Lord Liaden

Re: Inner-Earth Update Ever read The Ultimate Super Mage? There was a group in it directly inspired by Bulwer-Lytton, "The Vril Society." It was the cabal that trained Solitaire of the (4E) Champions.

Re: Inner-Earth Update I think the Empyreans have called dibs on that one.

Re: Has Anyone Done...... It may be a bit more "superheroey" than you're looking for, but Ghost Archer's Wild Hunt campaign certainly has a strongly mythic/magical style and characters, pumped up to super levels.

Re: Astral Form as Duplication I suppose everyone will have different interpretations of how a "real" Astral Form should function, and what kind of Powers/Modifiers would be appropriate. Even in the source material we have variations between Western occultist Astral Forms, Eastern mystic Astral Forms, comic-book Astral Forms, etc. The Duplication approach has built-in assumptions, and if you accept those you have no problem. I can see why that wouldn't work for everyone, though. Personally I've always loved the Clairsentience approach first detailed in Mystic Masters for the comic-book variety, but again that's trying to duplicate specific genre conventions. Oddhat, is that targetting Advantage for Clairsentience that I highlighted an official one? If so, where is it detailed and how much is it?

Re: Characteristics vs Aid

Re: *inspired my other threads* Gravitar vs Crowns of Krim Atlas Games put out a very good adventure supplement for 4E Champs (SPOILERS!!!) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . entitled Blood Fury which featured Mechanon. In that adventure Mechanon used miniature robot spy drones disguised as flies. He also replaced various humans with robot dopplegangers during the course of the plot, including ones that he could take direct control of and act through in order to mislead players as to who the real mastermind was. That adventure expanded Mechanon's resources and MO in ways that fleshed out the character quite a bit IMHO.

Re: Enemies of San Angelo

Re: Enemies of San Angelo Most definitely. Lots of people like the option of creating legacy characters, or prefer to run supers campaigns set in earlier eras, or with that Golden or Silver Age "tone" to them. IMHO putting all the earlier-era characters into one book would make it more appealing to people who don't want "just" a Golden or Silver Age supplement. I would suggest not leaving it as just a character collection, though. I recommend including notes as to what was happening in San Angelo during each "age," including political and social developments, major events in the timeline, etc. The unique focus of SA has always been the life of the normal inhabitants, and their perspective on the extraordinary beings in their midst. Making the earlier eras in San Angelo's history live and breathe should appeal to those who loved the modern-day sourcebook. However, I would also suggest a World Of San Angelo sourcebook at some point. One of the wishes I hear expressed most often among SA fans is for more information about the Earth outside of the city, so that they could expand their characters' adventures into the wider world. If such a book could exploit the "normal perspective" that's so distinctive to SA - how the peoples of different regions view superbeings and how their presence has impacted those societies - that would help set it apart from other supers worldbooks such as Hero Games's own Champions Universe.

Re: Enemies of San Angelo Since you have declared yourself open to fan feedback, I hope you'll take the points I'm about to raise as constructive criticism, as they're intended. IMO The Dragons Gate is a quality game product, with fascinating details of that section of a great fictional city. However, the fact that it did detail only a section with a particular style and flavor made it a bit of a niche product within a niche product (i.e. city sourcebooks), not conducive to great sales. Also, the personalities and power levels of the characters detailed in the book made it seem more like a Dark Champions supplement, whereas San Angelo overall is definitely four-color in tone. It kind of missed the SA fanbase target, again IMO. SACoH 1.5 was of course pretty much the same material as the original, just with new non-HERO game stats. I'm sure you didn't expect to have HERO gamers who already own the book buy copies, but IME many gamers will buy a sourcebook just to mine for ideas, whether it's a system they play or not. With the original SA having been out for so long a lot of those gamers would have already seen it, cutting down the potential buyership even more. OTOH a new San Angelo sourcebook updating and expanding on the city and its inhabitants, with stats for 5E HERO and other systems like Mutants And Masterminds, would have far broader appeal IMO.

