Stormraven

Re: Name for French Brick Too bad I didn't get in here earlier - My suggestion for a name would be Valjean.

Re: The Forumverse name game How many people's lives has Viper ruined? Just ask Assault. Who he was before they got ahold of him is a mystery he's trying to solve. All anyone knows is that they abducted some hapless man off the streets and - attempting to solve their problem with betrayals from their subjects - wiped his memory entirely, to make him the ultimate servant. It didn't work. He's amnesiac now; a little asocial and ill-mannered, but he wiped out the cell that created him, and now he wanders around in search of his identity and other Viper cells to destroy.

Re: Name her! Give her Powers! I'm Lazy! Well, it fits a sometime concept I've wanted to play. A fallen angel who - of her own accord, leaves Hell to help the mortals on her own, since Lucifer's way (if the campaign uses that version of Lucifer) wasn't working. She's not looking for redemption from God, she just wants to help the mortals. (Note, if the usual viewpoint, of Lucifer wanting the Angels exalted above Mortals holds true, she got tired of that, seeing all the good that mortals can do.)

Re: What do with a player ... Actually, TFOS was R. Talsorian, not Steve Jackson. On Topic: It sounds very much like the advice here isn't going to work, that the player doesn't want to play an homage, he wants to play 'The character'... If that is, indeed, the case, hold your ground and tell him - and his prior GM - no. And if they complain, ask them what part of N-O they didn't understand. And if they still complain, say 'no means no game if you don't accept it'.

Re: Fake TV-Shows While we're talking about fake shows in movies - Amazon Women on the Moon shows a number of fake shows in one of the vignettes.

Re: Need some "Smart" powers As mentioned above, it's pretty nebulous, but here are some I either did, or considered, for Checkmate. (38 Int) Chains of Logic: Precognition, defined as Super-Deduction. With some time and access to media, the character can determine the actions of a person or group, or the coming of a given event. Strategic Mastery: Bonuses to entire party's OCV and DCV. Requires time, communication, and knowledge of the battle's terrain. Requires opposed skill roll, Strategy. Tactical Mastery: The character is able to study a fighter or group and diminish their advantages. Bought as Drain to Dex, requires 1 turn, Requires opposed skill roll, Tactics. Tactical Study: A super-powered version of Analyze Style. The character can, with just a bit of study, determine what kinds of attacks and defences the target has. (I.E., Hand to Hand, Ranged, Killing, Stunning; Resistant or Non-Resistant, energy, physical or other) by simply watching their actions and reactions. Bought as Telepathy, limited to attack/defense type, extra time, Requires Skill Roll 'Analyze Style' I could come up with more, but those are the ones I recall off hand.

Re: WWWYCD: Caught in the Web I didn't include it, because it's not on every version of Checkmate, but in many of his permutations, his security is handled by his very own AI - which would have made collecting data on him a lot more difficult. :-)

Re: Character Sheets Excel here, too. I have a 5th Edition character sheet template that works fine for me. I also have a Word template, but I tend to go with the Excel.

Re: WWWYCD: Caught in the Web Checkmate Has a public ID, so wouldn't be terribly concerned about most of it, but information that only his wife should know - physical characteristics and such - would concern him on two levels. One, he's a security specialist - it would not be good for business for it to be known that he could be spied on by anyone. Two, while his wife can take care of herself, the possibility of a deranged stalker is still nothing he would scoff at. He would immediately institute a search to determine everything about the person, (and with every detective type skill and computer type skill in the book and a few besides, all at 17- or greater, he should be able to find it) then he would put together a similar website - though without the fan-fiction - and send it to the person in question. In the email, he would make it plain that removing the website is their only option if they don't want all their secrets let out into the world. In the event they believe themselves protected because no one would want to know about them, he would also attach a news story - fully accurate but spun to make them seem one of the vilest villains ever to appear - and remind them that the media can interest the public in anyone. Guardian, on the other hand, doesn't have a public ID or secret ID, but someone would have to point her to the website. She wouldn't worry overmuch about the physical descriptions. She's a model, and has been in ads for lingerie and the like, so anyone who did figure out her identity would be able to track down such pictures. Her concern would be the fan-fic and the apparent knowledge of secrets that Guardian does take pains to keep hidden. She, having no computer skills of her own, would need to get one of her many contacts to trace the creator, and find out how they know those things. If the information was obtained legally, she would let it go, though not happily. If obtained illegally, she would very happily beat them into tomato paste - or at least give them the impression that she would do so, before turning them over to the police.

