Lord Liaden

Re: The Blood

Re: The Blood I hope you don't mind, but I brought that tribute to Aaron's attention a few months back. He responded: "Thanks for passing that along. I'm certainly pleased that my work is still playing a role out there in the Hero gaming audience. (The Circle is now 22 years old -- old enough to drink legally. Yikes.)"

Re: The Blood

Re: The Blood nHammer, this isn't exactly what you're looking for; but Adrian Ownby posted a nice 4E HERO adventure, "Blood Rites," featuring all-new Blood characters based on Aaron Allston's original characters and the Blood homeworld of Ean. That might be of some use to you. Adrian put it up for free download on the old Red October BBS, the archives from which are now hosted on Shelley Chrystal Mactyre's website. You can get it by going here and clicking on BLOOD2.ZIP.

Re: Who is the most noble or 'good' hero in the CU? If he'd made it to the 5E CU, I'd definitely have put his name forward. His updated, expanded writeup in the first edition of the Champions Universe sourcebook regarding his personality and beliefs had Cap written all over them. He also had that "elder statesman" prestige that Cap often brings to bear. Mind you, the American Eagle did exist in the new universe as a Golden Age hero, just like in the 4E version, so maybe there's a story still to be told. And whatever the totals on AE's character sheet, nobody survives to the age of sixty in the superhero biz by being a whimp.

Re: Who is the most noble or 'good' hero in the CU? You reading this, Darren?

Re: Who is the most noble or 'good' hero in the CU? Thanks for providing that translation, TB, but I must say - and I mean no disrespect to any Persians or Farsi speakers - if "Bahzoo-e" is pronounced at all close to how it reads, I can understand why Steve decided not to go with it for a primarily English-speaking readership.

Re: The New Blue Beetle Well, in the interview the artist for the new series says that the character will have no personal connection to Ted Kord, so that seems to exclude Booster Gold becoming the new BB.

Re: post-apocalyptic genre book A couple of years back our board colleague C_Zeree - with a lot of help from other members of our community - compiled a pretty comprehensive List of Post Apocalyptic Source Material. Although it would have to be updated a bit, it provides an excellent basis for a reference catalogue.

Re: post-apocalyptic genre book From your lips to God's ear, friend. I've wanted to see this for years. The setting is so complete at this point, IMHO it wouldn't take much more than editing and layout to get ready. If we ever do get a PAH this would make a natural setting followup. Working out the rights to the setting and royalty details might be complicated, though. And it really needs to be in color - I know that's more expensive, but Keith's exquisite art and maps deserve no less. This would be near the top of my list for what to do with that briefcase full of unclaimed money I intend to find one day...

Re: Who is the most noble or 'good' hero in the CU? Yep, Daniel James "DJ" Johnson succeeded Robert Kaufman as Golden Avenger in 1997. (Champions Universe p. 44) As in my previous post, if we go beyond the present day CU then Captain Patriot would have to be considered. I'm personally a little uncomfortable with his rather simplistic and rigid ethics and patriotism, but he was after all a product of his times. Certainly he firmly believed in the ideals he espoused, and held himself to a high standard of conduct.

Re: Who is the most noble or 'good' hero in the CU? If we're talking published heroes active in the present-day CU, Defender certainly would have to be among the most idealistic. Not yet having Champions Worldwide, my opinion might be affected by some of the characters therein. However, if we look beyond the present day, I would include in the forefront of "noble and good" Vanguard, the late member of the Justice Squadron who sacrificed himself to destroy the asteroids that Dr. Destroyer was trying to crash to Earth in 1992 (Champions Universe p. 76). I know he hasn't been given a writeup yet, but Darren Watts had this to say about him in a post awhile back: The vibe I get from this description is that Vanguard was the CU's version of Superman, in power, reputation and character.

Re: Learning how to play HERO Well, there is an Excel spreadsheet in this section of "Free Stuff" that will do Active/Real Point calculations for individual Power constructs. Just input the Base Points (including Adders), then the individual Advantages and Limitations. Pretty straightforward and easy to use. It's under "Utilities" on that webpage.

Re: Who's the most evil villain in CU? Just to make sure we're clear on this point: Blowtorch kills people because he likes to watch things burn. It isn't even particularly people that he wants to ignite. As his motivation description in CKC states: "Anything that feeds his beloved flames is acceptable as fuel. The screams and smell of burning human flesh please him almost as much as seeing a towering skyscraper engulfed in flames from head to toe." That actually strikes me as even sicker. I imagine that if Blowtorch had the opportunity to gain the kind of power that Luther Black seeks, he'd use it to ignite the entire world as a sacrificial pyre to fire. And then move on to other worlds.

