Bengal

Re: Goofy hero names that you still love

I made up, but never used Enormo the Super Tap-Dancer. He was a youthful alien who crash-landed on earth. He brought a giant robot battlesuit in order to seem very impressive and keep him from being harmed by the natives, but the only part that survived were the eight foot tall shoes.

Which he wears.

To fight crime.

Great origin story, but kind of a one-trick pony.

Oh, also an archer character names Aerosmith

Re: You don't really GET a choice...

The whole idea of the Big Meeting always seems at least to some extent contrived; it's inevitable based upon the fact that the players agree that it should happen. How it happens is secondary to the "start of the superteam" or whatever, and figures more prominently in the future plots and subplots. Perhaps that's what you're asking about? How this sort of origin should affect the plots in future?

Re: Anyone Notice (White Rino)

Maybe his two forms are actually identical... weird

Re: from little plot seeds, mighty games do grow: Share you ideas!

As the hero's DNPC waits at the bus stop, a man in a wheelchair comes up and says, "Does this bologna smell funny to you?" DNPC smells bologna, only to discover why it smells funny: chloroform! Hilarity ensues.

Re: Leagacy of Iron: Power Suit characters...

When next I play, I'll be playing a high-tech multiform with eight powersets, each that can be defined in loose terms as battlesuits.

Re: Superhero Images

I love that Sepulchre. What a tremendous take on extra limbs!

Re: Need (More) Help With Marvel Age Game

Here's a weird idea - Omenite is actually a biological substance, even sentient. It understands the interactions of its host bodies on an elemental level, at least. It exerts little control on the host body although one area it does control is "invitational entry". The Omenite beings have a fear of going into private spaces due to an archaic religious/spiritual belief about souls, etc., it's a superstition. It's why powerful vampires can enter domiciles, they accumulate enough of their own power to overrule the Omenite or they've even become one with it and make decisions with the Omenite.

 

However, my explanation in my own games is that it's the way in which DNA mutations are affected by unconscious human control which reinforce the myths in the way they shape the DNA.

This is very Marvel- if not very Silver Age. In the X maxiseries trilogy, it is the dormant Celestial Seed which is germinated by traumatic events, radiation, or other strange phenomena which awakens superpowers in an individual. If you take that as a baseline, it makes sense that creatures created to be a certain thing would act like that thing (eg a vampire superhuman wouldd act like a vampire is supposed to act) even if it's hard to come up with a physical reason for it to be so.

On a not entirely unrelated note:

Clever players will tell you why a thing is as it is. Lay out the clues, and let them jump to their own conclusion.

Re: Cost of strength vs. benefit

You're all correct! Each adn every one of you! Even those of you who directly contradicted those others of you, you are all correct!

I agree completely with everything that's been said on every side of this debate, even the things that contradict the other things. Even things that repeated similar things in the past. It all makes perfect sense.

You know what costs too much? TF: Horses.

Re: Photos - need a little character help

4d6 Unluck. Hand-wave the specifics.

Re: Multiform base form question

I allow the rule whole cloth, as is. All it "gives" the player is a weaker form to change in to for free. Plenty of stuff is more munchkinny than that.

Re: Stretching Power: Need Suggestions

I have something similar for my speedster (in his very cheesy VPP of course). You may consider teleport plus HA 2xKB in order to simulate the ability to take no damage at all. You stop in your target's hex, he flies off in the opposite direction with a headache.

Re: Character Transformations

Remember when Optimus Prime got transformed into something else? Maybe it was way back when he got transformed into optimus prime.

I know it sounds glib to talk about transformers transforming, but they do go through precisely this sort of radiation accident at times, usually brought on by severe physical trauma. I think the little Volks Beetle had one of these too.

Re: Superhero Images

I found it on the Supervillain Thread.

Here are a few I did today.

Inferno, Tornado, and Lightning.

 

Members of The Masters of Disasters.

Great color scheme for lightning. Not your typical lighhtning-style villain. Nary a lightning bolt anywhere, which is refreshing.

Re: How many ways can you do this?

Buying the gun as an RKA simply fails to adequately reflect the concept - lazy draftsmanship' date=' really... The proper build, as I described, permits a second character to fire another bullet (or an arrow) to intercept the first in mid-air, as should be possible in a comic book.[/quote']

 

 

Hey, Hugh, could you write up the gun like this, perhaps doing roughly equivalent damage to a 2d6 RKA? I mean, as a baseline value. So that I will in the future neither have to be industrious nor incorrect.