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes I've played every combination at one point or another. I think I do have a tendency to play either straight men or bi women, but I've been able to play anything - it all depends on the concept that comes to me as to what I play.

Re: Sex and the Single Superhuman Checkmate Married, quite happily, wife knows all about him, as she used to be a heroine, and still joins in occasionally. Son is quite powerful in his own right. Fianna In a relationship with a policewoman, she hopes it lasts. Puritan Very much a hedonist, she has no intention of settling down for a good long while.

Re: The Incredibles -- WITH SPOILERS Actually, my take on Jack-Jack was that super powers seem very tied to the person's personality, and that the baby - having no locked in stone personality yet - simply had access to anything.

Re: Evolution of the races? In a world I'm dreaming up, they aren't the same species at all. Elves, dragons, trolls and goblins all evolved from small hunter saurians who escaped a cataclysm. Humans are separated into three groupings - 'Normal', or 'Common', men; Dawn Men (Neanderthal-like) and 'Great Men', larger and slower than normal men. Gnomes, Orcs and Hobbits are all evolved from other mammal species. Dwarves are the only sentient race deliberately created by the gods - because the gods came into being only after the formation of sentient culture.

Re: [Meta] What would your character be? Guardian - She tends to skirt the edge as it is, she has no CVK and has killed before, though never in cold blood. Basically, in Iron Age, she'd just be more ready to kill, using her full strength against even your generic mooks. Checkmate - Would probably be a Destroyer type in the Iron Age. He's already ruthless, cold and strategy oriented. In 4 colour games, he has a CVK, but remove that and his arrogance takes hold.

Re: Would your character... Guardian - no, but not because she has a problem with it. She's a model in her secret identity, so she couldn't very well bare all without a Secret ID problem. Hide the face all you want, her body has been well-photographed. She wears a costume that is not skin tight for similar reasons. Puritan - would love it. Though it would ruin her rep and name, so she probably wouldn't. Rush - is a minor, so can't. Also, couldn't sit still long enough for them to photograph her if it were legal. Storm Ravyn / Fyre Ravyn / Wynter Ravyn / Greyravyn: Same character, different people - Storm Ravyn wouldn't, also being too hyperactive to sit still long enough. Greyravyn would in a heartbeat, and probably for free, too. Hardcore? No problem. She's very uninhibited. Wynter Ravyn would not. And would be a bit rude about it, too. She wouldn't have a big problem with it, she's just very sharpspoken and tactless. Fyre Ravyn wouldn't, but would be delighted to learn about budoir photography, as the person she loves can't ever see her with his own eyes. Checkmate - would raise an eyebrow, give a millimetric smile, and shake his head. "If you can convince my wife, then I might consider it." The Wall - would chuckle and shake his head, as guys that are nearly as wide as they are tall aren't usually considered all that sexy, even if it is all muscle.

Re: Powers and knacks you favor for your Champions characters Oh, let's see... I don't tend to reiterate powers, I generally try to play all over the board, but I do have things I have a tendency to play. Females - roughly 60-80% of the time, though that number fluctuates depending on concept. If the concept doesn't come with a sex, I'll usually choose female. Albion. Scottish, English, Irish, Welsh. Given the option, a large number of my characters fit in there - usually Scottish or Irish. If not directly, then through blood. Personality wise, my characters tend to be a little arrogant. Sometimes it's an innocent, naive arrogance, other times it's not, but it's rare that there isn't some arrogance there.

Re: Character: Solomon Kane (Robert E Howard) I like. I like a lot - speaking as a major fan of Soloman Kane. I might have a quibble or two, but nothing major, and you definitely caught the sense far better than I might have. Regarding my quibbles, based on his ability to keep going in the face of literally anything, I would have set his Con above 20, in that he actually fought with bleeding wounds, but didn't slow down until after the fight was over.

