Koshka

Re: The Champion Protocols (ie how to take down your character)

Falcon is a gadgeteer/martial artist crossover. If we're using Kevin's rewrite of the question, the easiest way to take her out is to find out her Secret ID (wealthy heiress) and hit a charity event she's attending. She doesn't have armored ballgowns, and wouldn't have her weapons in her purse. Just be sure you drop her first, she's no speedster but she's faster than the average thug, and she would have at least a basic kit in the car.

She's also my GM-PC, and the closest thing that group has to a Batman type ... so if it were genre-appropriate for her to work up her own protocols, what would she do about the rest of the team?

We've got two bricks, Justice and Cat. Cat is more of an agile brick, so we're looking at area of effect attacks to drop her. OTOH, Cat's not the brightest team member -- she pulled a noncombat-speed movethrough in the first adventure, missed her target, didn't miss the spaceship her target was standing in front of, and KOed herself. Falcon's not a psychologist, but if she wanted to take Cat down trying to set Cat up for another stunt like that would be plausible. Justice doesn't have any notable weaknesses, and is probably too smart to set up like that, but the guy's gotta eat -- NND knockout drugs in his coffee.

Singing Cowboy has some martial arts training, but most of his powers are through his guitar. Spend the bucks for a high quality lookalike guitar, switch them while he's asleep. (Actually, all you'd need to replace are the crystalline guitar strings, but no one would know that.) Then just send a large number of thugs with Teamwork after him. His normal response would be to strum out an area of effect attack, which would fail, and while he's trying to figure out what's going on the thugs can knock him out. Even if only half of them make their Teamwork rolls, that should be enough for a KO.

Warder is a true mystic, but otherwise he's a normal human. Same basic tactics as for Falcon -- break secret ID and attack when character is maintaining it.

Madame Mystique was originally billed as a mystic, but is more of a mentalist. Surprise is your friend here; I have to keep reminding her player that rampant paranoia is out of genre for Golden Age, given any reason to think an attack is coming she would start burrowing through every mind in the area to find out what's going down. The character has No Conscious Control precognition, if you're worried about that going off and warning Madame Mystique then (assuming Batman levels of cash) hire lots of thugs to cause as much damage and chaos as possible in as short a time as possible. Her precog is mainly a "danger coming" type of power, overload it and any warning it might give should be lost among the warnings of power plant explosions and bombs at the docks.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

UNITY's plan to get into the Eurostar base (they knew where the entrance was) was to crash their plane into the entrance, have El Picaro teleport everyone out at the last moment, then have the three flyers on the team carry the rest through the hole as the backup plane full of UNTIL agents followed them in. As it worked out, mainly 'cause El Picaro's player suggested it, El Picaro got a ride from Dr White, the only female on the team. I don't recall the exact lead-in to this, it was El Picaro's player saying something on the line of "once again, El Picaro gets the woman".

Me: (holding up left hand, tapping ring finger) Just remember ....

(For those without the UNTIL book, Dr White is married to one of the other team members.)

El Picaro: Just because she has ordered, does not mean she cannot look at the menu!

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Not a game quote, but overheard in the hotel elevator at GenCon:

We'd just managed to cram one more gamer into the elevator (Embassy Suites only had 3 of 4 elevators working most of the weekend), and the guy who got on commented "I hope we're not overweight."

Response from someone in the crowd, "Of course we're overweight, we're gamers".

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

The past two sessions of my Golden Age Champions game, Captain Patriot has been a guest, and the PC flagsuit brick has been blowing EGO rolls right and left whenever he tries to be calm and rational about actually getting to talk with Captain Patriot, he's my idol ... well, you get the idea.

Finally, the player announced "One last try", rolled, and got a 16.

Player 2: I think your dice are in awe of Captain Patriot.

Original Player: (takes character sheet, writes "Psych Lim: Tongue-tied Around Captain Patriot, 0 points" on it, hands it to me)

Re: Champs 25ths Now At Tina's

So did the ones not getting signed (well, until I corral you and Steve at the booth ) ship before or after the ones that were signed?

