Bengal

I see no problem with offering 100% resistant damage reduction as a straight 120-point power. Not that I allow people 120-point powers, but it seems to be a valid construct to me. 240 points to be immune to physical and energy attacks? Expensive, but cheaper than the desolid option. Wanda is a plot device and not a character at all, which is why she translates so poorly to Champs.

If a character with Multiform also has a vehicle, does he have to buy the vehicle with each of his forms in order for them all to use it? If not, which form pays points for the vehicle?

Accidental Change is a good choice for Trigger's Evil Twin. I think it works perfectly to emulate Multiple Man's (Marvel) need to take damage in order to produce a dupe. Of course over time he refined the power, but I think he still produces a dupe whenever he takes PD BODY damage, or however you want to say it.

I almost forgot- Tarpaulin Man He was actually another hero in disguise, but his only power was an EC based on carrying a tarp. He could roll you up in it, keep dry, cover up holes he dug in the ground, or use it as a parachute. Very silly. Hm, the Green Phantom. Very normal guy, dressed in a green bodysuit, carried a paint gun. 10d6 Luck and Martial Dodge. Dick Dustbin, Ninja Plumber. Used toilet plungers to climb up walls, and bash evildoers. Not very coordinated or intelligent. Qucky Duck-heart. A boy tragically crossed with a duck. Fights crime because he is no longer accepted by the other children. Decapitated in first adventure.

Two points: "Knighthawk" was a dark-n-gritty "hero" published briefly by Malibu in the 90s. His powers included power-armor wings and big honkin guns, which he used to shoot people. Nighthawk was also the name of my favorite PC superhero. I got really bummed out when he turned up in 5E. So, I rewrote him on 350 points (instead of the 292 he was at at the time) and changed his name to Blackhawk. I figure, if I can steal one obscure name, I can steal two.

Okay, I'll be back on let with my 750-point duplicator. He will be enough to give many whole teams the business. With five friends, he should have no trouble surviving the Destroyer challenge. We'll need someone to write fan fiction or something too... lol

I'm fairly sure Rick Jones wasn't built as part of another character so I don't know if he actually counts as a sidekick. He is a great PoV character though. My vote goes to Robin (Dick Grayson) too. EDIT Although, Streaky the Super-Cat, Bat-Mite and Bizarro Marilyn Monroe are pretty good choices too. Gotta love those Silver Age Bizarro stories.

When I saw that you'd quoted my entire rant... I was hoping you'd wanna blast me or something. Oh well. I must not be ranting hard enough yet.

I GMed a team of 11 superheroes (played by 11 players.. it was very hectic) one time, so each mega-badguy needed to be really tough to whether their combined assault. The first one I tried was Baron Ames von Orskel, a powersuit genius in the tradition of Doom. He was more of a plot element than anything (escort the Baron, protect him from supervillains, etc), until the Baron made his move, and battled the team. Several rounds later, he was vaporized (or was he?), but everyone on the team required medical attention. The second one I tried was Enarch (Electronic Monarch), a far-future's city-state expert system, which decided it didn't need people to govern and took over for itself, creating a 60-foot tall robot into which it projected its machine conciousness. Each time the heroes hit it, it would chip away tiny bits, but it was pretty clear it was too tough for them. It killed six heroes before we called they claled it quits that night, and took their dead and wounded back to the late 20th century and ended up defeating it by writing a back door into its source code sometime in the 28th century. Dead back to life, yadda yadda, happy ending. Enarch had tons of resistant defenses, was immune to most mental powers (being a robot), and 75% DR versus everything. His attacks were simple AoE TK OIF Object of Opportunity and punches, bolstered by a 10 speed. Nothing more than 18 DC though counting advantages. The lesson I learned from Enarch is, it's no fun for your PCs to fight a foe they can't beat soundly in a reasonable amount of time. I think if they had thought it through though, they would have tried Draining him, or just skipped the direct approach entirely.

Actually, 8 is closer to the human norm for intelligence. 10 is the norm for heroic chaacters. Small point though. I also agree that 5 points on weapons is too many for Kobolds. they mainly use short swords and occasionally flimsy short bows. 2 points is probably enough.

I got kind of dry on ideas one night, and came up with Kung Fu Lawyer... who is exactly as he sounds. Needless to say, he'll never see the gaming table unless we're playing TV Funhouse Champions from Saturday Night LIve.

One answer is that it's a matter of game balance. A VPP can conceivably be any power you want it to be, with GM permission and a decent rationale. Taking lots of limitations on it can make it potentially much cheaper than a similar Multipower with a dozen or so powers. I'm sure there are other reasons, but really this one should stand up on its own.

Yes, please post the character! I think we can help you with a redesign that makes more sense.

