Lord Liaden

Ahh, now I see what the problem is. Ragdoll, the fact that the Sisterhood gestalt would have a different appearance from any of the composite members can be considered just a special effect of combining into one form. As long as it doesn't have a significant impact on the character's abilities, it's not something that has to be payed for. It can be considered the equivalent of putting on a mask to maintain your secret identity.

Actually, this wouldn't be too hard to represent by the method I suggested. Since your Duplicates are Altered from the base form already, you can give two of the sisters the abilities from Sisterhood's suite that they would possess as separate entities. You can then leave the Base Form as the third sister, and apply the Not When Duplicated Limitation to all the abilities from the combined form that she doesn't have when separated from the other two. Does that make sense? See my remarks above about the Not When Duplicated Lim. I have seen a Variable "Skills" Power Pool used for some published characters. It's definitely a GM's Permission construct, but it's often the most cost-efficient way to model those characters who seem to know or do almost anything. It usually has a Major Restriction, Only Skills Limitation on it (-1/2). Again, I don't think it's necessary in this case, but that's up to you.

Interesting idea Linking a Duplication to Multiform - haven't seen it done that way before. For most of characters I've seen with this type of concept, the Powers and Characteristics that wouldn't apply to the base form when Duplicated would take a "Not when Duplicated" Limitation, which would probably be -1/4 in this case since it doesn't sound like your character would be Duplicated very often. Doing it that way could net you big point savings, since you're not paying for Multiform and cutting costs on other things. How different the Duplicates are from the combined form would affect how practical it would be to build that way, of course. Looking at your character sheet, Sisterhood seems a little heavy on defenses compared to her attack ability. Her 10D6 EB would rarely get any STUN through her combined personal Defenses of 43 (!), and she has a Force Wall on top of that. Also, she only has one serious attack form other than raw Strength, neither of which is that powerful; if those fail against an opponent she's out of options. Perhaps her concept is for a primarily defensive character, but otherwise I'd consider lowering her defenses (maybe change the Force Field to 20/20 at 1/2 END since she doesn't have a lot of Endurance), increase the size of the Multipower, change some slots from Ultras to Multis to give her more flexibility, and add one or two more offensive options to it. If you use the Not when Duplicate Lim you should have plenty of points for that. If you come up with a concept for what her Multipower actually represents in terms of power type or source, other ideas for slots may come to you. In the same vein I'd suggest giving her some extra movement capability outside of her Multipower, since when it's fully dedicated to another slot she's rather slow-moving. Just some things to think about - feel free to question any of these suggestions.

Yeah, I've been taking Monolith's Speed Posting course. But you did remember to include Marco Martiz's name, which I had overlooked, and you knew Spanish for "skull," so first isn't always best. BTW, steriaca, if it matters, the Asesino cat man was "Ocelote" (pronounced OSS-ay-LAW-tay, again approximately).

I know almost no Japanese, but I'm going to take on the challenge of figuring it out using deductive reasoning. I know that "kawaii" means "cute" in Japanese - there was a Champions villain by that name in Villainy Unbound. And since "kage" means "shadow" (I know that from the great Kurosawa film Kagemusha), I'm guessing that "sokudo" from ShinDangaioh's example of "Sokudo Kage" above is the "speed" part of "Speed Shadow." So, I'm going to take a guess that "Pretty Quick" would translate as "Kawaii Sokudo." Anyone care to tell me how far off I am?

1) Professor Muerte (pronounced MWAIR-tay, more or less) - real name Hernan Cortez. 2) Giganto's real name has never been given - he was always called a "simple Argentine Indian." 3) Can't say whether it's scientifically accurate, but Spider Monkey in 4E had two levels of Shrinking Always On, so you can base her size modifiers on that. 4) "The Dark Death" was "El Muerto Obscuro" in Spanish. 'Fraid you'll have to look up "Skull" yourself unless a Spanish speaker on the boards cares to input it. 5) Tombstone's real name was Alex Tubbs. I'm surprised that you know all these members of the Asesinos, who only appeared in the 4E Champions book, but not these details about them which were all included in that book. If I may ask, where did you find out about them?

