Lord Liaden

Re: History of the Super-Soldier Serum (need suggestions!) Susano, I suggest that rather than having Bruce Banner attempting to recreate Herakleophorbia, he was instead trying to reproduce the meta-gene bomb. That would bring his origin much more closely in line with the original comics version. In fact, offshoots of attempts to activate the human meta-gene with radiation could have led to the accidents that created a number of Marvel superhumans of the 1960's, such as Spider-Man, Daredevil or the Sandman. I do agree with McCoy's suggestion of Hourman's "Miraclo" pills as another result of research into a super-soldier serum. Another possibility would be "Venom," the drug used by Bane to physically enhance himself.

Re: [Wanted] Lots of old sourcebooks Welcome, Predatorpt. I'll offer you such help as I can. I've heard good things from UK gamers about Leisure Games in London. They do carry some older Champions products, and looking at their website I noticed that they currently have one book on your list, Golden Age Champions. Here's where you can check for yourself: Leisure Games 91 Ballards Lane Finchley, London N3 1XY United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0) 208 346 2327 Fax : +44 (0) 208 343 3888 Website : http://www.leisuregames.com As for your specific book interests: GAC is a fun book IMO, and a good resource for Golden Age HERO gaming, with lots of characters including Axis, Allies and independents, and a good timeline for the war. The characters do tend somewhat toward the comical, though, which may or may not suit your idea of GA comics European Enemies is, to put it bluntly, dreck. Uninspired, cliched, sometimes downright dumb character concepts, and lots of system rules mistakes and math errors in the writeups. If you insist on getting it, though, you may benefit from this webpage, which will take you to corrections and Fifth Edition HERO updates of all of the characters. Enemies For Hire features a broad mix of villains. My personal opinion is that the quality of the concepts is mixed, as well, but you could probably find some of interest to you. Enemies Assemble is a collection of villain teams, and I personally liked several of them. There are some fresh concepts there IMO. Justice, Not Law is a very well-done book with a number of interesting characters, and details a quite rich city setting, Hudson City. However, the book is very strongly geared toward street-level vigilante supers, and would be less useful if you're more interested in "four-color" supers. Kingdom Of Champions is IMO one of the better sourcebooks for Fourth Edition Champions. As it was written by a Britisher, it's an accurate and pretty useful reference for UK gaming. Mind you, the background info about the UK likely wouldn't be as useful to you if you're from the UK yourself, and some of it is fifteen years out of date.

Re: automatons

Re: adventurer's club 3rd to 4th edition? Welcome, jushin53! I hope you'll be visiting our little community more in future. AC #13 was the last issue to exclusively use game stats from the various pre-Fourth Edition Hero games. Issue #14 was sort of a transitional issue, in that it introduced 4E stats for all the writeups of characters, items etc., but also provided writeups for the earlier games. By AC #15 and after, everything was in 4E HERO only.

Re: NAZI Villians Yes, that was "The Aryan," from the Allies sourcebook. That's for the 4E CU, though. There were one or two more Nazi villains in the 4E world IIRC.

Re: NAZI Villians If you're talking about the modern-day Champions Universe, I know of at least one true Nazi: Panzer, a powered-armor would-be conqueror of Germany. See Champions Worldwide, pp. 123-24. Of course there were a number of them during the Golden Age, but for the most part we'll have to wait for the 5E version of Golden Age Champions to view them. I know that Der Sturmvogel, first recorded superhuman of the modern era, is written up in an issue of Digital Hero, but I don't remember which one offhand.

Re: CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE II - What Do You Want To See? Hmm... what do you think Queen would charge in royalties? Now that I think of it, since we're getting writeups for the Sentinels and Justice Squadron, how about detailing their bases and/or team vehicles? Preferably with maps, if practical. Oftentimes a ready made supers base is even handier to have than a ready made supers team.

Re: Steve's Chat Tonight (Thursday, July 27)

Re: CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE II - What Do You Want To See? Cool, and your creative work is much appreciated. I have to admit that I have so many pre-5E Champs teams on hand - earlier incarnations of the Champions, the Protectors, Strike Force, the Freedom Squad, the Cyberknights, the Justice Foundation, plus Steve Kenson's HERO stats for the Freedom League - as well as Digital Hero lineups for the MC8, the Colorado Crusaders, the Forces of Nature and others... well, let's just say that I'm not exactly hurting for American NPCs. I guess that does color my perception of the need for more "official" US teams. We should probably wrap up this thread derailment, though. We may be entertaining Darren, but I doubt we're helping him much.

Re: How to thread I would need to hear your definition of "hurt" and "injure" in relation to STUN and BODY damage, before I would give a definite response. My first thought would be lots of Damage Reduction, BODY Only (-1/2 by the book).

