In my Pirates of Drinax campaign, some of the characters are fighter pilots, so I came up with some ranged martial arts maneuvers they could use.

Fighter Pilot Skills

3  Defensive Shot:  1/2 Phase, -1 OCV, +2 DCV, Range +0, Weapon  Strike

5  Dodge/Jink:  1/2 Phase, -- OCV, +4 DCV, Dodge All Attacks, Abort; FMove

4  Trained Shot:  1/2 Phase, +2 OCV, +0 DCV, Range +0, Weapon  Strike

0  Weapon Element:  Vehicle Weapons

What might be some other maneuvers a skilled fighter pilot would have, like Maverick from the Top Gun movies?

13 hours ago, bluesguy said:

About a month ago I asked ChatGPT to do the same thing and it couldn't because it didn't have any information about the Champions game system.  It could generate 5e DnD characters all day long.  Someone 'provided' ChatGPT with the information necessary to generate a Champions character.

Why would this get a downvote?

The point values are immense. Superman's Heat Vision looks to be almost 350 points all on its own.

And it only gave him 12 points of resistant defenses?

What instructions did you give it?

3 hours ago, Hermit said:

I saw Dungeons & Dragons: Honor among thieves yesterday due to having a friend who is an amazon prime member. I had mixed feelings about going. On one hand, it would serve Hasbro right if it flopped or sucked so it got bad reviews. On the other hand, I love high fantasy and a good D&D movie is long overdue. Quick sum up, it was good (A lot of fun imo). And I couldn't help think THIS is how Hasbro/Wotc should cash in on D&D.. not trying to shut smaller creators out, or squeeze every dollar out of folks for the 'privilege' of using their imaginations. I think it's going to be a hit, it has an early Marvel Movie vibe and energy (And I mean that in a good way), I just hope Hasbro/Wotc learns the right lessons from that rather than deciding they now have the money and goodwill to double down on the evil cash grab on the TTRPG players again.

 

 

It’s on Amazon Prime?

I feel like such an ability should be called “None shall pass!”

9 hours ago, Tech said:

Finally settled on a second villain: Ogre. However, this time, he's highly intelligent with Mental Powers, speaking like a proper British man. That should throw them for a loop. Of course, after he's defeated, they'll be easily able to dispatch the bug, leaving ordinary Ogre to wonder what just happened.

If you’re looking at classic villains, Green Dragon might be a good choice to round things out.

I suppose you could have the character spend a Heroic Action Point (if the campaign uses them), but then it effectively works like using Charges.

It took a few sessions, but our intrepid group of pirates made their biggest score yet, finally looting the Imperium Treasure Ship and making off with about a hundred million credits in booty composed of various items. Thanks to an extremely high PRE attack from @Durzan Malakim’s speech to the crew, the pirate gang has grown with the addition of about forty Imperium naval crewmen.

Their next stop was Tech-World to use their newfound wealth to repair and upgrade their vessels. After later making a clandestine deal with the planetary leaders and discovering an ancient, slumbering AI aboard their vessel, they then had to chase after a scientist who was the victim of a nanotech infection a bit reminiscent of the protomolecule from The Expanse series. They are trying to stop the scientist before she reaches an Imperium world in the Spinward Marches and potentially unleashed a catastrophe.

I suppose another option would be to have the ninjas be a small horde of weaker “mookbots” that obey the main villain robots but are not very smart. I’m thinking of the combat robots from the Star Wars prequel movies, only instead of them saying “Roger! Roger!” when given orders, a Japanese equivalent phrase is substituted.

If one of the mookbots managed to be memorable, perhaps it could be promoted, rebuilt and increased in power.

Imagine an entire ninja clan composed of only AI robots, from agent-level types up to full superhumans.

Hmm. I’m starting to feel the beginnings of a Mechanon plot can be built from this.

For the fifth member, I would recommend a female catgirl robot and name her Nekoken* (Cat Fist). She could be a ninja, but not an obvious one from the name.

*Yes, I know it is a Ranma 1/2 reference.  

32 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I've mentioned this before but back in 3rd edition the "Destroy" mechanic (very long term drain) recovered based on your recovery score. If you had 6 recovery, you got 6 points of a stat back per time period.

 

So... if you destroyed Recovery below zero it never recovered.  You inevitably, certainly will die from burning stun to zero and starving.  I even came up with monsters who died this way, zombies who were drained to death.

You can effectively do this in the current edition by delaying the recovery period. Set it to recover five points per week or per month.

1 hour ago, Opal said:

 And there's already been a "Universal Translator" in at least one version of the game, right?

Of course, but that is a borderline magical Talent based around an INT-roll, so it has a fair chance of failing at a critical moment.

I was approaching it as a Skill-based, customizable construct using parts of the system that have been around since at least 4th Edition and tweaking them a bit.

For ten points, one could buy Universal Translator for just spoken languages at a -1 Limitation and risk a skill roll failure, or use my suggested build to be able to speak and read seven languages without any roll. Adding in the language chart’s effects, lesser fluency with additional languages is also possible.

