Black Rose

Re: Help with power idea - inertia thingies I'm going to stick with some for of tweaked Flight, or possibly Superleap with usable as Flight - though I think the Flight works better. We'll see. I'm planning on a combo of Aikijutsu and other force-redirection maneuvers with an acrobatic style. Add some bonus STR (or possibly Extra DCs) to simulate the force redirection potential. Well, the character does have running, leaping, limited flight to simulate the pivot points, and a limited T'port to simulate the Batman-esque "blink and I'm gone", only with rose petals. These were all good ideas, thanks!

Re: Help with power idea - inertia thingies I was originally going to do a multipost response, but I simply couldn't focus on all the different posts in one, so....

Okay, I have an idea for a power build - and for what might be the first time, I have no real mechanics-base to work from. Hopefully y'all can help me with this. The ability to create... um, well... I guess you could call them pivot points. I really have no good name idea. What they do is serve as immovable points. You could create one while moving at high speed and simply pivot on the point, spinning around it in utter defiance of momentum and gravity. You could make several in turn and use them as momentary handholds, allowing for literally impossible acrobatics. You could stand on one and simply defy gravity, hanging in empty space. You can't move them once created, though, but they can be made and dismissed so quickly the difference is nil for certain effects. You couldn't use it to fly around, but you could walk or jump on "stepping stones." Nor could you use one to simply not be moved by a great force - you'd be moved in relation to the point, but you'd still move. I see this as a powerful trick in the arsenal of a person who has great power over creating inertia and momentum; I'm going to ransack the USPDs for kinetic-based powers, but I've had this visual in my head for a while. I guess I'm looking for some way of quantifying the basic idea I have, as well as any funky ideas that come to you. TIA!

Re: WWYCD: The Dark Side. Penumbra would probably have been raised by his grandfather, who would not have had a change of heart about his actions as a Nazi Ubermensch (his powers revolved around "witchcraft" and a talent for shadow magics). He'd be a firm believer in the "I have power, therefore I am better than normals." Many of his usual actions (trashing drug dealers and white slavers and then stealing their money) would now be done to both further his own business ambitions and to shut down competition. Basically a mystically-powered crime boss. Kodachi actually used to be a villain, to a certain degree; the people she ambushed and possibly crippled before their matches would probably agree. If she were villianous now, she'd come off as a cross between the Bride With White Hair and Queen Beryl - she'd have a loyal group of quasi-lesbian schoolgirls with youma-like draining powers (but better looks) and be looking for a way to increase her temporal power. Both would actually be interesting to play, if only briefly. I also notice that part of my definition of heroic, or possibly antivillainous, is an near-inability to be proactive. Bad guys act, good guys react.

Re: What do you consider “Modern Paranormal”? I remember that, around ten or so years ago, there was a second-hand book store with copies of the first four (or maybe five) Anita Blake books. These copies had been nearly read to death, and would only be "sold" to long-time customers who would be sure to return them. The ideas that the bookseller told me from the book (legalized vampires, lycanthropy victims as a socially persecuted group, the Church of Eternal Life, etc.) were very fascinating, and it really saddened me that the series went downhill like it has. Although, technically, it hasn't gone downhill so much as changed core audiences, but since I was part of the old core, I feel somewhat betrayed. To answer the OP's question: like some of the other posters, I consider "paranormal" to include psychic phenomena and spirit activity, but not actual "monsters" and such. I'd actually hold up Ghostbusters as a good example, with X-Files being another. Ghostbusters, despite being a comedy, is exactly the sort of comedy I really love - the events were completely "straight", it was the comments and actions of the main protagonists that made the movie funny. There was nothing actually funny about a materialized Gozer the Gozerian, Gozer the Destructor, Vulgo Zindrohad, The Traveller - it was, in fact, the first major step by Gozer in his attempt to conquer our world. Only through the potentially-fatal heroism of the Ghostbusters was he defeated. If you listen to the description Egon gives about what they are going to do, you can tell there is every likelihood they are going to die in a truly horrific manner. Sorry about that, I just like reasonably serious stories where the characters can be snarky.