Re: Villains versus Villains

It seems to me that unless the fight was talking place in an inhabited area' date=' PC superheroes, being the pragmatists they invariably are, wouldn't want to break it up. They'd wait for the fight to end then, once both sides were exhausted, arrest everyone.[/quote']

 

 

Hehe... you must have smart players. My guys would have wanted to beat them all themselves.

Re: Character Transformations

You can work a character, and work him, and work him, and rewrite him a hundred times. You won't know what he can actually do until you sit down and play against (hopefully) unexpected threats. At least this is true for less experienced players most of the time, and more experienced players some of the time. So as a GM, I allow a rewrite every couple of runs or so until we're into the campaign for about four months or so, so that my players are happy with the PC's abilities. Most players rewrite zero or one times, and some rewrite a few times. So in this respect, I get slightly different power sets fairly often at the beginning.

As far as radical changes down the line, I can't think of one at the moment. Usually when someone gets bored they'll devise a new hero for the group and discard the older one, either as a legacy character or someone entirely different.

Re: Character Design help, Men In Black

Hand-waving this should probably do it. Unless you intend to run him as a PC, in which case the answer is: tell your GM to build it.

Subcontracting can be hazardous, but you never have to think.

Re: Wow, what a differnce...!!!! <Gir Noise here>!!!

I'M NEK'ID!!! (runs away)

Thanks for sharing!

Anyone remember TWERPS? The rules could have been printed on a matchbook.

Re: Need (More) Help With Marvel Age Game

A problem with vampires in a Marvel Age game is that the walking dead were banned by the Comics Code at that time.

 

From the 1954 Comics Code General Standards Part B:

 

 

The comics code was relaxed in 1971, opening the door for stuff like Werewolf By Night and Blade the Vampire Slayer.

I poop in your shoe! Vampires are fun, so I think they should be allowed.

Re: Doom Patrol Champions

Oh. Thanks. I'll have to do my own research now. Bah!

Re: Bad Girl Hero

Wait a second, you do know there's actual pornography available on the internet, don't you? I think it was when Fanboy discovered this that Bad Girl Comics bit the dust, some time around late 1994.

Re: Need (More) Help With Marvel Age Game

There were people though, right? Before they became vampires? Every person knows (or enough of us do) that vampires can't enter dwellings, are harmed by running water, and so on. Only by trial and error could those persons transformed into vampires learn otherwise. Perhaps they will obey vampire law as if it were actual natural law at the beginning; only the most cunning among them will be able to muster up sufficient confidence to test these theories and find them lacking. Which means by adventure 2 or 3, you could easily have some of them inside a lab, whereas most vampires still wouldn't think of doing it since as everybody "knows", they simply can't.

Re: Doom Patrol Champions

I loved the Metal Men' date=' and it's too bad the people who tried to revive them several years ago didn't. I still would like to see them again. Hell, give them to me! If Hawkman's origin can be straightened out, there's still a chance![/quote']

 

 

They straightened out Hawkman? I thought he was one of the first ret-con casualties of Crisis. At one point they just wrote him out of continuity entirely. Can you tell me how they got him back on track? This ought to be interesting.

Re: Special Ammo

Angry Bug's reply makes thing easier in terms of number-crunching in gameplay; I'd go for that one myself. Fedifensor's construction also makes good sense. You may also wish to increase the MP reserve a little bit to put some more tricks into it along the way; you could have a 2/2d6 entangle (or 20 active points of anything) with a variable advantage (up to +1/2) as a +1 modifier. Since this construction is probably an ultra, you're still only spending 1 or 2 points on it including lims.

But really, a 30-point MP is probably a little low for this sort of thing.

Re: This is Too Cool, and I Must Tell You About It

I just came up with the coolest subplot for my upcoming game and I have to Brag Supreme...

I think I'm missing something here. Can we brag about anything, or just subplots? Or is it only you what gets to brag? Anyhow, if you ran this one for me, I'd probably take about one billion cigarette breaks, then pull the plug on it. I hope your guys have a better flair for the dramatic-romance aspect than I do. Or at least, I must not have a flair for it, since this one bores me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to flame you, I think I'm literally missing the fun of this one.