Re: CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE II - What Do You Want To See? Government-sponsored, no. But there is an independent team of some note based in Mexico, Los Angeles de la Guarda, "The Guardian Angels." (Champons Worldwide p. 101) All right, that's fair enough. To my way of thinking, even if I was running my campaign in the United States, I wouldn't want another major superteam in my region. That should be my PCs' turf, so that they can be the most important heroes at least on a local level. If our campaign was based on the West Coast, for example, I wouldn't be in any hurry to see the California Patrol or Bay Guardians plunked into my back yard. OTOH I figure once we have a few detailed American NPC teams for the 5E CU, I as GM am free to move them anywhere in the United States that I want, so that they're at hand when I have a good story idea for them, but I don't have to work too hard to explain why they aren't horning in on major developments that my players' heroes are dealing with. I had no qualms about relocating Millennium City to Kansas in my campaign, so moving a team's locale wouldn't upset me. The thing is, it's not usually hard to come up with ideas for appropriate characters for American-based campaigns, even for non-American gamers; that's where the vast majority of comics series are set, so the conventions are well known. Characters from other countries require more research to give them an aura of authenticity, which is where I as GM would appreciate someone else having done the research for me.

Re: Easily forgotten

Re: CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE II - What Do You Want To See? Some of the ones I'm fond of had your name on them IIRC. Not to threadjack too far, but if you had to choose just one, who would it be?

Re: CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE II - What Do You Want To See?

Re: automatons It's true that wear isn't exactly the same as aging: but wear and tear does indeed make the aircraft less usable per flight, in a very real sense. The amount of time needed for maintenance relative to the duration of each flight goes up as the craft ages. The probability of component failures during flight also goes up. Eventually stress to the whole basic fabric of the machine weakens it and renders it unsafe for further use. The alternative, of course, is to completely rebuild the machine with new materials; but then you have, essentially, a new machine, not the original one

Re: automatons But if you simply moved living things a million years through time, without movement or erosion (mechanical wear) or growth/reproduction (chemical interactions), they wouldn't wear out either. IMO you're excluding environmental conditions from one example that have to apply to both, or neither, for your analogy to be consistent.

Re: Now Here's A News Headline That's Just Brimming With Plot Potential I think Eurostar would be more likely to boost the code for themselves, than be boosted by it. Unless this particular Da Vinci Code involved a means to augment one's powers. Leonardo is reputed to have been exceptionally strong in his youth...

Re: CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE II - What Do You Want To See? I fear it's unlikely to happen, but I'd really like that "new hero team" that Darren mentioned as being in CU II to be from somewhere other than the United States. Nothing at all against the USA, but with three major American teams detailed in this book, plus the Ravenswood Academy teens, plus the solo supers of Millennium City and Vibora Bay, and some CU-based teams written up in Digital Hero, I feel that the States already has decent coverage NPCwise. In general I believe that if you're going to use NPC heroes, you can get more mileage out of those who are from outside the campaign's home base, which for the majority of supers gamers is the United States. There's greater potential for conflict and misunderstanding between the teams, especially if the PCs find themselves on the other heroes' turf. I realize that Canada and the United Kingdom are going to get their own sourcebooks, so we'll probably have to wait until then to see heroes from those countries. Also, the Tiger Squad from China is scheduled for Villains, Vandals And Vermin, so they're spoken for. But there are plenty of other CU teams from all over the world mentioned in CU I and Champions Worldwide. How about the Guardian Angels in Mexico, or France's Vanguard, or the Victory Brigade of South America, or the Children of Attaturk from Turkey, or India's Superhero Division? Perhaps a revival of the People's Legion in Russia, or the often-proposed European branch of UNITY?

Re: CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE II - What Do You Want To See?

Re: Help with Conversion The official Limitation value for "Others Only" for an Adjustment Power that affects the Power's possessor and other people, such as Healing, is -1/2. It's the same value for "Self Only." I and some other HEROphiles believe that -1 is a more appropriate value, but this is the book-legal version. If that doesn't address your question, please post a followup.

Re: Easily forgotten I would say that Invisibility would be a perfectly reasonable way to build this effect, if you consider that Invisibility is essentially "not being noticed." That would be the Special Effect of it. Default Invisibility has a Fringe effect which can be picked up by a Perception roll, i.e. someone does notice that your character is there. If you want you can take the "Bright Fringe" Limitation to make the character even more noticeable. OTOH you could probably justify buying it to 0 END Persistant, and Always On, since there would be definite drawbacks to it, such as the difficulty getting service that you mention.

Re: CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE II - What Do You Want To See? Sadly, you may have to wait for late 2007, when the Crews, Cops And Cabals organization compilation is scheduled. The IHA is supposed to be detailed in that book. OTOH I should hope that there would be some guidelines in CU II as to what the IHA, ARGENT and other groups have been up to since CU I was published.

Re: STR vs. Gravity As long as you're just lifting the rock in one direction at a time, sure. Stopping it, or changing its direction once you start moving it, won't be that easy. But as I said, I want to think more about whether this has any bearing on the point at issue. It may not.

Re: STR vs. Gravity I'd have to think about the implications of this a bit more, but it does occur to me that effectively employing STR in higher or lower gravity isn't just a matter of lifting capacity. The mass and inertia of any objects you attempt to move, including your own body, will not have changed. Lifting a rock on the Moon is not going to be six times easier than on Earth just because the Moon has 1/6th Earth's gravity.

Re: name this gadget!