Re: Seemingly Silly Things to Model

Re: How Would You... #1: Bloodreading Except it's not just blood purity; there's also an ability to interpret geographical origin and possible hereditary strengths. Granted, I think much of the ability will be rolling against a Bloodreading skill to interpret the information, but if the character has the knowledge to understand what they're 'reading, they could plot a target's geneology back for tens of generations. Would it be cleaner to simply set each "thing" that can be detected for as a seperate Sense? It would certainly be more expensive, but I've never been sure when to use the "Sense Additional Thing" trick. That would mean: Sense Blood Purity (telling the difference between Miss Weasley and Miss Granger in a dark room) Sense Lineage (telling the difference between Malfoy and Potter in a dark room) Sense Hereditary Gifts (this is a concept of my own devising - the idea that family lines can develop certain natural gifts, and if the right sort of mates are chosen, these will grow stronger. Forex, the Weasleys could be considered to have a certain gift for fertility.) Sense Magical Strengths and Weaknesses (picking up Longbottom's gift for Herbalism and utter lack of talent in Potions, or Malfoy's talent for the same, or Potter's knack for DADA, etc.) While this would allow for having 'readers with strengths in picking up one thing or another, is it the cleanest way to do it?

Re: MA Power Tricks I was about to mention the possibility of simply making it a PRE Attack if the victim were a nameless scrub. Since he wasn't, I personally would go with something like Deadly Blow, All or Nothing, yadda yadda, with some CSLs for flavor, and simply describe it as a double decapitation blow followed by a kick to the neck slice. The PRE Attack bonus dice should be forthcoming normally. If not, simply Link some in.

Re: Do patents work differently the Champions Universe?

Re: WWYCD: The Darkest Hour Penumbra would, like all too many of y'all (what's up with that? ), spend most of his time in strip clubs (just like he does now). There would be a massive upswing in completely bug-shagging insane organized crime personnel found drooling on themselves in front of the Police Station; he already goes after drug dealers and white slavers, both 'cause he hates the crime and it brings in big money, but now he'd be much more inclined to leave the criminals permanently mentally damaged. He'd also be casually using magic all the time, scaring the 'danes and drawing all the wrong sort of attention from the Prince of Darkness. If Virtue came after him, he'd either schmooze her like Leisure Suit Larry, or be horribly ashamed that he can't be as good as she tries to be. Kodachi would throw anything that even vaguely resembled circumspection and modesty to the four winds and be all over every single reasonably attractive female around, and there's a lot of those. She'd also... now that I think of it, that's probably the only thing that she represses. She'd be more expressive with her chi abilities - leaping all over the place, draining pretty schoolgirls with her kisses, beating the unholy crap out of perverts on the trains. Ah yes, good times....

Re: Nosgothic Birthright Boo-freakin'-yah!! Oh man, I loved that game! Only ever played the first one for any real length of time, but I loved me some wholesale slaughter of innocent Nosgothians. I got to fool around with the second one, and only really got to see the start of the one where Kain goes to the future. Good times....

The first in an ongoing series of me asking Herodom Assembled how the heck you would represent a power idea I've come up with. I'll probably be putting this up in the Fantasy Hero sub-forum, too. The basic idea is this: the person can, at will and without any real effort, simply know about the general strengths and weaknesses that come from your "blood", as defined back in the 19th century, as well as familial origin - Hmm, halfblood, and your family comes from France and... Belgium? No, Luxembourg, that's it. This is for a somewhat more serious version of the Harry Potter universe, so being able to detect pureblood, halfblood, and mudblood is a breeze. If the person takes a moment to concentrate on a single person, they can learn more detail - strong in Charms, weak in Defensive magics, especially Wards, and a predisposition to overeating. Avoid the tarts, old boy. If the person actually took the time to meditate on a real sample of blood from their subject, they could know almost anything that could be justified as being "in the blood" - interesting Malfoy... did you know about fifteen generations back some Sidhe blood got mixed in? Explains your oh-so-distinctive hair and eye color, I guess. I daresay you could breed for the next millennium with Weasleys and not los- Malfoy? Was it something I said? So, does anyone have some good ideas? The only thing I could come up with was Sense (obviously), but I never quite got a writeup that felt... right.