A mention of Jack Of All Trades from Traveller Hero probably deserves a mention at this point, since it was just a construct of skill levels. A more limited form of it could be easily constructed to just apply to Science skills or any other grouping of similar skills.

I could also see an argument for buying a Skill Enhancer like Linguist and then just buying single points in different languages and calling them full fluency thanks to the enhancer’s effect. For ten points that would mean the character is fully fluent in seven languages, which seems reasonable.

I’m wondering if the comic book age of a setting will affect how skills should be treated. Some of the examples given above are straight out of the Silver Age, which had more of a whiz bang view of science than a modern setting does.

For Golden, Atomic or Silver Age settings, a much simpler skill structure seems better, but maybe something more granular fits for more modern settings?

2 hours ago, GM Joe said:

 

I hesitate to say it, but would something like an EC for skills fix a lot of the cost issue?

I like using Expert for this, grouping a bunch of skills together and giving a -1 point cost modifier to each of them for following a theme.

It reminds me a bit of the old package deal modifier from early editions and works pretty well in saving points on skill lists from the various package deals in the current books.

6 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

I agree, and I hope to maybe get to at least one further step in that in coming years with a project to give GMs and players a whole campaign with info on how to build characters, etc.  The tentative name is Champions One (for the beginning), and would be a followup to Champions Begins. 

Maybe call it Champions: Year One to make it reminiscent of some comic titles that came out with that naming scheme.

I wonder if Mechanon could be behind this?

Companies like Google or Facebook seem like they could be used as vectors by Mechanon to carry out a scheme. Maybe a form of psychological programming using subliminal messages?

In your average TTRPG group, even with just a handful of players, if each of them takes DNPCs, Hunteds, Contacts and Followers, that can quickly become a cast size that could overwhelm a GM.

So, how many NPCs is too many? Should a limit exist on the number of NPCs a group can bring to the table as their supporting cast?

How about an individual player? What if one player’s supporting cast is significantly larger than those of other players? Should a limit be imposed to keep their NPCs from taking over the campaign?

On 2/12/2023 at 8:37 AM, Cygnia said:

D&D Can't Compete With Call Of Cthulhu In Japan

I am strangely not surprised by this, given how much horror-themed anime, manga and movies there is in Japan. It was surprising to read that women are the majority of players there though. I guess men there prefer video games?

3 hours ago, Cygnia said:

2 hours ago, Cygnia said:

Combining these two posts, I’ve now got the image of a WerePoohbear in my head.

The new team could be a family affair. Maybe the mutant power gene runs in their family and the new members are cousins or half-siblings. One cousin without natural powers could be the new Steel Commando.

1 hour ago, Sketchpad said:

Alternatively, rather than hiring in someone for STLs, licensing out the characters to a popular STL creator might work better.

Not sure if this is feasible since Hero Games sold the Champions Universe IP years ago and uses it under a license from them now.

29 minutes ago, assault said:

I think this game would be improved by it being possible to overthrow the Dark Lord. Not easy, but possible. And within a reasonably short period of play time. 9-12 sessions, to pull a number out of my hat.

 

The less astute players might not realize this, and just keep committing atrocities, but the smarter ones will, and that's when things get interesting.

Obviously, Kal-Turak wouldn't be a suitable Dark Lord for this kind of game, but I find him supremely uninteresting anyway. I suppose he could be used if you include a suitable Deus Ex Machina to take him out for a millennium or so. "He comes back!" is fine if it is long after the PCs and their meaningful descendants are dead.

Politics could also make this even more interesting. Evil organizations could keep the PCs quite busy without them ever leaving the Fortress of Doom.

Does the Dark Lord have children? Are any of the PCs his children? Are there other lieutenants or henchmen? Do they plot and scheme against each other? Will they try to involve the PCs? Do they want to get rid of the PCs and usurp their place at the Dark Lord’s right hand?

The Dark Lord’s beautiful but treacherous daughter may try to use her femme fatale wiles to ensnare a PC in between her time spent pining for the unattainable Hero. Does the PC get jealous and sally forth to stomp on their Hero rival? Perhaps the Dark Lord has more than one daughter from his various mistresses, and they are struggling with each other in the pecking order. Perhaps the Dark Lord’s eldest son is a powerful brute but dim of wit, but the younger son is clever but physically weak.

Are there rival factions in the Legions of Doom trying to pawn off their failures on the PCs or get them to do the hard work? Do the PCs have someone lower in social status trying to suck up to them?

You could get quite the soap opera going with only a little bit of effort. The PCs may end up having so much going on in the Fortress of Doom that they don’t seem to have much time to get out and enjoy some looting and pillaging.

And then there’s the paperwork. It’s all fun and villainous to march around and tyrannize the peasants, but you haven’t seen real evil until you’ve had to deal with the Dark Lord’s bureaucrats. They have ways to make you suffer without ever lifting a sword or wand.

An alternative to the nation-conquering version of Deathstroke might be to have them be the “secret masters” of a large town or small city they took over in the intervening years since their last appearance. It would give them a base of operations and set them apart a bit from other villain teams with more grandiose plans.

They could have secret IDs as upstanding citizens and maybe even be raising their kids with powers as the future of their operation.