RANT WARNING There are only two reasons that companies shake up their universes on a fairly regular schedule: 1) Poor and unimaginitive writing and editing creates untennable paraoxes which the same group of poor writers and editors can't seem to figure out a way out of. "Screw it all, let's reboot", says Mr. Half-Assed-Editor-In-Chief, or whatever. "We can't seem to find a writer capable of tying this all together coherently. Maybe we should just go get John Byrne and Grant Morrisson and Chris Claremont and let them muck around with our characters some more. But first, we need some big event to erase all this useless continuity." 2) Flagging Sales. You may remember the horrid "2099" line from Marvel. After about a year and a half, they shook every title up and turned it on its head in a big summer event. "You know," says Mr.-Half-Assed-Editor-In-Chief, "It can't possibly be these flat, boring characters are being written in a crappy manner. After all, I hired the writers and fans love them. Let's take the same creative teams, have them continue writing the same books, but make the characters entirely different! That ought to make people want to buy more copies." While short-arc multipart stories can be fun, they are only going to be fun if they fit the character's conceptions and the prior continuity. That's why Morrison's World War III (JLA vs the Injustice Gang) largely worked, but most everything Spider-Man did in the mid 70's didn't, despite the fact that Morrison is a hack, and most of the Spidey writers would be considered gods in today's thin world. END RANT The point is: stick to core character concepts, and good stories are sure to follow.

What's the problem? I love America! Bengal is fairly amazed by most every little bit of freedom we have in the West. I don't think he'd be too surprised to see such a thing on American television.

HA! My players poop themselves when they see three Five-Teams.

Supergirl is coming back? So much for the Last Son of Krypton thing. By my count, they're totally undone every element of Crisis now... lol. As far as the Secret ID thing goes, it's a rediculous idea for a superHERO to be hiding his or her life's work from friends. loved ones, and the world. Figure an average lifespan of a superhero is about ten years. You mean to tell me being a pathological liar for ten years won't drive someone nuts, and drive his friends and loved ones away? On the other hand, we're talking about people who wear leotards and beat up on other people in leotards. It's only one of about 30 rediculous conventions of the superhero genre that make it the superhero genre. If I wanted to read about something that made logical sense, I'd be a math buff or something.

It's interesting that your namesake is a Superman clone. In my game world, the name of the "Superman" type guy is Red Cross. He's Swiss and he lives in the Alps. His grandfather, Iron Cross, was a great Nazi willain in WWII, and is rumored to be alive, in suspended animation in an old forgotten Nazi lab....

I vote for calling him Intercourse, after the famous town in Pennsylvania.

Now, if only Keith would post an annotated biblography for his comic book collection, we would know for sure.

Use the Duplication subset of rules for multiple vehicles with differing abilities. (+1/4) advantage on the lot of them if they are 25% different, (+1/2) advantage on the whole schlop for vehicles with 50% differing powers, and so on. It gets more expensive fast... not a problem for Batman (Who presumably ahs the same about of XP as Superman) but quickly prohibitive for the 250 point super with 350 point vehicles.

Even though D.I. is technically inefficient, I find it turns out to be abusive if you buy it up to O End Persistent Always On. The usefulness of the ability outstrips its point total. In addition, you have to redesign every building and piece of equipment your PCs have in order to accommodate the 32,000 ton brick character who, let's face it- would just fall right through to the center of the Earth after one good smack. At the very least, he shouldn't be able to walk on wood floors or be allowed inside most buildings. Better to simulate it by buying all the attendant "Density" abilities seperately (most are already always on) and buying a much milder Physical Limitation: Great Mass (something on the order of 2 tons, the weight of a large pickup truck) and giving all the powers density SFX.

Not exactly a total answer, but a little bit of one. The end of Marvel's Silver Age was the excreable Gain Size X-Men #1. All-New, All-Different, All-Modern... and totally destroyed the original idea of the X-Men. The end of DC's Silver Age was the excreable Crisis. Destroy the greatest resource of any comic universe, continuity, and kill barry allen too. Not to mention make Kamandi into Tommy Tomorrow and wreck Power Woman's already crappy origin. Not only created more problems than it solved, but led up to Byrne ruining every major DC hero.

Steer your players toward "non-Duplication" Suplication powers. A few examples are in Haymaker. http://www.geocities.com/area51/cavern/1905/haym11.html Now, this articale specificaly refers to the BBB version of the power, but there are many applications that still make sense for the FREd version. An especially useful idea is the Cannon Fodder Dupe (CFD). CFDs represent Force Walls, Force Fields, Telekinesis AOE Selective Targets, Clairvoyance Visible Power Effects, Entangles, Teleportation, Stretching... tons of powers that can appear as if you're duplicating rather than actually duplicating. Read the article, print it out for future reference. There's enough in there to keep you busy for at least a few Duplication-Man iterations.

If you put the villain's SPD, OCV, PD, and REC at fantastic levels, you can perform multiple move-bys in a turn and wreck havok ping by ping. But really, you need AoE selective targets to make a difference. Ghost Archer is right there. Don't forget about HKA or Major Transform: Focus to Dust... Sounds like at least half your party would cry if their focuses were disassembled in their hands at near the speed of light. Some other things to apply AoR Selective Targets to: DEX Drain (Spin your heroes at 1000 RPM, lather, repeat) EB PD (a rain of punches) Entangle (OIF: Objects of Opportunity) Tunnelling, Useable as an Attack (Buried Alive) And remember, if any of your heroes have any sort of Adjustment Powers, add scads of Power Defense. Marvel had a guy named Speedfreek who was a speedster in an admantium battlesuit. His arm-blades were able to cut the Hulk due to their sharpness and hardness. You could think about 1d6 HKA Str Does Not Add Penetrating x2 AP x2... 45 active points, 30 real points. In fact, you may wish to put many of these powers into an EC and then make a seperate Naked Advantage (AoE: Any Area, Selective Targets, O End cost) which can apply to any of the aforementioned attack powers. It's a neat idea I really ought to follow up on for my own heroes.