largosama

I have a player who wants to gain the ability: Detect Water and I'm a bit confused on where you can detect: Question: Assuming he doesn't add any advantages, does this power mean that he'll only be able to detect water when touching it or when he's fairly close to it? So, maybe he'll be able to see that there's water in a pipe 5 feet in front of him? How about being able to detect water, say 20 feet below him?

In my Champions game, the PCs stole a small Scout ship from some aliens (Malvans specifically). Anyway, it's now gotten to the point where I really need to stat out the ship and as this is the first time I've designed a vehicle, I need help creating it from scratch... Basically, this thing hold two pilots and 12 passengers. It has no weapons and can fly quickly through space, but has no warp drive/dimension hopping abilities. It needs to have very good short and long range sensors along with a communicator back to the team's HQ. Oh yeah... and life support for about two days. So, if anybody can help, that would be great. Thanks in advance! -Kevin

Re: Using multiple Combat Maneuvers

Re: Using multiple Combat Maneuvers

I'm confused... I have the 5th edition rulebook (not revised) and just got the Combat Handbook... okay... I could have sworn that in the 5th edition rulebook, it says that you can use multiple combat maneuvers in a phase, but you have to use the worse OCV and DCV bonus. So, when my phase comes up, I can punch and kick on the same phase. Is this still the case? Am I just imagining all of this? Should I ever had allowed my players to do multiple hand to hand attacks in the same phase (assuming they have no advantages specifically that lets them do it)? I have a few guys in my group who have been doing that for a while and I could have sworn that we all read that rule together that lets them do it... help me out!

Re: Tales of the Freedom Corps This is from Sunday's game: #17 The Threads Connect (continued from #16: Return of the Fool) Alicia Blackmun says that she will set up anti-demon wards around HQ. In the meantime, Gallows stab wound is not healing due to an enchantment on Fool's knife. She can stabilize her but she'll need a piece of a pure demon in order to heal her. She then throws a newspaper that had Samantha Johnson (the Cloaca) on the cover. The team (Centurion, Fade, and Chevy) go to Stronghold and use Chevy's contacts to let them interrogate Johnson to find out a way to bring back the Cloaca. Despite trying several methods, they failed in their attempt to trigger the Cloaca. Later on, Centurion makes a phone call to Cateran to ask her about the situation at the Museum. She tells Centurion that she can't speak over the phone, but she would meet him at a warehouse at midnight. That night, they met Cateran and she said that the Cloaca coming out when she was around was purely a coincidence. Her boss hired her for a lot of money to steal the gyroscope, but it had to be that specific night. Just as they turned to depart, Tesseract appeared apparently pretty soon after the situation in the Gear Works. She couldn't comprehend how the Freedom Corps knew to show up at the Museum and the Gear Works. However, her master's project is almost complete. She teleports in three mechanical beasts called Chala-Lions which attack the team as Tesseract and Cateran teleport away, saying that they'll meet Shadow Dragon at Mt. Fuji. The battle goes badly for the team as Centurion and Chevy are defeated by the Lions, while Fade, finding that he could not scare the Lions, tried to distract them before he ended up hiding behind a crate of electronics (as an aside, he stole some of the electronics from the box). Meanwhile, as soon as Chevy and Centurion were knocked out, Zorran the Artificer, a man from Centurion's past, teleported in and left with the Chala-Lions as well as the two knocked out Freedom Corps members, leaving Fade utterly alone.

One of the PCs in my campaign has the ability to communicate with machines and has to ability to manipulate them and change their programming. So a few questions about this: 1: What would a typical Ego / ECV / Stun be for a computer? Video camera? Power armor? Other typical machines? 2: If he wants to alter the programming, what should the appropriate steps be to do this? First make the ECV roll to connect telepathically, roll Telepathy dice to see if he rolls high enough to commuicate with the machine... then make a computer programming and/or electronics roll to see if he can change the programming? 3: Considering that this is a mental linkup, how long in game should I require him to be able to rewrite the programming? We've been doing it fairly instantly nowadays and that may be the case... but has anybody else done this???