Re: Tri-system experiment There's a little programming doohickie* KS uses on his site (I have no idea what it's called, since I consider myself a glorified computer illiterate, until I deal with the real thing at work) that allows you to have a block of text that "magically" expands to show a lot more block of text when you click on it, and then it shrinks down when you click it again. He uses this mostly to go into greater detail about his magic systems (at least, that's what I've seen it used for there). If this theoretical setting you propose were online, something like this would be pretty near perfect: creamy flavor text description on top, crunch underneath. It's one of the great failings of paper, it doesn't allow for info shifting. * that's a technical programming term, or so I've been told.

Re: why the UNITED NATIONS? (for global super-agency)

Re: "Look, up in the sky! It's Super Saint!" Christian-themed heroes The closest thing I have ever made would be Chastity Lass, a.k.a. Virtue*, a.k.a. Mary Elizabeth McCormick. She was a good little Catholic girl of fifteen, no calling or anything, but basically in the 90th percentile in terms of decency. While on a trip to France she, through a series of events that were convoluted as all heck, became the Bearer of the Sword. The Sword has had many Bearers, Arthur and Jeanne d'Arc just two of them. On the Vanetti-Brechtmann Scale** the Sword registers at 3500+***, and there is no bias shift; every single faith, including the really pacifistic ones like Jainism, recognize the Sword as a truly holy object. Mostly, Virtue tries to do good things, get through high school and find a good college, maybe find a boyfriend who understands there won't be any hanky-panky until after she's married, and attempt to thwart the works of the Bearer of the Spear, the only known object with a stronger V-B Score than the Sword, 3800 ... except it's a negative. * In her first actual interview, Mary tried to explain why she thought she had been chosen by the Sword. In her opinion, it was because she tried really really hard to be a good Catholic girl and stood firm by the values she was raised with, which was, IHO, darned hard in this day and age. One of the points she (unconsciously) kept bringing up was how much temptation there was for a girl to be with a boy in that way before they were married. As a result, the interviewer decided to name her, somewhat snarkily, Chastity Lass. Mary gets pretty peeved when she hears that name, as she prefers being called Virtue. ** A +/- rating of "holiness" or "unholiness" for my campaign, developed in the late 19th century. It is effectively creedless, but individual observers do influence the readings somewhat, and near-universally accepted by those who would accept this sort of thing in the first place, provided there are multiple observers to balance out the bias. *** This only means something when you understand that dirt registers at 25, a typical we-only-come-here-on-Sundays church usually registers around 250-500, serious sites of religious worship sometimes reach 1000, and the Vatican City only hits 2300 when a new Pope is chosen. Even the Wailing Wall and the Qaaba don't get this kind of reading.

Re: WWYCD: The Champion Protocols I'm reading "taken down" to mean killed or incapacitated long-term. In Penumbra's case, anything that interferes with his ability to move through shadows makes him very nervous. He relies on that ability to keep the "bad guys" running scared, not to mention it makes up a considerable amount of his combat strategy (get bad guy to place with lotsa shadows, blip around while hitting them a bunch, then make them confess/steal their money/whatever). As for the rest of his powers, well, they're mostly shadow-based (and kinda evilish), so the protocal would involve some sort of spotlights and possibly priests with holy water (or maybe they consecrate the ground, I dunno). If Virtue and Marvin were somehow available, he'd run to them and probably back their play, since Marvin has enough magical gewgaws to enchant/charm/curse us all back to primordial sludge. Otherwise, he'd probably panic and run right into the waiting arms of his "family", specifically the Prince of Darkness, and make some sort of bargain to overcome the current problem (somesort of short-term power boost that isn't affected by his usual weaknesses). He'd regret it later, but he'd have a later. Kodachi already has a couple of opponents who specifically target her weaknesses; she deals by having allies. If someone was coming after everyone, though, she'd get to the closest ally she's got (whoever that may be), help them out if they needed it, and then try to contact her other allies and bring them together. Get the brains (Nabiki, Cologne, and Ami, to name a few) together and come up with a plan to strike back. In the mean time, see if she can't get these people to work together better. There's a lot of weird stuff out there, and if we could all work together, it would be much more easily handled.* * And yes, I-the-player realize that this would just escalate things, since there has to be a challenge. That's what I want; I-the-character doesn't know that though.