Re: Re: Death I made some 4E modifications to the Seven Horsemen mentioned above to make their power sets fit more closely to what I thought the embodiment of their concepts would be. Here are a few suggestions on abilities that would be appropriate: War - Mind Control, only to enrage. Aid to Strength and/or Presence (for courage). Tactics Skill, lots of CSL, Weapon Familiarity with everything. Death - Damage Aura with Body Drain or with Killing Attack, NND (Immune to Aging), does Body. Lots of extra Presence (the "face of Death" is traditionally terrifying). Possibly Desolid and/or Invisibility. For more normal kinds of attacks, perhaps HKA with Find Weakness (who knows more about the weaknesses of the flesh than Death?) Possibly Mind Scan to locate victims. Plague - Various kinds of Drains or Transforms, or Killing Attack NND (Immune to Disease or applied antibiotics), does Body. Perhaps with the Continuous, Uncontrolled, Sticky Advantages to represent contagion. Famine - Transfers of various kinds, most appropriately Body, Strength and Endurance (it makes sense for the embodiment of Famine to consume rather than just drain). EB NND (No need to eat), representing "hunger pains." I hope that sparks some ideas.

You know, I have a feeling that once Scott Bennie's Gestalt setting e-book comes out, the room for discussion on this subject is going to get a whole lot bigger.

I agree with Derek about the Until Sourcebook. In the interim, though, might I recommend Shelley Crystal Mactyre's excellent PRIMUS e-book available right here in the Online Store? It contains some very good guidelines for running a super-agents campaign, including her detailed and useful Brownie Point system for giving agents more prestige and resources within the agency based on their performance.

Absolutely! "Bouncing" is thoroughly detailed on p. 162. It's listed in the Index under "Bouncing." When looking for stuff in 5E Hero books, your mantra should be, "The Index is my friend."

Ah, the Seraph... a member of the Global Guardians, IMHO a rather underrated collection of international supers (although some of their members did make it into the Justice League). IIRC the Seraph had the strength of Sampson, wore the mantle of Elijah and carried the Rod of Aaron. On the religious villain front, Marvel had the Crusader, whose faith in his extremist interpretation of Christianity granted him superhuman power against those he thought were an affront to that faith. Come to think of it, comics have a few other characters who could be considered avatars of concepts in their own right. The Hulk is practically the avatar of Rage (our own resident kiwi notwithstanding ), while Juggernaut embodies the Irresistable Force. Marvel's Collective Man can draw on the combined strength of all the people of China. Eclipso is quite literally the "dark side" of human nature, while Ghost Rider is after all the Spirit of Vengeance. The "Nabu" version of Dr. Fate was a Lord of Order, and Hawk and Dove derived their powers and personalities from Chaos and Order, respectively. As a side note, the old Champions adventure Wrath of the Seven Horsemen introduced a great gimmick for generating this kind of character - the Worm Scepter. This was an artifact of Lovecraftian Elder Gods with the power to draw out the true inner "aspect" of a person and make it manifest, transforming that person into his or her aspect. The resulting being often developed tremendous power, but a consequently narrow personality dominated by a single trait. This was how the Horsemen were created. There was no controlling what aspect would appear, though, or whether it would be a positive or negative one; that was entirely based on the person affected.

"Vengeance" is a classic one for many darker campaigns - pay back wrongs suffered, often with a mosaic theme. "Order" would make sense for some heroes: uphold the law, maintain the status quo. "Liberty" is a concept with strong resonance to Americans. The Mutants and Masterminds character "Lady Liberty" from Freedom City has a whole suite of powers relating thematically to "liberty" and "freedom." It may sound strange for a combat-oriented genre like superheroes, but "Peace" would make for an interesting hero: passive defenses like Missile Deflection or Desolid, or "peacemaking" Powers such as Entangle, Mind Control or various Drains.

You know, since she's either three feet tall out of armor or nine feet tall in armor, she's an unusual size all the time, either of which causes problems. How about just taking one Limitation, "Unusual Size, All the Time, Slightly Impairing?"