Re: Demon The book is *excellent*. I had picked up the book to get some evil occult ideas and ended up adding in a huge plot line to my story due to the neat stuff in DEMON. You have lots of background info on the organization and it's members. They give you a few occult villains and even some super villains. The villains range from the very aggressive (like the Left Hand) to the assassins (Jack Fool, who I use as a Michael Myers style killer), to more corruptive (Coin Collector, Black Shepherd), to the strange (Herr Doktor Pandemonium). I feel that the story has some greating jumping on points for a campaign as well which in itself is worth the purchase Anyhoo, double thumbs up on DEMON!

Re: Tales of the Freedom Corps Thank you! :-) Does it make the Singing Boxer any better that he speaks with a thick Polish accent? ;-) I've gotten some odd looks from my players in terms of the Fanta-Beam's name... 'You mean, it shoots out soda???'' Then they realize it's short for 'Fantasy' and it's alllll good The Ruun are some of my faves... ancient non-human necromancers that stay 'alive' by replacing destroyed/worn out body parts with body parts from the recently deceased. However, while they are creepy and there are some bad apples in the bunch, the Ruun in general are peaceful... The Ruun are central to the main storyline going on currently... the short and sweet of it: Ruun and Null (anti-life creatures) go to war. The Sol (beings born from stars) come down to help defend Earth from the Null, but while they defeated the Null, they ended up taking out more then half of the Ruun's population with it (caught in the crossfire). Thousands of years pass... the Null are now active again in Earth but this time they are very organized. The Sol are nowhere to be found and the Ruun have been reduced to hiding in graveyards... there seems to be a race of creatures that look like a crossbreed between Ruun and Null leading the Null to battle. That's where the heroes come in. Toyotatomi... I love that name... there's a PC in my campaign named Chevy... basically, he's a power armor hero ala Iron Man... his suit was built by Chevorlet and is the prototype for their new armor project. Hence the name Chevy... Toyota wanted their hands on it, so they hired some mechanized mercs, called them the Toyotatomi and sent them on their way... fun stuff ;-) The Crimson Battery story is just starting... a new energy source from a crashed meteor? You know something bad is going to eventually happen! Dream Shift is simply a plot device when they teleport to the dream world so that I do not have to automatically put them in the same spot everytime they go. I can then use different dreams for them to go to.

