Captain Liberty

The Mighty Manta

The attached character illo is for a character I actually played in an Aberrant game, but the drawing is by Brandon McKinney, who has done some pro stuff and does artwork at various West Coast game and media conventions, which is where I got him to do this picture.

ring is a vehicle?

Simple actually.

Assume the ring is a vehicle. It lacks many of the attributes of a vehicle, but those can just be "bought down" to 0 and get some more points. Then construct the ring with whatever ECs and Multipowers seem appropriate (or perhaps no ECs, depending on the prejudices of the builder) and have your ringbearer buy the vehicle.

If you can buy an armored suit as a vehicle, you should be able to buy a power ring.

Of course, I have never actually gotten down and tried to do this. I have no idea if there are cost savings or not. But paying 1 for 5 has to count for something.

What is the ring, anyway?

I have been toying with the idea of treating the Power Ring as a vehicle for some time. Not at all sure how well it would work out, but it is an interesting concept.

Professor Muerte redux

Enforcer,

Very nice. I might use that version or something like it for a revival of Professor Muerte. It would fit him better to set up a clone than find a successor that wasn't him.

Liked your background a great deal . Of course, I'm not using 5th Edition CU as such (though elements creep into the Perrinverse), but it was very well done.

Replacing Professor Muerte

Unfortunately, trying to rebuild Terror Inc in the current CU would involve getting a new Professor Muerte. The description of what Scorpia and Feurmacher did to the old one was pretty thorough. There definitely was a body to see.

Not to say that a new Terror Inc couldn't arise, though. In fact, given that Poignard is probably a low-grade physical mutant and Espirit is more than likely a mutant, I could see Holocaust deciding to revive the name...

Of course, I never did specify an origin for Espirit. She could just as easily be an almost ghost, someone left for dead who revived somehow, perhaps because of the intercession of some Armenian spirit of reprisal.

The meaning of Espirit

In theory, the name Espirit is French. It's a brand name for something or other you can buy in frou frou stores. It shows up on tote bags.

Google and Babel Fish were not available when I was making up names for these characters.

Even if it is French for Spirit, it probably doesn't mean spirit as in ghost, but it sounded good.

Why is an Armenian working for a South American and trained by an Irish girl using a French name? It is a secret ID, after all.

Name for Darkness

You might try Erebus for the Darkness projector. That's the name of the Roman god of darkness or the night or something similar. A friend of mine used the name for a darkness elemental in one game I was in.

Terror Inc, as last seen

The attached zip file contains all of my Terror Inc principals. They are in rtf format. Please let me know if that doesn't work.

These are just bald character sheets, with the only roleplaying notes contained in the Disads, which are not always clear.

I think Terror Inc is well enough known that not too much needs to be said about the first four. Please note the booster multipower on Feur. That has never been seen on a published version of the character.

The entire team has undergone an increase in DEX and Spd, as well.

Poignard is an experienced mercenary assassin who had some initial success against various supers but decided he needed some backup. His relationship with Terror Inc is strictly business, though he never fails to try to impress Scorpia and Espirit. Scorpia slept with him but was not impressed. Then again, she is rarely impressed.

Espirit is a protege of Scorpia's that she met in Syria when the Armenian freedom fighter was just getting started. Espirit lives up to her name because she can adopt a "spirit form" at will that partially removes her from the real world, which is the reason for her Damage Reduction. This is not astral projection, her actual body turns semi-insubstantial. She is working on being able to go totally desolid, but hasn't pulled it off, yet. She has a deep and abiding hatred for capitalist lackeys, which was only emphasized when the Soviet Union broke down and the capitalists/gangsters made life even worse. She is the youngest member of the group and still has some innocence, though that is going fast in Scorpia's company.

Lately, Professor Muerte has been thinking of retiring to a behind-the-scenes position, and has been looking at various independent villains as possible new blood in the Terror Inc organization.

The real Terror Inc.

Since I created the original Terror Inc, I thought I would horn in on this thread with a few comments.

As the playing groups I worked with got larger, I felt a need to expand the team. I added a French martial artist knife expert called Poignard and an Armenian woman mentalist called Esprit.

If you like, I can provide character sheets for these characters either in Metacreator or Word format. I haven't gotten into Hero Designer. I can attach them to missives here, as I do on the VOICE thread, or send them personally if you like.

By the way, shortly after I submitted Terror Inc to Hero for the original Enemies II book, I realized that the brick should be called Gigante, not Giganto. But the change never made it into Hero's versions.