Re: Your Character: The Series (Not exactly WWYCD...) Penumbra's show would either be animated (quality Japanese or Korean studio, please) or on a cable channel, since the heavy magic levels mean a big FX budget. Owing to the "inappropriate content" that is his life -- since he doesn't live in the ShadowRealm, he needs to stay in shadows a lot to charge up his powers, and only losers hide alone in a basement , he frequents strip clubs and bars -- the rating would be TV-13, maybe TV-15 if his "cousins" get to make more appearances than just "I'm a baddie, stop me". Honestly, Virtue's life would make a much better show (and Pen would really prefer it go that way; his Unluck would just screw him over otherwise) -- lots of Arthurian references (including the descendant of Merlin as a Contact!), plenty of wholesome "Good triumphs over Evil" stuff. Heck, aside from some Christian groups getting ticked that she's Catholic, she'd make a great spokesperson. Kodachi's life would be an anime... since it already is. I run this character through a blend of Ranma Nibunnoichi, Inuyasha, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon, and Phantom Junction, just more mature and somewhat twisted. The show would either stick to "reality" and be rather mature -- you can't have the main protagonist creating her own "gang" like the chick in Bride With White Hair (with all the lesbian references cranked to 8/10) without being considered mature -- or they'd tone that down to virtual nonexistance and play up the humor of guys hitting on her (and her brother trying to get her hooked up with a good boyfriend) while she just wants to be with her "girlfriends". "Sure Usagi, Haruka and Michiru are just really good friends. "

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Would that be a young girl having to dress up as a poet so her father won't die of debauchery in Paris?

Re: Rarity of Magic? In a lot of ways, this is the way I prefer magic in my Empire game to work. For the most part, there are "arrangements" that the people have with the Gods - mortals do this thing and the Gods shall do this other thing... usually. So long as the rituals are performed at the appropriate times, the crops will grow... unless "somebody does something to displease Jerilin Harvestbringer", in which case something bad might happen. Though Jerilin is pretty laid back... for a God (this is at least partially due to exellent growing conditions in the Empire). Exactly!! This is the kind of miracle I like. Something happens, and it is deemed a miracle, and everyone knows it. Don't try to explain fertility cycles to me, bub, Pondi made it so I could have a son! And really, this is how miracles should be in "most" fantasy games IMO. Some event occurs, and a number of people witness it, and call it a miracle, and maybe some others claim they were there too, to get in on the benefits (free meals for telling the story), and the priests are sticking with the party line, whether they believe or not, and.... You see what I mean? I like the idea of an event being declared "miraculous" and people simply going with it - regardless of how "big" it is. When you think about it, finally being able to have a child when you couldn't before sans fertility meds is pretty miraculous.

Re: "Why'd you yell FIRE! when you fell into the chocolate?" From what I remember of my Desserts module in Culinary Arts, white chocolate is only not a chocolate in the US. We have some fairly strict guidelines you have to follow, and as white chocolate does not have any cocoa solids, it doesn't qualify as a real chocolate. It still has cocoa butter and sugar, and all that happy theobromine.

Re: Trading up with Skill Levels I do this, too, with one little tweak: I like the Skills to go through all the stages in between. If you have an 18 PRE and an 8- in Streetwise, and spend the points to get it to stat level (13-), you spend 1 point (2 total) and have a 9- for one session/adventure, then a 10-, an 11-, spend the third point for a 12-, and finally have a 13-. This only applies if learning the skill should take a long time, or if you're trying to pick it up "in game time", instead of waiting for the between-"game" time.

Re: Good Zombie flicks I thought that was the whole point of the Japanese live action film industry - to make freaky-ass movies. And your description of the punker girl with things pierced through her reminded me of those "fine" films in the C.H.U.D. series.

Re: Treating CV like levels If you did that, I recommend retooling SPD to be 1+(DEX+INT)/20, and recosting DEX at 2pts/+1. Without CV to inflate the stat, and reducing SPD's effect by half, all DEX is used for is skills and initiative. And, not to derail, but I think Lightning Reflexes is priced a bit high for it's utility. I'd rate "DEX, no combat value" at -1, and that at least includes skill rolls.

Re: The Ultimate Skill (micro review)