For those interested in a campaign synopsis, I have listed the various adventures that the team in my campaign has gone through. Please note that I have each player control 3 characters, but only one per adventure. So, you get to use a specific character every 3 adventures. This has enabled me to use three different stories that can tie into each other when necessary (like #10). Anyway, these are the short and sweet versions what happened. If anybody is curious and wants more details on certain things, let me know: #1 Join the Corps A new Freedom Corps is formed as the team takes on an attempted bank robbery by Nex and the Singing Boxer. Featuring: Chevy, Fade, and Centurion #2 The Grand Library The team (Johnny Bam, Silhouette, and eventually Krakatoa) investigates a finding by this world's Vladimir called the Grand Library. Featuring the first appearance of Titus Grueber as the keeper of the Grand Library who sends the team on a mission to retrieve Dead Meat, a ghost working for him so that the Freedom Corps can receive information on the Fanta-Beam #3 The Goblin King Freedom Corps HQ is attacked from the inside by a horde of Goblins and the evil Goblin King. But who is this mysterious woman with Hydro-Electric's powers who the Goblin King chased to this world from another time or dimension? This is the first time there is talk of alternate Earth's being destroyed or overrun. This story featured Hydro-Electric, Vladimir, and Byron #4 Enter the Elements Continued from: The Goblin King: The new Hydro-Electric's mystery continues as her powers become chaotic just as Millennium City is attacked by various Elementals led by Dr. Element. After a strange trip to a mysterious temple, the team discovers the Source, a mechanical device supporting a huge ball of water. After meeting with the Source's guardians, old WWII vets left here during the war, the team defeated Dr. Element who during the battle kills the WWII vets. The new Hydro-Electric becomes the Source's guardian. #5 A Grave Mistake Under orders from Grueber and the Undead Council, Centurion and Fade try to retrieve Tattoo, the council's lost 'co-worker'. Along the way, they encounter many strange people, including Prof. Samedi and Jack Fool (who attack the team), as well as the Ruun (dead body part stealing Necromancers), and Cynthia (A Ruun wearing Tattoo's skin), and hear about prophecies of horrible things that will happen if the Undead Council open the Null Portal. The Portal is opened, despite the team's best effort. Later on, the team is attacked by Maximillian Narcisse and several men dressed in cloaks. During a battle with them, a Null Spider, a creature made of anti-life interferes. Maximillian flees, leaving the Freedom Corps to deal with it. They only defeat it by sending it crashing through the street into the sewer. Also, during the search for Tattoo, the party discovered a dark secret. Julian Vargas is already dead, killed by his son Christopher Vargas, and all that is left is his mental form. #6 Binary Corporation The team (Silhouette, Krakatoa, and Johnny Bam) is ordered by Vargas to retrieve a fanta-beam from Binary Corp. Monica Knowlton, an executive there, refuses unless they guard the beam from a suspected attack. Eurostar attacks later on, but Knowlton uses the Fanta-Beam to send both Eurostar and the Freedom Corps to Xertia, a realm of fantasy. The team battles the Goblin King and the Goblins immediately after entering Xertia. They defeat him and bring down his cave upon him. #7 Dreams of a Dark Future Continued from Binary Corporation: The team is escorted by a knight named Marlin to a castle ruled by Queen Bethany and Princess Stephanie. The party soon must face off against the kingdom's enemy, a person called the Red Knight and his horde of vampires. After fending off an early attack, the team assaults the Red Knight's castle, only to discover that the Red Knight is Krakatoa as a vampire named Nolan Grueber. He is from an alternate Earth where the Null overran the Earth. All Freedom Corps members went to Xertia, which is actually the Dream World, to find ways to enhance their powers. Nolan simply embraced vampiric powers that he already had. He informed the team that this is Stephanie's dream, but Bethany, though looks like her mother, is actually something more. He then takes the team to his Earth where the Null have overrun it. He gives Nolan a necklace with a strange red crytal on it and then soon faces off with Maar, the person from Cynthia's prophecy. Maar kills Nolan just before the team leaves for Xertia. Later on, the team goes to the castle and frees the captured Eurostar team just as a Null Spider attacks. The team gets back to their Earth just as Johnny Bam sends the Null through a wall as it was dissolving various parts of his body. Later on, the team has Eurostar arrested. Finally that night, Titus Grueber visits Nolan in a dream and carves a symbol into his neck, making him a vampire so that he can experience what Grueber must go through. #8 Attack of the Toyotatomi After a brief discussion with Vargas, Victor Eversole, and Cpl Harrison about the Null, Chevorlet's research lab outside of Millennium City is attacked by the Toyotatomi, a group of mechnized villains including Ankylosaur, Armadillo, and Chevy's old enemy, Cyclone. Chevy, Fade, and Centurion go the lab and find that the Toyotatomi are after Chevy's specs and upgrade