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Re: Schmucks? Uh, yeah, I guess that wouldn't fit the definition of frequent sessions

Re: Schmucks?

Re: Schmucks? Here's a suggestion: if it's possible for a GM to "ignore" uber-powerful villains like Dr. D, why not publish some iconic heroes at the 450, 600, and 700+ point levels, and any group that doesn't feel secure enough to have NPC heroes running around built on more points than them can just "ignore" them. I wonder how steady some of these campaigns are(and how often they meet, how much xp per session) where people talk about theire 250 point or 350 point heros. It seems to me: If you meet weekly, and earn 2xp per session, then after 2 years, you have gained 200 xp, giving you a 450 or 550 point PC. If you meet twice a week, and earn 2xp per session, then after 2 years, you have gained 100 xp, giving you a 350 or 450 point PC. If you meet once a month, and earn 2 xp per session, then after 2 years, you have gained 50 xp, giving you a 300 or 400 point PC. If you meet once a month, and earn 1 xp per session--MY GOD, MAN, WHAT KIND OF SICK MASOCHIST ARE YOU? seriously, though, my point is that power creep is inevitable, unless you just keep ending campaigns before it happens. PCs gain experience--eventually they gain enough that it just makes sense that they're far more capable than when they started. there are ways to play at the higher level faster--start out at 450 or 600 or 700+ points, or award 3-5xp per session instead of 2xp per session, and award bonus xp for between session bluebooking and player contributions to the game.

Re: Supreme Power write ups don't know offhand, but since Hyperion can survive(barely) the simultaneous detonation of 20 daisy cutters, I'd say 40-60 defenses aren't out of the question

Re: Champions vs other systems Hero: longevity, consistency and a steady player base--it's basically been around for over 2 decades, has thousands of devoted fans around the world, lots of source material, and the basic mechanics have stayed largely the same--most of the changes have been big improvements. it's the most refined system for supers out there. On the down side, it may be the most complex and a little intimidating for some new players I don't really have an opinion about the others...

Re: What If . . . Superman Blogger--finds stuff out as it happens, and has tons of free time--money could be a problem, though... Crime Lord--could easily enforce a no-killing rule, and steer things away from hard drugs--probably still antithetical to his upbringing, though

Re: How to: "intellectual speed" speed reader, lightning calculator, and penalty skill levels vs. time penalties that's the simplest way, but you can get funky with precog/retrocog, buying computer link with the rapid sense adder, even summon or duplication for a bifurcated mind(i.e., your duplicate or summoned consciousness resides within you--you have no other benefits than a second INT, with all the INT-based skills you know, etc)

Re: Shoubu Da! (quien es mas macho!?) well, the Z-fighters usually are considered to have transcended conventional martial arts--their techniques are what allow them to fight at superhuman speeds, and to throw those tank and boulder shattering punches and kicks. So from that perspective, their attacks look unsophisticated, but are really just techniques stripped down to their most direct and efficient forms. that's the way I look at it, anyway

Re: Is a politician a good secret ID? yeah, it's like having a doctor or lawyer for secret ID--those guys work IRL about 50-80+ hours a week sometimes, and wouldn't really have much timefor superhero stuff. Or, even better, working professional AND married family person--if they still need to sleep, they pretty much have to plonk down the mannequin in front of the Sunday football games and do their heroing then

Re: The Authority RPG ???? well, either they want to put out more sourcebooks if the first is successful, or it's just too hard to negotiate the licensing...

Re: WWYCD? #113: What If God Was One Of Us? Deus Ex Machina would throw the trinket in the pile with the others--he already does the omnipotence thing in his home realm, and it bores him to death, so why would he want it here? Vigilance would do really bad things to a bunch of organized crime figures, render every human being on the planet immune to the effects of various narcotics, and wish the thing out of existence before he went too far Most of my PCs would recognize the pitfalls of infinite power without infinite wisdom, but the super-brains would likely be the most tempted...

Re: Iron Age Philosophies I think Steranko's work on Nick Fury also contributed toward the dawning of the Bronze age of comics. Complex, adult themes and bold, experimental artwork.

Re: Gods and Champions In terms of PC to PC interaction, I think religious characters or even iconic religious characters are fine, as long as a) they don't compulsively proselytize their fellow heroes, and they have a modicum of tolerance for those who differ in their beliefs.

Re: Gods and Champions A friend and I were joking around about a mild mannered virtuous guy stuck in a barn who tries to escape by striking the barn door with a simple pitchfork...Boom! "Whosover holds this pitchfork, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of..." For some reason The Mighty Satan had a very hard time getting into any superhero team..."our publicist threatened to quit if we let you in"...

