Lord Liaden

Acroyear, that was from the old Champions III supplement. I agree that it was neat; I still use its guidelines for making this kind of effect. For a -1/2 Limitation, you can make an Attack Roll against any object, after which you can exert TK Strength through it. The object can attack at the user's OCV, with appropriate Range Penalties from the user's point of origin. The object can use STR from TK up to 5X the total DEF + BODY of the object. Unfortunately, it won't be much help for bryanb, since it still requires constant direction (each phase) by the user - unless you just grab and squeeze something.

I concur with the VPP as the generally simplest way to run a character as versatile as Strange, but for a mage of his power level, I could easily see boosting the size of the pool to 100 AP or more. Another possibility would be to create one or more Multipowers with high Active Points for his most powerful and/or commonly used spells, and keep a smaller VPP for all his "plot device" spells. One point-saving suggestion for "supermages" that Dean Shomshak presented in The Ultimate Supermage is to give their spells Variable Limitations. This is to represent how Dr. Strange and his ilk frequently use incantions, hand gestures, talismans etc. when casting their spells, but never seem to need any particular one of them. Sure, you could call it simple s/fx like Mystic Masters does, but this way is equally valid, and cheaper.

Wasn't that "Silk Whirlwind"? I seem to remember someone suggesting that she and Iron Whirlwind duke it out for the right to the "whirlwind" part. Mike Surbrook seemed to be excited about writing her up, and when Susano gets excited about a new character creation, I start to salivate in anticipation. (Just call me "Pavlov's Gamer".)

Re: Re: Say, Mr. Vimes... Oops... Sorry! (Wretched little players have started checking the boards, have they?) P.S. I edited my question out of my earlier post - you should feel free to do the same with my quotation.

Say, Mr. Vimes... Edited to keep from spilling Vimes's beans.

Takes on Raven I was quite smitten with the conceptual and structural changes to Raven made by Steve Long in Justice, Not Law. The concept of an organization dedicated to rule of the world by those "born and trained to rule", i.e. aristocrats, had potential, and the classical/medieval names and ranks gave the group a definite mystique. Of course, as a Dark Champions supplement it really wasn't geared to four-color campaigns, which are my preference. My solution was to bring in the Families from Aaron Allston's Strike Force supplement. These were several related European bloodlines who all have longer than normal lifespans, and who often manifest mutant powers; the heroine Lorelei of Strike Force, and the mastermind villain Alasder Dell, were both members of the Families. I decided that the various family patriarchs were the founders and leaders of Raven, and their ranks of those "born to rule" could include anyone with innately superhuman abilities. To give them more muscle, I made Raven's elite enforcement corps, the Praetorians, into the group's supervillain branch, made up both of "younger son" scions of the Families, and villains with other origins. I'm very tempted to bring back Raven into my new campaign, with some additions from the revised Champions Universe. For one, I think that Holocaust would make a very appropriate leader for the Praetorians. I would also like to see the organization galvanized by a new Grand Imperator, a long-lost relation of the Families now returned to the fold: Menton.

My first thought would be to go with your END Reserve idea, and buy a Recovery for it with the Limitation, "Only in presence of violent emotions". The size of the Lim would depend on how often that would happen, but given what kind of environment the average superhero works in, I wouldn't allow a larger Lim than -1/2. If the concept needs more refinement, come on back and we'll try again.

Re: Major Purchase I liked the original Bestiary; I liked the 4E Bestiary even more. Kiss your budget good-bye, 'cause they're right - the new one's better.

Very cool idea! Just the sort of high-profile, politically upsetting stunt VOICE would be involved in, particularly with Lung Hung's abiding interest in China. I've used an elaborated version of VOICE for years, and expect to bring them into my new campaign; this idea is definitely going on my list. Moochers Grass Seeds!