details. While Fade goes into the building to stop Armadillo from stealing the data, Centurion faces off against Ankylosaur and Chevy and Cyclone clash. Fade manages to destroy the data before it can be stolen while the four combatants fight to draws in both of their fights. The Toyotatomi escaped, leaving the Freedom Corps and MARS to clean up the mess. During the cleanup, one of Chevorlet's mechanics talks to Centurion, revealing that he is Christopher Vargas. Later on, the team comes back to HQ, only to find Julian Vargas and Jennifer Gallows under attack by the Null. After it severely wounded Fade, Chevy severely wounded it before a suprise attack by Titus Grueber finished it off. In a startling revelation, it was revealed that of the three Freedom Corps members, only Fade stood a chance of defating the Null. #9 First Contact After returning from Brazil, Hydro-Electric, Vladimir, and Byron are sent to investigate a crash site where a giant metal sphere has landed. Soon, the sphere opened, unleashing a giant lizard monster who began rampaging. Luckily, the Freedom Corp used their combined powers to capture the lizard back in the sphere before it did too much damage. Soon after though, the team was abjucted by a race of aliens calling themselves, Malva. The team was forced to battle each other for the right to battle their grand champion, Firewing. Hydro-Electric soon triumphed over the team but was quickly defeated by Firewing. However, just as that happened a giant red asteroid smashed into the ship, causing it to fall apart. Luckily, with the help of a human captive from back during colonial times, the team escaped on a stolen fighter. The asteroid hit near Millennium City, but seemed to slow itself down before impact causing little damage. The team hid the fighter and went back to HQ where they encountered the entire team, the Champions, Titus Grueber, H-E 2, Necrosis, Vita, and Diatasso all waiting to discuss the Null #10 Beyond Death The Champions, Freedom Corps, and Titus Grueber team up to take down the lich, Phon-Arath and the Null Portal which fed him pure Necromancy. After being separated by a force field and being attacked by a horde of zombies and skeletons, the Freedom Corps went alone after Phon-Arath. After Phon-Arath damaged his suit, an enraged Chevy single-handedly defeated Phon-Arath. Fade, Centurion, and Byron went into Null Space to destroy the portal from the other side. It was there that they viewed a mass horde of Null being organized by a human like figure into military formations. The trio attached the bombs to the portal and left before they were found. Meanwhile, the white haired being known as Maar came through the Null Portal into Earth and attacked the remaining Freedom Corp members. The team was being very easily defeated, even with the returning trio from Null Space. However, the team managed to set up the bombs and blow up the Null Portal. This caused the Portal to collapse upon itself and sucked Maar and the Null-Spiders back into Null-Space. However, Maar grabbed Johnny Bam before he was brought back into the portal and despite the team's efforts, brought Bam into Null-Space with him #11 The Artist and the Artifact Monica Knowlton attempts to blackmail the team (Chevy, Fade, and Centurion) into giving false feedback to her new product, the Crimson Battery, created from the crashed meteor from 'First Contact'. During the Battery's debut at the Museum, local artist Samantha Johnson is transformed into the Cloaca, a tentacled monster who can hop through paintings. After defeating the creature, the party discovers two things: Maximillian Narcisse unleashed the Cloaca and Cateran stole a gyroscope artifact from the museum while people were distracted. #12 City of Circuits The team (Silhouette, Hydro-Electric, and Krakatoa) returns to Xertia only to find themselves in a mechanical city due to Dream Shift, which is similar to ocean currents. This city, as it turns out, is literally Nullworld's Vladimir. He gives the team several red crystals as well as a bomb to blow up the Archway to the Heavens. Later on in Xertia, the team has a showdown with Burris. After rescuing Stephanie, the team battled Burris. Burris had the upper hand, but the team lured her away from the Archway, giving the bomb enough time to go off. The team escaped with the Fanta-Beam in the nick of time. However, instead of returning to Earth, the team was dumped off in a world full of gears #13 Showdown at the Big Ten Byron notices that the police are staking him out. Later on, power is cut off for a while in Millennium City except for one office building which certain offices were lit up to form a message about a chess game from Cybermind to Shadow Wolf (Vladimir). Later on, the team is informed of a robbery at the Big Ten movie theater. Shadow Wolf and Byron go to investigate and encounter the Samurai 5 holding up the place. A battle ensued but it was only ended by the appearance of a meta-human named Mean Streak who helped the Freedom Corp defeat the Samurai 5. After an interrogation, the team finds out that the leader of the Samurai 5 is the daughter of Nicholas Donlan. Also, the team finds out that a man named Preet Junction hired the team. The team goes to the warehouse where Preet was last seen. After taking out the guards, they enter the warehouse and then down a hole in the floor. This lead to an arena where Preet Junction