Re: Missing Do you mean, other than the optional rules for "Missed And Random Shots" on 5E p. 284/ 5ER p. 423? I'll sometimes use those rules when it seems dramatically appropriate, e.g. if the PCs are fighting in an area where they know there's a lot of fragile/flammable/explosive etc. stuff, or plenty of innocent bystanders. Sometimes if I'm using a tabletop map I'll just extend the line from the attacker to the (missed) target until it connects with something interesting. I'll often throw in the "Breaking Buildings" rules from Champions p. 161 for high-powered combat when comics traditionally show a lot of environmental damage.

Re: Idea seed: exploring zoologists And of course, the world of the pulp era was rife with "lost world" regions harboring all manner of exotic and/or extinct species... including humanoids. If you want to really open up the unexplored regions, try running exploring underwater zoologists, aboard a Nautilus-type supersubmarine. Even today we haven't explored a thousandth part of the deep oceans. Almost anything could be down there in a pulp setting, from mermaids to aliens to Atlantis to Godzilla. Heck, almost anything could be down there in real life.

Re: post-apocalyptic genre book

Re: Lagomorph HERO If I were going to run a "rabbit-centered" game, or any other where creatures smaller than human were the PC and NPC norm, I would build said creatures as normal characters with whatever other package of default abilities I'd consider appropriate for the species. Characteristics, Damage and so on would follow the human standard. I'd then use the size differences between them and other creatures in the Bestiary (Mass, DCV bonuses or penalties, etc.) as guidelines for what penalties human-sized opponents should have, and what Characteristic ranges would be appropriate. I wouldn't try to make the DCV stats for published creatures square with the new standard, because those were all written relative to a human baseline, and you're now working from a bunny baseline.

Re: Opinion: EuroStar Actually, I adapted the origin of "Das Wall" (or more properly "Die Mauer") from European Enemies for the brick in my own incarnation of Eurostar, replacing Durak (although mostly using Durak's character sheet). This was primarily due to his name; although it sounds strong, durak is usually translated as "fool," and I can't imagine someone with Igor Starankov's attitude willingly using that as his nom du guerre. Durak can also mean "bully," but that's really not much of an improvement. Otherwise I'm essentially using the lineup for Eurostar from Classic Organizations, but blending in elements of both the CKC version and the Champions: New Millennium version. That includes Pantera from C:NM - she's much more intelligent, but just as vicious.

Re: Who's the most evil villain in CU? But that comes back to the whole "born/created evil" vs. "chooses to be evil" distinction. The point was raised earlier in the thread that Mechanon does what it does because it was programmed that way. That seems to be the main factor which prompts people to exclude the Dragon and the Kings of Edom as viable choices; their nature is fundamentally "evil," so they don't really choose it.

Re: post-apocalyptic genre book Well, it was written for Fourth Edition HERO System, but you could do a heck of a lot worse than Ron Miller's excellent Wasteland Hero web sourcebook. It was explicitly inspired by Gamma World, and covers most of the bases for that kind of slightly over-the-top PA setting. And for this genre the differences between 4E and 5E are pretty small. Or, if you'd like a more direct translation of GW into HERO, just follow the link in my signature, below, and scroll down to the GAMMA WORLD listing. Tons of stuff there, by Mr. Miller and others.

Re: Learning how to play HERO Got just the thing for you, courtesy of our generous colleague, TheEmerged: http://theemerged.blogspot.com/HeroCost.htm

Re: Strike Force And the cheapest one is sold already. Big surprise.

Re: Build ? : "Invisible to Damage" I think a case could also be made for either Shape Shift or Invisibility to the Sense Groups you want to cover, Limited to "Only To Conceal Effects Of Damage." If one of those Sense Groups included Sound, that ought to cover any involuntary pain noises. Knockback Resistance would be a good idea, though, to maintain verisimilitude.

Re: Worldbuilding exercise Hmm... it just occurred to me that your group could have started as a reformist movement within the Church. One that accepted the premise that the gods were fallible, or at least that conflicts between them could have unintended detrimental consequences; and that therefore there is a role for mortals in dealing with those consequences. These mortals would be spellcasters whose powers did not derive from the gods, so as not to risk offending them or drawing the gods' attention to themselves. The ultimate triumph of orthodox doctrine forced the reformers underground. Certainly the history of our own world's religions is fraught with even more esoteric doctrinary wars, and more than a few cults which continued in secret to avoid persecution.