It looks like I will finally get the chance to use a concept I've been working on for a couple of years in my new campaign, incorporating elements from Classic Enemies, San Angelo: City of Heroes, the original and now the new Champions Universe. Since you've asked for a story, allow me to elaborate: Randal MacFadden was one of the most powerful and least detrimentally affected of the mutates resulting from Project: Sunburst, gaining great light-manipulating powers. After forcing the general in charge of the project to erase all records of MacFadden's participation, and to create a new identity for him, Randal killed the general. He then joined Pharos Industries in his new guise of young hotshot executive Stephen Bow, quickly rising up the ranks to become VP of Acquisitions. At the same time, Randal adopted another identity and another career: that of Adam, founder of the new-age cult The Light of Truth Ministry. The cultists revere the Sun as the symbol and source of life energy, but Adam's inner circle is aware of his powers and consider him an avatar of the Sun itself. Adam recruits from these fanatically loyal followers for agents of his super-terrorist group, Solar Mass, equiped with technology pirated from Pharos Industries, and which he leads under yet another identity: the supervillain Photon. Solar Mass can attack rivals of Pharos Industries or those who get too close to the truth about Light of Truth, or steal funds to finance secret projects by Pharos. The Light of Truth can demonstrate against and harass heroes who attack Pharos or Solar Mass, and their donations can support the other two. Pharos Industries lawyers can protect Light of Truth cultists or Solar Mass operatives. In this way, the various branches of Photon's organization can support each other. And I find that I like the way the various sun-light motifs play off each other, giving this villain a strong theme. Obviously, Photon's background as designed here has plenty of plot hooks to draw in the PCs: they can come into direct conflict with Sunburst and Solar Mass, or investigate questionable activities by Pharos Industries, or a DNPC could be drawn into the Light of Truth Ministry, or the PCs may learn about the tampering with Project: Sunburst records and try to track down Randal MacFadden. My intention is to have the PCs run up against each of these branches of Photon's organization separately, only gradually coming to suspect that they may be connected. I think that it has the makings of a good conspiracy campaign.

Well, let's see, off the top of my head: Radium: radiation attacks (NNDs, probably with Does Body); Oxygen: Transform, Metal to Rust; Carbon: enhanced Strength and defenses in diamond form; Nickel: magnetic effects (e.g. Limited TK); Cadmium: Energy Absorption vs Radiation; Silicon: Invisibility underwater (in glass form); Lead: Density Increase-based powers; Neon: Energy Absorption vs electricity; Chlorine: NND vs No need to breathe; Silver: probably nothing special, but useful against werewolves. I'll see if I can come up with some more.

Some of these agencies do suffer from the "venerability factor" of having been used and reused over the years, although each rewrite of them has added something special to the basic framework: Scott Bennie's VIPER sourcebook brought enough depth and variety to that group for years of roleplaying use (as well as a bunch of neat supervillains), and Shelley Crystal Mactyre really fleshed out PRIMUS in her e-book. Still, I admit that those were essentially elaborations of the same basic theme. If you haven't used it in the past, I'd suggest trying to find a copy of Steve Perrin's VOICE of Doom adventure for 3E Champions. VOICE has a flavour quite different from many of the other published Champions groups: strongly international, especially the fascinating cadre of supervillains; a structure more reminiscent of an Oriental secret society than a high-tech super agency; a more vicious and lethal M.O. than most villain groups; and a different motivation than many other such groups - not to conquer the world, but to keep it destabilized so that VOICE's corner of it remains secure. Since VOICE was used as part of an adventure module, it's more sketchily described than some of the others mentioned above, but that can work to your benefit in leaving lots of room for individualization.

I really enjoyed the Allies book for its variations on "standard" superheroes (The Redeemed, the Flashmen, Zen Team), but I think you and I are in the minority. From remarks I've heard over the years in and out of the company, NPC hero books don't sell all that well, since for many gamers "NPC hero" equals "screen time taken away from PCs". If this project gets taken up at all by DoJ, I suspect it would probably be done as an e-book. To make the appeal as broad as possible, I'd suggest filling in niches in the established Champions Universe that aren't occupied yet. My first notion would be to give a lot of attention to international supers. These would take more research to write up (although the names in the "Project 3000" thread might help), but they're more likely to appeal to Champs players who don't have the time to do such research. There are several countries mentioned in CU as having significant populations of "capes" but few named heroes or hero teams. These would be good for color-adding encounters or jurisdictional conflicts with American supers. Probably best to use countries with whom such conflicts are likely to occur: Mexico, Canada, Russia, China, Middle East, etc. You might also consider "corporate heroes" who work for a particular company and protect its interests (like Zen Team), or villains who pretend to be heroes to mask their nefarious activities - these are always good for interesting encounters. Your "Supertemps"-like group sounds good, but you should probably dump your plans for PRIMUS; that territory looks to be officially ceded to Shelley Crystal Mactyre, who's already put out one PRIMUS sourcebook and several Digital HERO articles on it. My suggestion would be to develop a high-tech private security firm, like Starguard International from the old Super Agents book or World Security Services from HERO System Almanac 2. Because their priorities are often less altruistic than a lot of "pure" heroes, such organizations can be allies or enemies, as desired. Hope that helps.