was on a video screen. Preet Junction, as it turns out, is a Malvan and has introduced the Malvan gladiator games to Earth. With Firewing's disappearance, he had to crown a new champion... and that champion is... #14 The Watershed Continuing from the Showdown at the Big Ten: The champion is a Earth metahuman named Bulldozer. Bulldozer and Mean Streak battled while Byron set up some distractions and Shadow Wolf made sure that Preet Junction's apparently televised gladiator matches were of lowest quality. After Byron set up Bulldozer in a very embarassing state, Preet fired Bulldozer and gave Mean Streak the championship. Mean Streak was injected with a small device that would enable any gladiator to find him and challenge him at any time. The team left the arena and ran into Antoine Harrison and the MARS. Apparentely, someone called in a break in ot the warehouse by Metas. Antoine arrested the team and took them to Stronghold. In Stronghold, they were put in separate cells. However, one of the guards attacked a powerless Byron stating that 'Psimon sends his regards'. The next day, Nicholas Donlan bails them out, stating that he didn't realize it was them. Later on, the team found out where the guard was currently: A seedy meta/henchmen bar called the Watershed. Upon investigating, Mean Streak discovered that some major jobs were going down by a woman named Tesseract. #15 The Gear Works Continuing from The City of Circuits: The team (Hydro-Electric, Krakatoa, and Silhouette) lands in Gearworks where they encounter Clockwork Robots and a dwarf of a man named Curls who is the Engineer of the Gearworks. Each gear controls a specific function of reality, whether it's how stars are born, to how purple looks to your next door neighbor. Soon after, the Gearworks is attacked. Curls and the Freedom Corps go to see who the attacker is and are attacked by several armed goons. After dispatching with them, the team ends up on a platform and encounter the meta humans, Tesseract and Shadow Dragon. Shadow Dragon had stolen a gear from a tower and then left via Tesseract's teleportation ability. Tesseract left soon after. It turns out that the gear that was stolen was on a tower for Magical Cosmetics, but the gear was not listed on the tower's inventory. This meant that it was being hidden for a purpose (Curls talked about how the god Chaos, before he went to war with the other gods, came to Gear Works, found his own Gear and modified it to make himself more powerful. Since then, all gears of significant power are hidden.). Also, the team makes a discovery on the same platform. There are towers for the Null, Ruun and Sol, that are filled with gears. The Sol are missing a few at the top that apparently are yet to be created. Also, an empty tower has just been built for Maar and the Nullruun, but Curls stated that he has no idea who they are. He was under orders from Diatasso to build the towers and leave them empty. With that, Curls sent the team back home. #16 The Return of the Fool Jennifer Gallows announced that her work on the Gymnasium is complete. The room can now be continously altered from a control room to maximize training regiments. Centurion takes it upon himself to take Fade into the Gymnasium for a late night training session to build endurance. After wearing Fade out, Centurion notices a commotion in the control room. Several red robed men were holding Gallows hostage as several more came into the gym led by Maximillian Narcisse who demanded that Centurion hand over an artifact that Centurion knows the location of. A battle ensued as Centurion took on Narcisse and his crew in the gymansium while Fade, an incoming Dr. Silverback, and incoming Julian Vargas went to save Gallows. After restoring order to the control room, despite Silverback being knocked out, Fade began starting up the Gymnasium's controls which led to a lot of confusion and damage inside the gym. However, it did it's job and took out the red robed people. Vargas locked out Maximillian's telepathic abilities while Centurion came in and finished him off. However, soon after a man by the named of the Black Shepherd appeared, burning the bodies of the red robes and Narcisse. Though he was impressed that Centurion dispatched his Morbane, Narcisse, he demanded the artifact from Centurion. He summoned several 'Little Ones', small white demons capable of entering a host's body and taking it over. They swarmed around Centurion and attacked. Just before being overwhelmed, he used his grapple line to swing out of there and kicked the Shepherd with all of his might, knocking himself out in the collision as he hit the wall. The Shepherd and the Little Ones disappeared, but not before the Shepherd vowed that his friends would suffer because of this. With that, Gallows was sent through the control room window with a knife in her back. Stepping through the Control Room door was Jack Fool. Fade, who had gone to check on Gallows, and Vargas were the only ones left to stand up to him. However, Vargas used his telepathy to summon an ally, a witch named Alicia Blackmun who teleported in with a vial of powder and a black book. She tossed the vial to Fade while reading from the book which paralyzed Fool. However, Fool broke out and stabbed Blackmun multiple times in the arm. Fade used the time to break the vial on the back of Fool's head. Fool quickly disappeared in a ball of flame.

