Lord Liaden

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.

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.