Re: Re: Re: Brrrr Haven't you heard? Cholestorol kills. Thanks for (at least some) nice words about Canada. We don't mind the ribbing, though; to tell you the truth, we don't take ourselves too seriously, either. Which is exactly why we've cornered the market on comedians. Besides, we've already had our revenge on America. We gave you... WILLIAM SHATNER!

How did you feel about the Bestiary, SS? (Unless the absence of writeups for any of your relatives was too painful for you.) Star HERO is an exceptional genre book, but I thought that the HERO Bestiary is one of the most broadly useful books that DOJ has yet put out.

I noticed that while most of the opinions expressed on the Showdown board seemed to support Kinetik, there were far fewer of them than for the previous matches. It may be that Kinetik was a victim of voter apathy - too many people just assumed he would win, so not enough of his supporters got out to vote. There's a lesson in democracy for ya! (I did vote for Kinetik, BTW.) Of course, it could just be that the "silent majority" sided with Slipstream. Secret ballots have a way of surprising you.

Non-CC payment My understanding is that HERO Games will accept cashiers check or money order payments. There are specific instructions on how to do this for international orders (for folks who don't have credit cards that draw from US banks), and I can't see anything that would invalidate those instructions for American customers. You can find them here: http://www.herogames.com/SupportFAQs/internationalorders.htm

Ultimate Supermage Magic Spells The Ultimate Supermage describes several different styles of magic, with different effects and Limitations, including Ritual Magic, Necromancy, Technomancy, Alchemy, and Voodoo, with suggestions for other styles. What would likely most interest you, though, would be the style author Dean Shomshak calls "High Magic" or "Thaumaturgy", which is specifically designed to resemble the colorful, fast and easy, combat-effective magic typical of Dr. Strange stories. I counted a selection of seventy-eight spells, most of them grouped into Multipower frameworks with names like "Bindings of Bromion", "Scintillant Suns of Saravane", "Qliphothic Claws", "Ordonian Aura", and "Fada's Far Seekings". The other styles are comparably diverse. Mystic Masters is also packed with magic items, creatures and NPCs, discussions of alien dimensions, sources of magic, a detailed cosmology, and lots of other neat ideas to choose from. It's very detailed, and the discussion can sometimes be a trifle dry and didactic, but IMHO it's well worth investing in if you have serious interest in a super-magic campaign.

Not to sound defensive, but it's "Lord Liaden", not "Liarden". I never got too upset with people calling me "Lord Laiden", but the connotations of this one are rather less flattering. And I'm glad you like the idea, Fitz.

Although I personally love the Speed Chart because it allows the GM to keep track of who does what when, I've been part of groups who hated its predictability. One such group experimented with a suggestion from Steve Perrin in his "GM's Discretion" column from Adventurers Club #21. The results were pretty satisfactory. It's essentially a variation on your Second Variation: each player rolls a D12 at the start of a Phase, and if he rolls his SPD or less he gets to act that Phase. Having each player roll allows for an adjustment to compensate for the "player left out due to streak of bad rolls" problem that you experienced; each player who misses a roll adds 1 to his subsequent rolls, cumulatively, until he succeeds, when the roll resets to his raw SPD again. Another of Steve Perrin's suggestions (which we never got around to trying) was to ignore Post-Segment 12 - anyone who rolls a 12 gets to take a Recovery and perform any other Post-12 actions. Hope that's useful.

Re: Re: Re: The Team "Vibe" You mean we're not!?!

One of the neatest things about being a long-time Champions player (and at least partial compensation for mounting grey hairs ) is being familiar with all the neat characters, gimmicks and concepts that have been put out for the game over more than twenty years. Some of this stuff has carried over into the latest official Champions Universe, of course, but there's so much still left to stea... er, adapt. I'm planning to start a new campaign in the (mostly) official CU, but I'm bringing in a new group of villains who owe their origin to the Worm Scepter from Wrath of the Seven Horsemen. As a source of origins for interesting characters, and "radiation accidents", the Scepter has always been my favorite Mcguffin from the published Champions canon.