Re: Question of the GMs

In my Champions campaign set in Millennium City, there is an Undead Council. It's led by the Triumvirate which includes: A vampire named Titus Grueber who is the PCs sometimes great ally, sometimes great enemy type of NPC... a Lich named Phon-Arath, and a so far unnamed Death Knight... this council is fairly secret in it's existence (it was created during the medieval ages to unite against the multitudes of monster hunters killing their kind off)... the PCs were introduced to it only when Titus Grueber needed their help. The Council leads basically a UN style council of undead... so, there's a representative from the Banshees, Ghosts, Wights, Ghouls, Zombies, etc... Just a few weeks ago, the PCs were involved with a situation that ended with the permanent death of Phon-Arath (they knocked him out to stop him from using a portal to a dimension of pure necromancy to draw unlimited strength from... but as soon as they knocked him out, he was absorbed by my campaign's current Master Villain, Maar (who beat the snot out of the PCs until they managed to destroy the portal to banish Maar for a while) Anyhoo, now Phon-Arath is dead which ends up destabilizing the council. Titus Grueber wants to take the council in one direction, but the knight wants to take it in another. The council is split on what it wants to do and it will lead to civil war. It will start off pretty small... The PCs will interrupt a fight between two undead. Then skirmish battles in graveyards in the middle of the night before it goes to full blown out war in the streets and all over the world... The PCs will be caught up in the middle of the war... whether they choose a side is up to them, but they won't be able to avoid at least taking part in the fight... I don't have a definitive ending planned as yset, but I think that's when I'll introduce Takafones to come in and join the Triumvirate as the new lich and he'll restore order (under an bony iron fist probably) Anyhoo, I need suggestions on what other events I should have during the Civil War, primarily subplots that will go on during the various stages of the story. DEMON plays a big part in my campaign right now, so I may have DEMON back one of the major players in the war to make it more interesting... Just so you know, Titus Grueber represents wisdom and knowledge on the council... he's embraced his immortality and because of it, he doesn't really care what living people think of him because he'll outlive them anyway... he does not kill for random reasons... only to feed or when it suits his purposes. He loves to stick his nose in places it doesn't belong... however, if you try to stop him from achieving his objective, you've earned an enemy for life... one of the PCs try to stop him from taking an undead villain away from MARS police... in retribution a few days later, Grueber turned him into a vampire... considering that the PC is a vegan and will not harm people when possible, currently the PC is starving to death. The Death Knight does not have a defined personality yet, so you can have plenty of creative breathing space with him. Sooooo, let's get the creative juices flowing! Thanks!