Re: Playing cards as offensive weapons...

Even still' date=' a playing card going 90 MPH probably isn't going to hurt at all.[/quote']

 

I just got that MythBusters episode on DVD, and they managed to get a card up to 150 MPH with a mechanical thrower. Jamie winced when he got hit, and technically they managed to draw blood, but it ain't a workable weapon.

 

I'd go with Utech and just call the card SFX for Range Based On STR.

Re: WWYCD - The Night of the Dead

Arcana doesn't have anyone close to her that would show up, but she wound up with her spellbooks when she helped sort a personal book collection that was being donated to the public library. If Marcus VanDuyker (the eccentric collector whose collection that was) were to show up, it could make for an interesting 12 hours -- hope she's got enough coffee in the house .

Falcon ... most likely it would be her late mentor Peregrine. One hour of ladylike (i.e. no profanity, she's Golden Age after all) yelling at Peregrine for being an idiot and not waiting for backup, one hour of Peregrine yelling at her for "going public" (he was a pulp-era vigilante, she's a mainstay of a superhero team with informal government alliances), we've still got 10 hours for Falcon to pick Peregrine's brain about some of the weirder things she's encountered as a superheroine and possible tactics that might work.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Last night's game, the PCs were on their way to a meeting with a bunch of other supers from across the country. One PC (female) started asking about the COM scores of the male supers at the meeting. Another player responded "You don't go to a superhero convention to pick up guys!"

Later in the session, a player with a speech impediment was trying to suggest forming an information repository, but instead suggested an information suppository. There were lots of comments that would get me in trouble were I to quote them, but I think my contribution should be relatively safe: "It gives a new meaning to the phrase 'info dump'."

Re: Help W/ Human Bomb and similar Char Design

I'm cat-sitting at a friend's house, but once I get back to my home computer let me take a peek on the drive -- I may have a Human Bomb sheet.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

I was sitting in on a friend's Pulp Hero game the other day:

GM to Player One: (after describing the assassin coming through the upper-deck window of the train car we're in) OK, what do you say?

before player one could respond,

Player Two: (who's browsing through the food table since his character isn't on the upper deck of said train car) Where's the condiments?

A couple phases later, a PC drills the gun- and ketchup bottle*-armed assassin through the right shoulder for 9 BODY.

Player: Is he right-handed?

GM: He was.

________

*Added to his armament after the previous comment

________

And then last night was the regular D&D game. A little background -- one of the PCs, Malachi, is married to a priestess of the Drow good-aligned goddess (don't ask me to spell the name). She's working in the Underdark, but has come up for a couple quick visits before so all of us know about the relationship.

The magical alarms go off at the house we've been staying at for the past month, so we head out to help with the search. While checking the bushes by the wall, the ranger suddenly finds a dagger held to his throat by a drow hand.

"Malachi, it's for you."

Re: When Champions Begat

Of my current characters, I could see Falcon getting married to another hero. It would just about have to be another hero, keeping her costumed activities secret from a husband would be more hassle than I think she'd be willing to put up with. (Maybe someone with 25 points worth of "Clueless"?) She's a gadgeteer/martial artist combo, so if the kids inherit any powers it'll be from daddy.

Arcana ... I don't see her getting married soon. She's slightly annoyed with her family for trying to push her into dating/marriage, and she's still learning how to use her sorcerous powers. If she should marry (maybe after retirement), I can see one of her kids finding her spellbooks in the attic and taking on the heroic identity.

Re: Your Retired Champions Character Needed

Tempest (if you can get the sheet)

Dang, this is older than I thought. I found an electronic copy of the sheet, it's Heromaker . I also found a .rtf copy, though, so I can retype her (updating for the new rules as I go). I'm assuming you want her as she was during WWII?

Re: Your Retired Champions Character Needed

I've got a retired character who would fit nicely in a school setting, but someone else in the Champs Universe has the codename "Tempest". Of course, mine was in a Golden Age game (she didn't find out about her immortality before the game ended), so I guess you could call her "Tempest I" if it mattered.