I also have a better version of Feur (or Feurmacher if you want to use the 5th Edition version) and Scorpia.

If anyone is interested, let me know.

Taking damage

Lord L, you have it correctly. The Damage Reduction essentially models the instant effects of the character's regeneration. He can be stunned or even killed, but the body immediately reinvigorates (though he is still Stunned in game terms) and rebuilds the body. As I said before, they should all have the Returns from Dead advantage on the Regeneration. The thing that stops the Return from the Dead is, of course, total destruction of the body or a stake through the heart area. However, that stake has to be there permanently. Remove it and the body starts rebuilding again.

The older incarnations of Lung Hung are in Metacreator form, so I will have to create rtf files and then zip them. They'll be posted in a bit.

Earlier Lung Hung

I have used Lung Hung in historical campaigns

In a game set in the 1950s

In a game set in 1900

Would folks like to see what I thought she could do in those time frames?

I also have an early incarnation of the Jaws from the 1950s campaign I could put in, as well.

If you all are interested...

Lupus and the Origins of Lung Hung

My character Lupus has been mentioned several times, but he has never actually appeared in print aside from Rogues Gallery.

Here he is, along with the heroic Corsair (aka Nemesis of Evil) whose adventures instigated the original appearances of Lung Hung, Lupus, and helped originate VOICE.

Again, this is taken almost wholesale from the original RG article, with very minor changes. These are 4th edition character sheets (or maybe 3rd edition) and the regeneration especially needs to be re-worked.

Note again that the damage reduction takes effect only AFTER Stun and Death effects have been resolved.

On the other hand, all of these mutants should probably have the "regenerate from death" advantage on the power.

Hawkgirl's wings

I don't know whether the cartoon has explicitly said so, but the comic book based on the cartoon seems to indicate that the wings are part of her. She has had the wings on while in civilian dress.

If she can still hover while her wings are bound, then she is probably telekinetic (which might explain some of the oompf of the mace) and just uses the wings for direction and maneuvering.

Then again, perhaps the real source of her power is the mace, made of Nth Metal. Probably not, since she still flies when he has thrown/dropped it, but something to think about.

Who is Dreamer?

Hi everyone,

For some reason, I haven't been getting notifications of further additions to this thread. I'm very impressed with the stuff that I have seen (haven't had a chance to read everything) that everyone is doing here.

Lionslayer is actually an original VOICE member that I contributed to one of Scott's Enemies books. He was left out of VOICE of Doom because with the Graf and Irredenta, there were already a lot of strong, fast, archaic weapon users.

Dreamer is a different sort of VOICE member, mostly a background guy. He is the secret assassin who is almost impossible to track down and stop.

Again, the attached character sheet is more or less 3rd-4th edition. I'd be interested in seeing what someone might do to make him 5th compatible.

And he being English, there is no need for another name...

Status Report

After one small session using the New You plot seed from the sidebars, I have now run the Park scenario. I think its biggest problem is its size. Given Champions movement capabilities, characters spend a lot of time getting from one point of action to another. It probably would have been even more evident if I wasn't free forming things and avoiding the use of maps and miniatures.

The book is right, however. If you have mentalists amongst your heroes, either change out Ogre and Herculan with villains who don't suck from mind attacks or give them some protection. Ogre spent the entire fight chasing butterflies and beating up shrubs he thought were enemies until he was the last man standing, and got swarmed without getting a hit in.

Also, if you have some fairly fast heroes, you might think about boosting Ogre to a Speed 5, and maybe Lodestone to a Speed 6. Lodestone could have been very effective against one of the heroes, but just was on the wrong end of the DEX and SPD chart.

If I'd made Mirage (who I call Mysteria, the successor to Mysterio) more inclined to cut and run, or at least not get personally involved, she probably could have gotten away without a problem. Utility easily slipped away (again, distance mods to Perception rolls made it almost automatic) because he was 200 inches away from the main struggle and wrapup.

The heroes did find Interface's observation device, though.

Also, again because of the scale, the gas cloud did not catch two of the heroes because they were dealing with the locked gate when the bomb went off.

Next stop, the Mall!

levels vs ranged attack

Taking as assumed that hand to hand levels are only usable against hand to hand attacks, that does bring up the interesting question of using ranged levels as DCV.

Leaving aside arguments about it being impossible to see a bullet (or energy beam) coming (a proposition obviously erroneous according to almost any comic book story) the question as stated asks whether knowing how to shoot a rifle allows one to dodge bullets.

