my first choice - please give the female spot on the combat team to Raya de Plata, a world-class speedster with the right attitude for this team. If you really want your superheroes to tremble, replace Jade Phoenix with Taipan.

Re: Cyberpunk resources? It's always great when you don't end up feeling like a putz for recommending something.

Re: Build Me A Villain Team Interesting. I was just thinking along similar lines for my reworking of RAVEN. No "major mastermind villains," huh? Would that include Holocaust? He's not included with the other mastermind villains in CKC, and he has a precedent for hiring groups of villains to assist his plans for world conquest, so if he isn't excluded I'd say he's a natural to lead this team. Assuming Holocaust is a go, I'd add to the core combat team: Mechassassin - elite class field commander; Jade Phoenix - one of the deadliest martial artists around; Gargantua - among the top bricks in the CU; Zorran the Artificer - powerful and versatile sorceror, and his magitech could be very useful; Now it gets tricky. We still need a spot for a woman, and I'd really like to use Tesseract - she has the desire for world conquest, and her powers would be extremely helpful to a team - but your "willling to rack up a superhero body count" proscription clashes directly with her Code Vs. Killing. As a matter of fact, I'm having trouble finding any combat-powerful supervillainess that doesn't have CVK. For that reason I'd probably go with Stingray, but that's under protest. For the reserve members, I would choose Masquerade and Esper, both well suited to covert operations, with no qualms about who gets hurt.

Re: Which Villain Do You Want to Play? 'Fraid not, Baron. Menton in the 5E Champs Uni went AWOL from the Doctor's service while DD pretended to be dead. Prof. Muerte is officially dead, I'm afraid. Scorpia and Feur (now "Feurmacher") betrayed and offed him.

Re: Cyberpunk resources? Cool. In that case I'll just direct you to stuff that I'm aware of. First off, hit the link down in my signature, and then scroll down to the listing for CYBERPUNK 2020 (lots of converted cyberware and bioware), and the listing for SHADOWRUN (mentioned earlier on the thread), with more of the same plus integration of magic into the cyberpunk setting. I would also recommend Michael "Susano" Surbrook's excellent Kazei Five anime-style cyberpunk setting sourcebook. Although it's for Fourth Edition HERO, it translates easily to Fifth. It's available from the PDF section of Hero Games's Online Store, for a mere $9.95. Susano also has substantial samples from the book on his personal website. I particularly recommend his simplified Skill-based netrunning system, since it doesn't sound like you'll be making that a major part of your campaign.

Re: Changing to Heroic identity

Re: Changing to Heroic identity When you think about it, no character with a Secret ID can change willy-nilly. A character with a costumed identity would need to find someplace out of sight to change into costume, which BTW requires at least one full Phase; and the character gets no cost break for that. However, the definition of OIHID in the rulebook requires, as a minimum, one full Phase for the change to take place, and since you have that covered - and I presume the normal form is as vulnerable as any person on the street - it's probably sufficient to justify the Lim. Other difficulties or means to stop the change can be included or exchanged for that extra time, but aren't mandatory.

Re: Dyson Sphere (shell) - Dysonica Anyone? We've had some fruitful discussions on this topic, and some useful links have also been posted. Check out these threads: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45189 http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36890 http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37430

Re: Changing to Heroic identity As with so many things in HERO, it depends on how you envision the effect working. If the hero can change from schmoe to demigod instantly and with no effort, whenever he wants, then there's probably no need to account for it mechanically. It's equivalent to another hero changing into or out of costume. If the change poses some difficulties for the character, such that the change could be prevented - takes some time to fully change, has to speak a magic word, needs an artifact that can be stolen, etc. - then it would be reasonable for the character to purchase the abilities he gains as a super with the "Only In Hero ID" Limitation. OTOH if the normal and heroic form of your character are different in more than just appearance and abilities, i.e. have different personalities, Psychological Limitations, Vulnerabilities and the like, then you'd perhaps be better off buying one of them as a Multiform. You can put Limitations on the Multiform to represent any difficulties in changing that you may envision for your character. I hope that helps. If anything isn't clear feel free to post followup questions.

Re: Transformer's Spark Hmm... well, if you built the Transformers' bodies as Vehicles or Automatons, the the Spark could be designed as an Artificial Intelligence which controls the body when it occupies it. A basic AI is an impotent intelligence without some physical system for it to manipulate, which would match the source material. The AI doesn't have any BODY score, so it's intangible and not "killable" in any normal way; but the Fourth Edition Spirit Rules allowed for special attacks which destroyed EGO rather than BODY in order to kill spirits, so I would suggest BOECV attacks which do BODY damage to the EGO of the Spark.

Re: Cyberpunk resources? Hmm... frankly, what you're describing doesn't sound much like most variants of "cyberpunk" that I'm familiar with. The closest thing to it would probably be the Matrix film series, where cyberspace is a virtual world not that dissimilar from the physical world, but in which people's avatars have extraordinary abilities comparable to low-level superheroes. The dystopian tendencies of most cyberpunk settings wouldn't really suit the tone of your campaign. You say that cybertech or biotech augmentation isn't common; that's among the most substantial categories of free HERO material available, but I'm not sure how interested you'd be in using that. I'm also unclear as to how much of the traditional activities of cyberspace "netrunners" you want to incorporate, e.g. ferreting out secret information, covertly reprogramming computer systems, etc. Again, there are sources for that we can direct you to if desired.

Re: [storytime] Birth of RAVEN I thought for some time about whether Menton would leave his mental paddy-paws off his fellow conspirators, and came to the conclusion that it would be in his best interest to do so, at least for a while. First off, as I mentioned in my story, these villains are all very intelligent, and Menton guiding their thoughts too closely to his own way of thinking would stifle their creativity and initiative, which could be very valuable to RAVEN. Second, and perhaps more importantly, most of these villains are strong-willed and react badly to attempts to dominate them (high EGO and Psych Lims), so without constant supervision by Menton they could throw off his mental domination at any time. As soon as they realize they've been under Menton's control they'll likely inform their colleagues, and RAVEN will blow up in Menton's face. And even being Hunted by Dr. Destroyer wouldn't be worse than having these seven p!ssed-off masterminds on his trail. That said, I would expect one of the first acts by the non-mentalist villains would be to recruit mentalists of their own, to at least warn them of psionic intrusion. I figure Gravitar would look up her countryman Le Bouc, and Molnya his fellow Russian Slun (both from Champions Worldwide, and both with the right temperament to be part of RAVEN). Teleios probably has a brain in a jar to serve as his psychic watchdog. And thanks for the props.

Re: Cyberpunk resources? To offer any intelligent suggestion, I would need more information. What are the ground rules for the campaign? What's the overall tone - gritty? Humorous? To what degree will the action be divided between the physical world and the cyberworld? What abilities will characters have access to in the physical world? What are the characters' objectives in the campaign supposed to be? Who or what are the opponents or obstacles that they'll be facing? What you're describing seems a bit like a mixture of "cyberpunkish" settings and Palladium's Rifts, and there's certainly a lot of free material for both that I could direct you to; but the tone of the campaign sounds more upbeat than those settings.

Re: Which Villain Do You Want to Play?