Could you give me examples on how you use Presence attacks in your campaign? I don't mean what dice to roll, when I can use them, etc... just how you used them.. 'Mr. X yelled nasty things at Hero Blaster causing him to lose his next phase' or things like that. I've been running my HERO campaign for a few months now and I'd like to use more presence attacks. I'd like to see more examples of how they are used before I start using them more.

Re: Mind Control awareness In the end, I didn't make him a brainless zombie or something like that... we ended up agreeing that the most he would answer back with would be something to the effect of 'I don't know why I can't attack them. My body isn't letting me'.

This past weekend, I had a villain NPC mind control one of the PCs (Centurion), telling him to not attack the NPC's allies (who were in the midst of a battle with the PCs). Another character asked Centurion why he wasn't attacking the bad guys. He responded with something to the effect of 'Because I don't have psi dampeners' (basically implying that he's being controlled). As the GM, I ended up telling him that while he'll remember that he's being controlled and he'll know that his actions are not his own, that I wouldn't allow him to basically blurt out that he's being controlled. Now, I know that there's an added difficulty of having the Mind Control go off undetected (which was not done), but for future reference, who was correct in this situation?

Re: Evil Corporations What have they been doing in your campaign to harass the team? Do they kidnap the team? Use secret methods of extracting it? Kidnap other metas (and have your team go for the rescue)?

Re: Just used my first Master-Villain Sorry for the delay! I just caught this one! Anyhoo, the captured guy will get some XP. He's going to be stuck running around and fighting A LOT (which I haven't decided whether I'm going to RP out with the player or not) to escape the dimension. When he does, it'll lead right into a huge advancement in the story due to where he comes out. It was a self made villain. As the campaign goes on, he'll get more powerful, but as of right now, he's basically from a race of necromancers who have the ability to absorb the memories/powers of the dead if he comes into contact with them. Now, a long time ago, he was tossed into a dimension (accidentally) where all of the dead people go if they don't go to Heaven or Hell (1% go to Heaven, 1% go to Hell, and the rest go to Null Space). Anyway, he and some other members of his race were now basically in a dead buffet bar. He now has found a way back to Earth and he's pissed off at a lot of people (the people who sent him there (while it got him powerful, absorbing things has gotta get boring after a while!), the people who didn't try to find him after he got sent to Null Space, and a few others... right now he is extremely powerful... there are plans to get him into the god-like powerful range... I have it planned out how it's going to happen, but now I have to plan some way of being able to defeat him

Re: Evil Corporations In my campaign, Binary Corp hired the team to guard this high-tech device in their labs. Eurostar broke in to get the device and damaged the lab's walls and a bit of the device. An executive of Binary Corp used the device to teleport both teams to another dimension (Sinister purposes? Of course! But it also saved the device from being completely wrecked)... anyhoo, after the team got back and went to talk to the executive about it, she presented them with a bill for $150,000 worth of repairs. She then said that she'd tear up the bill if they publically vouched for the safety and reliability of a new energy system coming out. They turned it down, but she ended up saying that they did later on anyway... eeeeeviiilll... ;-)

I'm curious to hear stories about Evil Corporations in your campaigns. It could evil by way of just bad ethics/don't care if they completely squash the little man to interested in world domination to is actually controlled by supernatural evil entities. How did you use the Corporation in the campaign?