Re: High End Cannoical Character in Champions Universe I think the iconic NPC heroes should be a resource available to GMs running a CU campaign, mainly because the NPC master villains and some of the villain teams are so dang powerful. It just doesn't make sense that no high level heroes exist... only a novice GM (or a really bad one) would use the NPCs to overshadow the PCs.... otherwise, the question is, what 350 point team of heroes is going to stop Takofanes, Dr. D, etc.? What, the villains put their plans on hold until the PCs gain 100+xp?

Re: Gods and Champions well, generally it was bad form to try to convert anyone at the team meetings In a more recent game, there was a PC priest of Imhotep and a very devout Christian on the same team...that got a little heated...

Re: Gods and Champions hmm...I've played a couple gods, demigods, even metagods, and have had players who had angelic, demonic, or divine PCs. The full religious implications never got too heavy in terms of public relations, but there were a few clashes here and there...we had an angel and a half-demon and a pagan demigod on one team at the same time

Re: High End Cannoical Character in Champions Universe I think a few iconic NPC heroes is a very good idea for the CU, and I'm a little baffled by the reluctance to do this. There are several villains throwing attacks well beyond the capacity of 350 point heroes to withstand. Perhaps one team of 450-600 point NPC heroes in NYC, plus 2-4 iconic heroes of 700+ points would be good. It's just that there are way too many master villains, and it's hard to believe a bunch of 350 pointers could hold them all at bay...

Re: Favorite Abuses I think Foci and OIHID are the most common abuses. OIF is probably the most common abuse I've seen. Some players run 2/3 of their points through an OIF on the (often correct) assumption that they will rarely be penalized for it. Aside from power limitation abuses: always delaying at the outset of combat, without a specific event to wait for--even when it's out of conception and out of genre use of throws, flashes, cheapo entangles etc following said delay Why, it's as if the character somehow has read the combat rules beforehand

Re: Martial Arts to represent "Basic Training" I think a lot of military personnel either enter the service with MA knowledge, or they study it on the side while in the service. AFAIK there is some MA training similar to the commando training package, but generally the guys in basic should just get +1-3 STR/DEX/CON, and maybe an experienced MP might have a hand to hand level and +1d6 HA to represent brawling...

Re: A Modern League of Extroardinary Gentlemen "Mr.Lee"(from Enter the Dragon) Jules (from Pulp Fiction) Tequila(from Hard Boiled) John Doe(from the tv series)--a veritable walking encyclopedia Lara Croft The Professional(jean reno's character) Nikita The Man from Atlantis I dunno...

Re: Murderous intent well, I'm currently in a campaign where a villain blew up an entire police station so his captured henchmen wouldn't rat him out. this is after they kidnapped a school bus full of kindergartners, just to get the villain's "twin" (a PC, of whom the villain is the evil clone) in a position where he could be killed. Well, we managed to find and rescue the kids, and to have enough PCs around to stave off our teammate's destruction and capture the henchmen(though the villain escaped). Our reward? see above. This is after we captured a bunch of missing kids genetically altered and cruelly experimented upon by the huge multinational corp run by the evil bastard--then the corporate lawyers showed up and "proved" that those weren't the missing kids, but just "altered rhesus monkeys" who somehow escaped their labs. Now we are basically at war with this guy and his company, trying to gather enough evidence to bust all of them. My fear is the GM will overestimate our frustration tolerance threshold, and it will come as a complete shock to him when, after he shuts down our best efforts and lets this guy commit another atrocity without consequence, we just kill the SOB, his evil clone girlfriend and his evil parents, too. "and your little dog, too!"

Re: Guns, guns and more guns The old Kevin Dockery book(The Armory) wasn't half bad. Aftermath had probably the most math-intensive method of calculating bullet damage effectiveness I've seen in a game... Sometimes I think the hollow-points and similar rounds would be better simulated with increased Body damage, but reduced penetration...

Re: Pokey Starships? My suggestion would be to convert 1"=10km, since the nuke and a/m missiles all have that as their range increment for damage... so a 30" speed every 3 seconds equals 100km/second or about 360,000kph...which is pretty fast for combat maneuvering. there are a lot of questionable aspects to the starship writeups: beam weapons do too little damage compared to defenses defenses way too high compared to beam weapons body stats sometimes blatantly ridiculous(250 BODY? really? More BODY than a planet?) star fighters equipped with enough firepower to destroy a continent(4x a/m missiles, each doing 25d6 RKA X megascale(1"=10km)) etc oh well, it's only a game, we can always change the writeups to our own tastes...

Re: Guns, guns and more guns Really? The Musashi took 17 bombs and 20 torpedo hits before sinking. Battleships were designed to take hits from shells weighing from half a ton to two tons, and keep sailing. The Tirpitz was sunk by a couple bomb hits--of course, they were 12,000 pound bombs ...