Another cool element to the Destruction Company is one that doesn't appear often among published Champions teams, or many comics for that matter: all the villains' costume/armor followed the same basic design, giving them a distinct team "look" - which also made sense since they were all constructed by the same guy.

On the temporary discussion boards, someone was asking how to model a magic system where the energy that powered magic spells could be increased over time with no upper limit, but only through the application of certain rituals; however, casting spells would drain the reserve of energy until the proper rituals could be performed again. What I came up with represents some principles that might be of interest to people looking to model a "mana" system, so I'll just pass it on here: Try buying an END Reserve for spells with no Recovery at all, and take the "Never Recovers" Limitation from Charges for it (-2). That means that when END is used to power spells, those END points are "permanently" gone. Assign a certain number of Experience Points to ritual activities designed to restore the reserve of power (sacrifices, prayers, meditation, acquiring materials, etc.), perhaps requiring a Skill Roll to perform successfully. Use that Experience as Character Points solely to buy more END for the reserve. Since those Character Points are directly increasing the size of the Reserve, it can continue to grow as long as the character keeps feeding it points, but will shrink again when he expends END for his spells; thus the size of the Reserve can grow or shrink freely. There are several potential benefits to this approach over the standard END Reserve or a Mana stat. The Reserve can be increased indefinitely provided a spell caster has the time and resources to perform the necessary rituals, allowing him to "save up" for a really major spell casting. The GM can set the amount of Experience gained from each performance of a ritual, and the difficulty of said ritual, to govern how easily a character can regain END. Restrictive conditions on the rituals make it easy for the GM to put a character in a position where he can't recharge his Reserve, requiring him to husband his END use. Note that with the Never Recovers Limitation, the ratio of END to Experience Points would be 30/1, which IMO is a pretty fair tradeoff for some difficulty in increasing the END Reserve. Hope that's of some use to someone.

Steve Long has said repeatedly that he is also a big fan of pulp-era gaming, and very much wants to write the 5E Pulp HERO genre book - he's been collecting research material on it for years. IIRC from remarks posted by Steve and Darren Watts, Pulp HERO will probably be the next major genre book after the relaunch of Dark Champions. I'm afraid that won't be before 2005 at the earliest, though; the publication schedule for the rest of this year and all of 2004 is booked solid.

A negative INT? Are you sure he'd even be able to remember a big word? Interesting idea, as long as you don't mind him trying to make an INT roll every time he has to make a decision on his own. Whoever controls him might commonly refer to him by a perjorative term which he would take as his name, such as "Brute," "Oaf" or "Troll." If you do want a big word, how about "Gargantua?" It was good enough for a real gorilla, so why not a metaphorical one. For something a little different, he could have watched a popular fantasy film and adopted the name of the character he most identified with: "Fezzik."

Since your gunslinger carries two pistols, having him buy the Two-Weapon Fighting Skill would also improve his ability to use the Rapid Fire maneuver.

The newest incarnation of Mechanon has exactly this ability, defined as Summon, Expanded Class (+1/4 for minor variations), Slavishly Loyal, OIF (must have sufficient technology/parts available). If you'd like to see those robots written up, they're available as as small free PDF under the Free Stuff link at the top of the page, in "Fifth Edition Write-ups and Forms."

Since "The Inca" didn't make it in (and my mother's from Peru, so I have a vested interest), may I suggest instead Inti, the Inca sun god.