I can actually see this. We have to keep in mind that the levels are in USE of the weapon. One could assume that an experienced pistoleer also knows tricks of movement and using cover that would let him avoid a ranged attack. It's all part of using the weapon.

So I think I will so rule in my campaign.

Thanks everyone, for your input.

Thanks for input

So the consensus as I see it is that catgirl, to use my original example, can take her 4 levels in claw, etc. and say that she is putting them all in Defense, and have those levels in her hand-to-hand DCV as long as she is performing one of the three attacks.

These levels would not apply to ranged attacks. Or would they?

This came up in my campaign recently. I thought we were all in agreement on this, but apparently there are differences, and reading the rules did not help.

Are 3-point levels in specific attacks, such as a catgirl's claw, bite,and grab, only good in defense against those specific attacks, or against any hand-to-hand, such as an attack with a sword?

It seems to me that the character is getting the benefit of a 5-point hand-to-hand level if the latter is the case, but I could see a logic argument for it in reality terms, if not game system terms.

Any comments?

Another double KO

Playing against Eurostar in an early Champions game with the original Champions crew.

My friend's flying brick, Captain Guts, having exchanged a few lovetaps, flies up his full move, then powerdives on Durak in the next phase. Durak has a held action. Just as Guts arrives, Durak punches. The GM (it was George MacDonald, so what can one say) totalled up the entire damage and applied it both recipients. Both went down.

Knock yourself out

The most spectacular example of this in my many campaigns was a power suit character named Linedrive, mostly for the way she would use an extendible baton to add to the knockback of blows she handed out.

The group was outside Stronghold, and there was a major break going on. Mechanon had taken over the computer system and all the doors were locked down. Linedrive's player decided that the quickest way in was to move through the top of the building.

The interesting thing is that she might have made it. She had an awesome move through. But in this case, less was less. She rolled down on Body, so she only did 23 or so, just short of powering through. The associated STUN was enough to take her out in one shot. Linedrive fell over.

Hawkgirl's wings

I don't see the cartoon as often as I'd like, but read the comic book. In that, it would seem that Hawkgirl's wings are part of her, making her different from either version that has been in comic books before. Has there been anything in the cartoons to imply that the wings are not always there?

The comic at one point had the wings scrunched up into a backpack, but she has never been seen without them. And later in the same adventure, the JLA went on an "everyone in civies" camping trip and she was still winged, though otherwise in civies.

Also, I believe the cartoon had Flash asking at one point "Is there a Hawkboy (man?)?" She didn't answer.

Using the Mall

I just finished the opening episode of my use of CB by taking the suggested plot thread of the New You salon actually being a plot to create superbeings. I made it a plot by FIRE (the equivalen of ARGENT in my universe), which establishes a motivation for Interface to go after my heroes.

As a side effect, the Mall now has an open corner storefront available. Wonder who I can move in there...

Using Harley Quinn

Some good notes, Abdul.

The Perrinverse is a bit different. The second Batman (formerly Robin) died in the 80s, his place is currently taken by Huntress (1st Batman's daughter) and her sidekick Nightwing (Bruce Grayson). Harley's career has mostly been about harrassing Huntress, mostly independent of the Joker (who is still around, though the body has been found on a number of occasions - the spirit lives on, as it were). She took the name from the Golden Age villainess.

But you have several good points. Thanks.

Kirigi

I have no memory of the actual Marvel character. I haven't been a steady Daredevil reader for decades. I created something I thought could be the leader of a Shadowclan and manage to bring something like the Zugaitsoku to heel.

Both Lung Hung and Kirigi's psionic attacks are magical, or perhaps Oriental mysticism. Neither is innate to the character type, they just made use of their immortality to take the time to study to learn some magic.

I prefer to keep the two masterminds separate. Perhaps they are somewhat aware of each other, but no real connection. But then I work on the theory that the vampirism mutation has been in the human gene pool since the Ice Age.

Vandal Savage (who is around in my universe) may well be another one of them...

I'll try sending you a Steel Raven sheet directly.

European Supers

I see that no one has suggested my favorite British archetype, John Bull. I see him as super-strong (though not horrendously so) but virtually invulnerable. A symbol of all that's imperturbable about the British spirit. The sort of fellow that bails out of an aircraft without a chute and then picks himself up out of the crater, dusts himself off, and gets to it.

Some other very good names have already been suggested.