While I have powerful villains in the game, I finally used a Master-villain style bad guy to end the first part of a story arc. The team knew they would be going up against some powerful guys, so the whole team came along (nine characters, three characters each (usually every session, you play one of your three characters, switching it up every session) All sorts of prophecies about this guy destroying the world had been going around for the past ten sessions and it had been building to this. Bad guy came out of a stargate like portal that led to a dimension of Pure Necromancy. The team knew that the objective was to destroy the portal first and foremost. They had just defeated another powerful villain, who was the guardian of the gate, in one hit (legit hit with great dice rolling) so they were cocky... they battled the guy for about two rounds and for the first time since we started in 10 weeks ago, the PCs got their butts kicked and the master villain worked out perfectly. Heroes were getting tossed around, smashed into other heroes, slammed into walls... Now, don't get me wrong... though I love giving the PCs a tough villain to fight, my intention was not to get my rocks off by killing off PCs. I wanted to emphasize that there are things out there that they can't handle yet. Anyhoo, after a few rounds, a PC made a mad dash for the portal with some time bombs and blew the sucker up... this forced the villain back into the other dimension... however, he grabbed a nearby PC and despite the attempts by the heroes, the PC was sent into the portal (they were literally 1 off from saving him). That PC will be back eventually, but for now, that player has to design a new character... So, the PCs lost a guy and got their butts kicked... they know that the master villain is still around, but he'll have trouble getting back over here. Now that they know what he's all about, it's time for them to start planning on how to beat him... Anyhoo, just wanted to post that since it was a fun session!

Re: Help with villain description/powers That sounds perfect... now I'm going to have to dig around and try to find who you are talking about.

Re: Help with villain description/powers In response to Dr. Anomaly's response: 1: The thing that they'll have to destroy is not on the villain's body and has already been emphasized in the game that it's a 'Big Bad Dangerous Object'. Unfortunately, I can't be too specific as I'm not sure how frequently my players are on this board ;-) 2: This guy is affected by only specific types of attacks. An NPC that is a sometimes rival sometimes ally, knows that he can affect the big bad and the big bad's allies (who have similar but weaker 'reality hates them' powers) and that one of the team's members can affect the bad guys as well (the team fought one of the bad guy allies in a tough fight, but only one of the team members could damage it (others could affect it, but not truly damage it)... anyhoo, it will come out that a few members of the team have the ability to damage the bad guys (the remaining part of the team will have other important duties as well, don't worry about that) 3: Luckily, I don't think any of my players have any NNDs and AVLDs (we're fairly new to the system)... hmmm... now that I think about it, I think one of my players has a little sleeping gas, but other then that, nothing. 4: I have no intention of GM masturbation... my palms are hairy enough, thank you! ;-) I intend for the NPCs to steer them at least in the right direction (This super hero can affect the bad guys, but I don't know why), but it's up to the players to figure out what to do about it. 5: The way I've been doing this faction of bad guys is that they're all hittable and can be knocked around all to hell. However, only certain attacks actually do real damage to them. I guess the easiest way to say it in HERO terms is that they take STUN from hits but no BODY unless it's from a specific attack.

Re: Help with villain description/powers Ooooo... I like the Marty McFly idea... For some reason, I've only been thinking about the environment, not about the characters themselves other then maybe 'there's no air around this guy so you're struggling to breathe'. Having the characters go a bit ghostly/fade a bit in and out of reality would rock!

Re: Help with villain description/powers Exactly. Nothing in this reality affects him. The first few times around, the heroes will only be able to foil his plans, not defeat him. The real question is going to be, how stubborn will the heroes or more to the point, the players be when fighting him and realizing that they don't have what it takes as of yet to beat him. I plan to emphasize that by having NPCs before the battle say (and repeat if necessary) that 'destroying the big bad doomgun (or whatever) is your objective, no matter who stands in your way' Also, how would you describe his 'abilities' in game description? The party enters the room and out steps the big bad. How do I describe how the powers work?

Here's the situation. I'm going to be having a master villain coming up which in game, the universe/reality did not intend to exist. So, when he walks around, reality doesn't know how to affect him. The ground doesn't know what to do when it's being stepped on... the air doesn't know whether to flow right through him or go around him. He doesn't control the reality around it and never affects him negatively. However, it can affect other people (air around him might disappear for a while, ground may turn into a sinkhole for a few seconds, etc) So, how do I: 1: Describe this to my players in a fashion so that it emphasizes that fact that reality is basically bending/distorting around him 2: Though I may just need the description, if I were to build this 'reality distortion' as a power, how would I build it?