Re: Characteristics vs Aid I have kind of mixed feelings about 5E having eliminated the "points gained up to starting value don't fade" feature of Adjustment Powers from 4E, in favor of the new Healing Power and the restrictions on it. One the one hand, I appreciate the game-balance and mechanic-consistency issues that went into the decision. OTOH some constructs such as "recharging" yourself using Transfer and Absorption are now much more expensive and complicated to build (e.g. greatly extended Fade rates, or Linked Healing). Also, Healing imposes significant default limits on when and how it can be used, and I'm not sure I like game-balance decisions being made for me. I think if Aid had been kept mechanically as it was for 4E - Costs END, no Fade below starting values - but had its cost increased to 10 pts. per 1d6 as it is now, I'd have been quite happy with it. In fact I've toyed with a "Doesn't Fade Below Starting Values" Custom Advantage for all Adjustment Powers, which I've set at +1/2 based on Aid with such an Advantage that Costs END (-1/2). That would make Aid cost and function just as I described above.

Re: *inspired my other threads* Gravitar vs Crowns of Krim Mechanon still has the option of remotely downloading its current memory files into a new body, but this is a last-ditch tactic if it's impossible for its head to escape. Note that its head can be detached at any time, not just for a last-ditch escape. That could be very useful for scouting and spying; being much smaller than Mechanon's whole body, the head can get through small openings and easily conceal itself.

Re: *inspired my other threads* Gravitar vs Crowns of Krim I did notice that Dark Seraph's loincloth has a very long drape in the front. And I can't believe that my discourse has sunk to this level. Anyway, you must admit that having vast black wings goes a long way toward offsetting a lack of pants. At least pants won't be the first thing that people seeing DS are likely to comment on. BTW I compared Dark Seraph to Mechanon earlier on this thread; anyone have the time to run that fight? (I'm a little pressed right now - in fact I probably shouldn't even be spending time here.)

Re: Characteristics vs Aid There's also the possibility of Aiding various Characteristics one at time, for yourself and for others. The +1/4 Advantage for doing so will probably turn out cheaper than any method based on Characteristics, such as a Power Framework. You can of course also Aid any group that you and the GM decide is related, which can include Characteristics, Powers, or any combination of those - more difficult and costly to do by another method. IMO once you start exploring the full flexibility of Aid, it becomes well worth the point investment. It's only in narrow applications such as the example at the start of this thread that its effectiveness is readily open to question.

Re: Enemies of San Angelo I've used Dr. Talos and Prometheus (with modifications) in my own campaign. Among the modifications, I changed the robot's name to Dr. Daedalus. IMO "Talos" is just too much of a giveaway that it's actually a robot. OTOH "Daedalus" better suits the Doctor's role as a technical genius for hire, and keeps the connection to Talos for clever PCs to eventually figure out. I enjoyed Enemies of San Angelo quite a bit. There were a number of interesting, original concepts there. Personal favorites included the abovementioned Prometheus and Dr. Talos, Anarchy (good focussed group motivation, and some cool backgrounds), Deadweight (a thug with an innovative gimmick), Mastermind (the only thing more disturbing than a hero who's gone too far, is one with the mental powers to make you do the same); and my fave of the group, Senora del Oro - wonderful name, rich background, defined and understandable motivations, and a logical powerset. Also, one of the nicest illustrations in the book.

Re: Characteristics vs Aid The boost to Maximum Effect on the Aid dice - +2 for 1 point - offsets the price disparity with Characteristics somewhat, although the time needed to build up to that maximum is a definite detriment. However, I've come to the conclusion that Self Only for Aid would make more sense at -1 rather than -1/2, not only because the math balances better with Characteristics that way, but because -1 is supposed to reflect the Power losing half of its effectiveness, and "Self Only" and "Others Only" really are the only two options for using Aid.

Re: *inspired my other threads* Gravitar vs Crowns of Krim That doesn't seem to hold as true for hell-lord types like Mephisto or Trigon. Of course the climate in their realms is probably fairly balmy.