I don't know if I still have her sheet, she was two computers ago, but I can probably reconstruct it. Basic outline: she's the younger daughter of an Earl, who managed to get her parents into allowing her to study history and archaeology at Oxford instead of being shipped off to a finishing school like her older sister. She was helping one of her tutors clean and catalog items from a dig in the Middle East when she noticed a Sumerian inscription on one of them, read it out loud, and was transformed into Tempest, with powers over air.

For this game, she could either be the school librarian or a language instructor (hard to justify Sumerian or Ancient Egyptian in a high school, but Latin or Greek should work). She's a British citizen, but I think she should be able to work in the States.

Re: Borrowing your brains: Greek Gods in New Con

I'm blanking on names right now, I'll have to dig through the bookshelves tomorrow. But, one of the Greek cities was founded by a hero who planted the teeth of a dragon he slew, and the first batch of citizens grew immediately from those teeth. Give a local villain a nice big bag of those teeth, and let your players wonder how that guy got all those loyal combat-trained minions without anyone finding out about the recruitment drive.

Re: Code vs Killing, in your group?

A long time ago, in a decade far far away, there was an article in Adventure Quarterly (I think) about using a group of seemingly normal, but incredibly fragile villains as a means of teaching "a lesson" to Players. There was Gold Rush, Gold Brick, and one other I dont remember, but basically they were designed to be superhumanly strong and superhumanlt fast, but -incredibly- fragile. One hit from a 6d6 normal EB would likely kill them. They were susceptible to BODY from FLASHES for crying out loud. The scenario you described reminds me of that.

Adventurer's Club, and I think the third guy was Goldmind (mentalist, of course). While I can empathize with the desire to get people thinking about how hard they're hitting, I would never use that team as designed. I have one player who's known for carelessness in combat, but if he needs another reminder I'll just whip up a super-mesmerist villain and send a bunch of hypnotized normals (in everyday clothing, of course) to dogpile him. If he can't guess that the 6th grade class on a tour of the museum might be slightly more fragile than a warship, oh well. Throwing them into costume, though, would encourage him to go full power, and that's not what I want -- I want him to think before swinging.

Oh, and as far as Mr. Glass goes, Darkness should slow him down long enough for a nice padded Entangle.

Re: Lensman Hero Questions

There's no point in bothering with a multipower. First stage (human) Lensmen can just do telepathy. 2nd stages have a suite of powers' date=' but can use them all simultaneously so that's an elemental. I'd assume the reason why some of them can't get into memories is just because they don't have enough dice in it.[/quote']

 

Without pulling the book out to check, I think the trouble on Radelix was that the two suspects had untrained but strong blocks -- in Hero terms, Mental Defense. The local Lensmen could have settled matters in three seconds under "normal" circumstances, but couldn't dig deep enough with the blocks in the way. Kinnison has more dice, but I'm wondering if he's also got AP to ease past those blocks.

 

Clarissa Kinnison can't read minds without a lens. She can read them with a lens.

 

It's implied that Clarissa has some psychic powers before she gets her Lens -- she pulls Kinnison into a wide-open two-way without either of them realizing just what she's doing. Admittedly, Kinnison initiates mental contact and then Clarissa gets way more than she expected ....

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

"She's got PMS, and we're all out of Haagen-Daaz."

Re: "This is such fine cloth....."

Another use is secret signs and documents. Imagine a banner upon which is emroidered the password to the throne room! Or detailed instructions on how to unlock the magically sealed door to...treasure? the inner sanctum? the privy? While it might not protect against the dishonest' date=' at least only the "worthy" would get through.[/quote']

 

Or hang a tapestry of this stuff in front of another tapestry in the temple meditation room. Put something representing a minor (but worthwhile) virtue/teaching on the normal tapestry, and something representing a greater virtue/teaching on the enchanted one. If someone told to "meditate on the symbolism in the tapestry" comes out of the room with the lesson from the magic tapestry, you know he's worth further instruction or promotion in the faith.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

"Don't you think that using a .50 cal to administer a coup de gra might be just a little bit of overkill?"

