Metaphysician

Re: Holding the end of the world Hermes: As long as the device is stable enough for the moment, first priority would actually be researching what it is, so as to figure out where it came from and who built it. After all, this is a weapon of cosmic destruction, such are *extremely worrisome*. . . especially since the most likely candidate for having any desire to make one is millenia dead. Hopefully. Once that's done, dealing with the thing is comparatively easy: have someone open a portal into deep space, and then cut his own hand off in precise time with the closing of the portal. He could do this himself, or he could ask for help from someone way faster than his already incredible speed if further insurance is needed.

Re: Time Travelling "Historian" Hermes: Despite the context not exactly fitting, this could happen. And it would be a guy we know called Darius. And it would somehow end with Hermes responsible, directly or indirectly, deliberately or accidentally, for screwing up what the guy was doing.

Re: The Emergence Of Superhumans You forget one of the *BIG* factors on that last one: assuming that metahumanity is evenly distributed? The majority of the metahumans in the South will be among the black slave population.

Re: The Emergence Of Superhumans This thread reminds me of the Ancient Aberrant campaign I am in, where the question of "What happens when supers emerge in a pre-modern setting" is answered in many. . . and conflicting. . . different ways. The results ranged from "a society founded on the principle that men and gods both can work together to build a better world for all" to "Apokalips in single city form", with various things in between.

Re: Mutants and Masterminds: Iron Age Opinions? Mostly rhetorical.

Re: Mutants and Masterminds: Iron Age Opinions? If you like running iron age games, its not a bad buy. In particular, if you are already using Freedom City setting material, and want to touch upon the iron age, I'd say definitely buy it. However, its not a "must have" if your interested in just the genre support, as opposed to the setting material. ( and the natural question is "If you want to use everything in the book, why not just grab M&M 2e and use it in the original system?" )

Re: WWYCD? #80: Future Hope or Hellspawn? *snicker* So who are the shocking candidates? :-p As for Hermes. . . well, odds are one of the kids claims to be Anastasia Seeker's. As for the other kid. . . I can't think of any candidate that wouldn't have Hermes looking on in bafflement. Still, he'd try and handle whatever romantic embarassment arises with as good humor as possible, while trying to keep his kids from killing each other ( or him ). Presuming they both can be confirmed as truthful. . . well, that means at least one of them is from an alternate timeline and is lost.

Re: Why the dislike for Find Weakness? I never liked it because it was headache to properly balance with DCs of damage. FW could be weak or strong, narrow or broad. . . but in a totally different manner than attacks are.

Re: The Emergence Of Superhumans Another important question is "Are superhumans around continuously, or for whatever reason do the numbers vary over time?" If the first superhumans appeared in 4000 BC or so, and are present continuously thereafter? The world won't really resemble ours at all. OTOH, if they first appeared in 4000 BC, but they follow a cycle of a few centuries of high superhuman activity, and then a millenia of low activity ( with extremely few new superhumans, and lower levels of power when they do appear ), you could get something resembling normal history, as enough time passed between peaks for it to ( usually ) get written off as myths.

Re: I Just Shoot Marvin In The Face Shoot the GM.

Re: What would your sidekick be named? Hermes: for irony value, Djehuty. ( Toth is already taken )

Re: The Death Of Vinnie The Viceroy I figured that BrokenDark the Munchkin Lord probably started off with some kind of "close the room" or "paralyze everyone with fear" spells.

Re: The Reason Behind Teleios Reasons vaguely related to these, are why in one campaign I played in, Teleios turned out to not be Jakob Stroessen. . . but rather Dr Gerhardt Spregen, a character originating in the Dark Champions line, IIRC. Nazi biological scientist, who figured out a means for extending lifespan, and managed to evade the post-war hunt. By the time of the current Champions era, he has basically the capabilities of canon Teleios, so its mostly a background alteration.

Re: Challange rating and balanced encounters Hence why I specify "Unless they get free agent equipment" for my rule of thumb. 50 point agents, that have 10d6 blaster rifles and equivalent equipment, aren't really 50 point agents.

Re: Your PCs might be Underpowered if... Bad Egyptoid, no biscuit! M&M totally supports the same power ranges as Champions, moreso even.

Re: Challange rating and balanced encounters It should also be noted that, even in cases where point total is a reasonably accurate measure of capability, the scale is not linear. Four 250 point characters are not generally a match for one 1000 point character; in fact, they generally won't even be a challenge for him. Likewise, five 50 point mooks won't be much trouble for a 250 point character ( *provided they aren't benefitting from free agent equipment* ). This is because most game mechanics don't follow a purely linear progression. An OCV of 12 isn't usually 20% superior to an OCV of 10, its notably moreso ( unless the attack is a sure thing or hopeless effort in both cases ). Damage tolerance involves a lot of thresholds ( avoiding all damage, avoiding stun, avoiding knockout ), and when an attack passes a threshold either way, the result is a major change in efficacy for better or worse. If I had to make a rule of thumb, I'd say that when comparing point values of characters, every doubling ( or halving ) of points is equivalent to a quadrupling ( or quartering ) of potency. This is a very vague rule, though, and only really applies if the lesser characters can actually hurt the greater one.

Re: The Reason Behind Teleios His Reason? Totally Yosuga, he's totally a believer in individual ( his own ) supremacy. *waits to see if anyone gets it without resorting to Google

Re: Captain America and Cast One of these people has trouble with the Green Goblin. One of these people gets into issue-long slugfests with guys like Thor and Hercules, and has been known to blow up planets. If HeroClix gives Firelord a glass jaw, than it just means they got it wrong, too.

Re: Captain America and Cast Where I came from, we called is "Spidey vs Firelord". . . ( code phrase for "Bullshit we'll pretend didn't happen, because it damn well shouldn't have )

Re: Surprisingly Effective Builds? Wouldn't the strength DCs also have to be pro-rated?

Re: Power Level of a the Mafia I think we are talking past each other. I agree with you. Its just, for purposes of measuring whether a particular Hunted is LessPow, AsPow, or MoPow, look at the level of physical threat he can bring to bear on a character ( /including that of hired or manipulated minions/ ). This will suitably benchmark a character, as a character who is MoPow in purely social fields can *also* use that capacity to acquire and deploy MoPow physical threats. Its not that social capacities of a Hunted don't matter; its that, as a general rule of thumb, a character with social potency is also a physical threat, so you don't need to benchmark them separately.

Re: Power Level of a the Mafia No, but the nature of the Hunted rules is a bit vaguer on the matter of social attacks, since NCI is broken into a separate modifier. My rule of thumb is, use physical ( not necessarily combat ) threat level as the baseline for determining power scale, then apply NCI as needed. You can then modify if necessary, but you should only rarely need to ( after all, the same money and influence that buys social threats, can also buy physical threats ). Or, put differently, Viktor does indeed pose a MoPow social threat to the PC, here. However, he also poses a MoPow physical threat, and the level of physical threat he poses, is the primary matter of debate.

Re: Fallen Avenger IIRC, there have been efforts to infiltrate DEMON. . . horribly failed ones. He could *conceivably* be involved in one.

Re: Power Level of a the Mafia Okay, given the descriptions? Definitely MoPow. Your a highly skilled brick, but with only 17/17 resistant, not even hardened? He can hurt you with conventional military hardware if your not careful. Which, given it sounds like he's basically the Kingpin. . .

Re: Captain America and Cast Mental Defense. Lack Thereof. Also, Ego 20 is really too low.