Re: *inspired my other threads* Gravitar vs Crowns of Krim This runthrough makes me question again, as I did when CKC first came out, why Dark Seraph wasn't classified as a Master Villain in his own right. He outclasses the other Crowns of Krim almost as much as the Warlord outclasses the War Machine, and commands at least as much allegiance from them. The variety, lethality and accuracy of his attacks and range of his Defenses may make him more dangerous than Mechanon one-on-one. His long-term plans are certainly epic enough: world domination, and the summoning of his patron demon-god to Earth.

Re: *inspired my other threads* Gravitar vs Crowns of Krim As the fool who first posited Doctor Destroyer versus Takofanes, I am going to scrupulously mind my own business.

Re: Your greatest Chmapions moment The one that always stays with me was a mini-campaign revolving around an invasion of Earth by spaceborn "Lovecraftian" aliens who were simultaneously attempting to free their extra-dimensional kin imprisoned by ancient powers eons ago. The GM ended up weaving elements from most of the Champions books published to that point that referred to such beings. Our group was an ad-hoc assemblage of the most powerful heroes who had been published for Champions - I got to play my favorite character, Nuada of the Silver Hand from Kingdom of Champions. The climax of the series had two major battles occurring simultaneously: one group of us assaulted the space invaders' mothership, while the other attempted to prevent the opening of a gate to the prison dimension. The action shifted from one to the other each Turn. Nuada was in the battle at the gate, and at one point had to hold off both War and Death of the Horsemen (Wrath of the Seven Horsemen) until the rest of the heroes could bug out. Nuada Teleported away moments before the other team brought the mothership crashing down on top of the gate, burying it forever.

Re: For FREEDOM!(Freedom Force) You're very welcome, but considering it took me over two years to find you anything useful, I wasn't exactly going to demand a show of gratitude.

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10

Re: Hitting the Head an FX or mandatory? I've long used a general "instant kill" house rule similar to Fitz's in various genre campaigns, including grittier superheroic ones. If a character takes an amount of BODY damage after Defenses equal to their starting BODY from a single attack - including Coordinated attacks, and counting modifiers for Hit Locations - the character has to make a CON Characteristic Roll or die immediately from shock (which is actually a pretty realistic outcome). Note that with their higher than average CON scores most heroic types will make that roll, and their higher BODY scores mean that they often don't have to roll at all, so using this rule doesn't affect them adversely in most cases. The possibility of immediate death is still there, though. For higher-fatality campaigns you can just ignore the CON roll altogether. I've also found that that works well as a "mook rule" when you want lots of slaughter of cannon fodder or innocent bystanders; you just assume that anyone you want to die automatically failed their roll. This has given me all the realistic NPC (and PC) deaths I could want.

Re: Opinion: EuroStar The battle scenario that JeffreyWKramer described seems pretty reasonable. Eurostar would probably try to set up an ambush against Gravitar in revenge, but based on their 5E writeups, IMHO they'd still need some luck (at least a good roll by Mentalla) to successfully pull it off. With 4E Eurostar it might play out rather differently. They had three members (Bora, the Whip and Pantera) with SPD 7, and DEX 30, 33 and 35, respectively, so there's no question of who would act first even in a straightforward fight. Bora had a 12d6 EB with Double Knockback, and Gravitar has no Knockback Resistance, so unless she Braces or succeeds with Missile Deflection she'll go pretty much where Bora wants her... which would probably be toward the Whip and/or Pantera. The Whip had a 12d6 Armor Piercing Strike with his whip (and Gravitar's Defenses aren't Hardened), while Pantera's 4d6 HKA had Find Weakness 14- (and Gravitar has no Lack of Weakness). Oh, and Mentalla in 4E was only SPD 5, but her Mental Powers went up to DC 16 even without Pushing or Haymakering - pretty nasty in an ambush.

Re: The Blood

Re: The Blood Since every character on your website is of your creation, and the Circle background is only loosely used as the basis for your work, I'm not surprised that he has no problem. And it's not like he's tried to copyright the word "Circle" for all gaming... this is Aaron Allston, not Kevin Siembieda.