Note to self: quit watching MythBusters reruns before reading this stuff. (Let's just say I've got "Bulletproof Water" on video.)

Re: Playtesting Champions With Cats

As for sticky tape: we tried it to keep the cat from scratching up our La-Z-Boy chair, and she decided the sticky tape was REALLY COOL and an AWESOME TOY and to play with it she just HAD TO SCRATCH THE CHAIR EVEN MORE!!!

 

Sigh.

One of my friends (one half of the couple whose house we game at) has been getting a bunch of stuff off eBay recently for a project, and their kitten decided that packing tape and bubble wrap exist so cats can chew on them. But then, there's a reason they named that kitten "Rascal" ....

A friend of mine came up with this list for my birthday card, I thought the other cat people on the boards would enjoy it as well.

Playtesting Champions With Cats

1) Prepare adventure.

2) Arrive at house of friends who own cats.

3) Strategically place self in front of front door so cats do not seize opportunity to escape.

4) Enter house.

5) Proceed to game table, which is covered with various and sundry items.

6) Remove various and sundry items from game table.

7) Remove cats from table.

8) Find battle mat and unroll onto table.

9) Remove cats from battle mat.

10) Draw map on battle mat, running pen over toes and tails of cats.

11) Address cats by name, pick up, swat, and remove to another room.

12) Return to game table to find cats on top of it once again.

13) Admit players, instructing them to block the doorway to prevent the cats from leaving.

14) Set out figurines for players' characters.

15) Remove cats from table again while chiding them for chewing on figurines.

16) Set out dice, dropping several on floor for cats to bat around with their forepaws.

17) Retrieve spilled dice from floor and lock cats in bathroom.

18) Narrate the opening of the adventure to players over caterwauling from bathroom.

19) Release cats from bathroom.

20) Resume narrating adventure, keeping delivery as boring as possible to keep players' bodies near the backs of their seats so that cats cannot wedge in behind them. (Cats will instead walk across players' laps and jump off their backs onto adjacent curio cabinets.)

21) Ask players what their next moves are. (Before players can make their moves, cats will jump on table again.)

22) Move to combat earlier than planned by bringing out Doctor Destroyer to put players into GM's option so they can deal with cats.

23) Get cup of tea.

24) Sit back in chair with cup of tea.

25) Cuddle cats.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

I was running a playtest on the first half of a GenCon game the other night. At one point, Seeker (yes, that Seeker, it's for the Anniversary game) tried the old "get villain to shoot at me and Dodge at the last moment" trick ... but a 5 still hit him. The player asked which attack the villain had been using, I replied that it was the laser beam.

"Oh, he's using a 'Heat Seeker'? "

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

From last night's D&D game -- at the end of the previous session, the group had run into some brownies with sick senses of humor who transformed all of us into animal forms. Those with animal companions/familiars got to be normal versions of those animals, for everyone else the GM rolled randomly. At the start of this session, we're bringing a player who missed last time up to date. He's very enthused about "being a wolverine", I'd call him bouncy except he never got off the couch. (He's still on pain meds, which may have been part of it.)

After the third or fourth "I'm a wolverine!", one of the other players said "If you say 'snick', I'm coming over there and hitting you."

Re: WWYCD: Fundamentalist against non-tech supers.

Falcon's a gadgeteer, so isn't directly affected ... but two of her teammates are mages. One gypsy sorceress and one servant of Marduk. She'd go after him to protect her teammates. As for how, I can guarantee any ministers who publicly challenge this idiot's teachings will suddenly have a much easier time paying the radio airtime bill (15 points Wealth). And while that's going on she'd be investigating this guy back to his birth to see what's really going on here.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

So' date=' don't keep us in suspense... did it? [/quote']

 

No, the die turned up a 3.

 

To be honest, I hadn't thought of dropping the branch on him. It's nice to know I can pull stunts like that if he playtests someone else with Unluck, though