Re: Spiderman Vs. Firelord I went looking for this, and couldn't find it, so maybe someone who has access to the Marvel stats could tell me. How does Spiderman compare, strengthwise, to Colossus? I seem to recall reading somewhere that Colossus can lift about 50 Tons. Compared to Spiderman's 10, that's about 5 times as much, and - pulling his punch - Colossus rocked Dark Phoenix, while she had all her defenses up. I don't think it's any real stretch to consider that five or six dozen hits from Spiderman could rock - or even knock down - someone generally viewed as less powerful than Dark Phoenix, even if no one hit will do much damage at all. In some ways, it's like the concept behind a point on a weapon. If I want to hurt someone jabbing with the end of a staff, I have to hit them fairly hard. But with a pointed weapon, I don't need as much energy, because there's a much lower area for the damage to be spread out over. Sure, Firelord has defenses against asteroids and the pressure of space, but those defenses are general and spread out. Spiderman (and just about any human-like being) is hitting focussed areas, so damage gets through, even though his attacks aren't as powerful as, say, a speeding asteroid.

Re: Global Guardians - Champs by email (review) I have had one character make it through Audit so far, with another still in the audit process. I had one make it through prior to the reboot, but I never got to play him. I will admit that I have wondered sometimes at the audit process. In my first case, before the reboot, things got changed that didn't - to my understanding - impact mechanics at all, and I didn't see how they violated house rules or anything, either. Despite that, I took the message on the site to heart and made the changes. It didn't hurt my character's concept, either. If it had, I probably would have just said 'this is necessary for that concept. If it's not doable, then may I submit a new concept?' With my second audited character, the audit caught power errors that I missed. I will admit that one thing gave me a major concern. The Campaign had a required Disad, and gave points for it. The auditor said that it was more points, and that I was therefore 5 points over. I did have a problem with the auditor changing the disad value from what the GM had set, but since that seems to have been universal for that game, I worked with it and changed other disads around to fit.

Re: what character concepts -HAVE- Gm's allowed that you thought they wouldn't? I can't say that any of my hero characters have been such that I thought a GM wouldn't allow it. I did have a Star Wars character I wasn't sure of... A race I created, basically humanoid unicorns, who are almost invariably force-sensitive. Not only did the GM allow a martial artist from that race, the character showed up in other games, too.

Re: GMs: PC Scrutiny & Acceptance Having been through the GGU audit process twice (and with a third looming on the horizon) I think it's more a question of what constitutes a mistake. IIRC, an audit can be returned for improper format, for powers that are miscalculated, or for Disads that are disallowed, for whatever reason. While sometimes it seems overly picky - like when a Disad required on the campaign page is disallowed or changed because the campaign page lists a different value than the house rule accepted version - I can still see the necessity. Sometimes a person can misread a house rule, or forget to carry a number, and wind up with different values than the auditors. Since I don't use HD - I have 1.xx, but I'm much faster with my own Excel spreadsheet - I don't mind the auditing at all. If I did use HD, I might be a little more concerned about differences in Power costs. Just to throw out an example, though, in one of my recent audits, I'd missed the correct values for a couple of Life Support powers. I was only off by two points, but I was off.

Re: Super Metals and Alloys FWIW, Thor once cracked a large quantity of Adamantium. It was actually in a Dr. Strange, or a Hulk (I don't recall which, but probably the Dr. Strange) when Hulk had gone fully bestial, with no trace of Banner. Thor knocked him into an adamantium statue (of the Hulk, ironically enough) and the statue received several cracks.

In the same vein is the GM who approves a character with 'Poor' as a disad, then in the first few games, makes that disad completely moot by putting the character on a stipend or government salary. If you don't want your PCs to be poor, don't approve the disad!

One of my pet peeves from any GM is when they have a set expectation of how everyone (in their minds, anyway) should respond to a situation, and if the PC has a different response, the GM calls it 'bad roleplaying'.

A valid point. Actually, cats are strong, for their size. Not super strong, but strong. Hunting cats even more so. A lion or tiger can leap up pretty nicely, and long jump even more impressively, and I've seen housecats make a single jump from floor to the top of a 6'6" tall refridgerator.