What made the Protectors great I've noticed that the fondness of longtime Champions players for To Serve and Protect, and particularly for the Protectors themselves, is pretty widespread (including myself). They seem to have struck a nerve for many of us. That prompted me to consider why I, at least, find them so appealing: Depth. The character writeups showed the kind of originality of thought, attention to detail and well-rounded concept that comes with characters actually created and run by good players for a long time in a well-GM'd campaign; Visuals. Scott Heine's illustrations are sharp and striking, and the characters' poses and expressions are highly evocative of their attitude and personality; Balance. This team has all the bases covered: frontline and ranged fighters, bricks for slugging and martial artists for finesse, fliers, mentalists, sorcerors, scientists, detectives... it's an excellent example of how to maximize a team's strengths by filling all the necessary niches; Tactics. As Captain Obvious pointed out (which seems somehow appropriate ), the Protectors employ coordinated battle strategies to increase their effectiveness in combat, one of the most valuable lessons I and my players learned from the original adventure; Cool Accessories. The Protectors had several roundout items that gave them a distinctive team "feel" and just made sense for a major superteam: personal communicators and protective/sense-enhancing contact lenses for all members, agent backups/associates providing additional resources, a classic amphibious superplane, and one of the neatest team bases I've ever seen. All this richness really helped the impact of the adventure in To Serve and Protect. In my experience the player-characters readily come to admire and care about these NPC heroes, and become concerned when they start to go bad, for the Protectors' well-being as well as for their own skins when they have to confront them! One additional note in the "plus" column for that adventure - the Skull Pendant is one of the best plot-generating McGuffins ever put into a Champions book. I got quite a bit of long-term use out of that dingus.

You make a good point, Mr. Collie. I'm reminded of Scott Bennie's adventure Day of the Destroyer (SPOILER WARNING): A cynical, sarcastic reporter is granted an unprecedented one-on-one interview with Dr. Destroyer, and mouths off to him one to many times. Destroyer leaves evidence that he has killed the reporter, but actually kidnaps him, tortures and brainwashes him, remaking his personality into an ardent worshipper of Destroyer. Merely for the sin of annoying him. With his knowledge and resources, there are so many ways that Destroyer could Hunt someone besides using force. A hero's secrets could be unearthed, his worst foes informed of his Vulnerability, his loved ones brainwashed into leaving or betraying him, the hero's powered armor controlled by Destroyer and used to kill someone - the possibilities are vast.

All right, my hopes were well founded! Nato, Scott Heine was the artist and writer for the 3E adventure book To Serve and Protect featuring the famous Protectors superteam (base on his own campaign), as well as writer-artist for Mind Games which detailed the villain organization PSI, and for the Alien Enemies villain compendium. His work is scattered among other Hero books, including the "Powerpuff Champions" on p. 37 of the new Champions genre book. If you'd like to see the recent color renderings of some of the Protectors that Scott posted to the old discussion boards, he has them here: http://www.geocities.com/scott_heine_hero/

When the Art Director for Hero Games wants to contact one of the classic Hero artists, I'm kind of hopeful that that means more Scott Heine art will be appearing in upcoming Hero books. Note that I have no inside information - just hope.

Like Siberian Tiger, I'll just throw a few things out for consideration: Vienna has many historical and art treasures ripe for looting. The city is located on the Danube River; some villain might plan to flood the city as a cover for robbery or another attack. In fact, the name "Danube" would be suitable for a villain with water-control powers. Similarly, Vienna is an important passage between the Alps and the Carpathian Mountains, either of which could be used as names for villainous "bricks." The city's musical heritage is legendary: at various times it was home to Mozart, Strauss, Brahms, Beethoven, Mahler and others. A mind-controlling villain with a musical theme (pun intended) woul be quite appropriate, using one of these names or an appropriate musical term like "Maestro". Vienna was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a major political power in Europe until WW I. Perhaps some megalomaniacal descendant of the old Habsburg dynasty would like to restore the nation's former prominence. And as Siberian Tiger pointed out, Austria has an unfortunate Nazi connection. There are a suprising number of important international institutions in the "United Nations City" on the left bank of the Danube which could be terrorist targets: the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and perhaps most provocative, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). St. Stephen's Cathedral has a 113-meter (370-ft) steeple visible from all parts of the city. That would be a spectacular site for the location of a villain's "doomsday device", particularly since any super battle would risk damaging the cathedral. Finally, if you're looking for other names for local superheroes or villains, I'd suggest the names Ringstrasse, which is the major boulevard surrounding the city; Hofburg, the name of the former imperial palace; or The Gurtel, the now-dismantled fortified wall surrounding the city. Hope that helps.