Mike W

I would guess that the demon wants some human souls for doing its part, hence the need to sacrifice a few humans. Since you now have a couple of "spies" it sounds like time to use them as bait for a trap, or a distraction. After all, if the heroes' own sources tell them be at place X, why wouldn't they go. Send one out as a decoy this time, then next time, use the other as bait, preferably when the other mage is taking the fall.

The group I'm playing in now has 3 regular players and a couple of people who float in and out, so we can have as many as 5. I think this is a good number. When I GM'ed I tried to keep the group limited to 5 or 6 - which is pretty close to the comic book standard 7 man limit. It's too hard to involve everyone if there are more...I've played games with as many as 9 but there wasn't time to tell much story in them because with 9 heroes and 9-12 villains the fights would take 5 1/2 -6 hours, so we couldn't do much more than get a quick plot hook and send the team off to do battle. It was still fun, especially since it was my first Champs group, but in retrospect I think it would have been nice to have only 6 or so people so we could roleplay a little more as opposed to roll play(of course I was about 8th or 9th in seniority in that group but still...)

Well Demonicus, it seems to be that the easiest thing to do is to find some lesser mage who is just powerful enough to control the spell and just gullible enough to think that you won't set him up...then let the heroes capture him instead of you, maybe plant some evidence to make it look like HE was framing YOU and then move the party well away from the heroes.

There have been a number of good ideas thrown out. What those of us trying to help need is a bit more info about the character: what is the character's power set(or intend power set)/ and special effects - is he a mentalist, a gravity manipulator, a gadgeteer, etc. Also, when you say "immobilize" do you mean only movement or the ability to act(fire weapons, etc) as well.

SPD drain has possibilities, but I was thinking about Mind Control -1 single command "Don't Move". You could also build it as a very large TK power - 1 only to hold in place(essentially a specialized grab). They COULD use brute force to break free but if you bought enough dice then only bricks could do it. You might talk to your GM about using Transform to build such a power. After all, if Transform can make someone blind, it should be able to make them lame as well.

Black Mamba I don't remember where I got the idea for this adventure. I think it was loosely build around a plot line in a published product, but it's been years. Black Mamba vs. King Cobra Black Mamba as a dark hero/antihero was one of my favorite characters. The story I did for my campaing I think was the best centered around Mamba and Cobra. King Cobra was going to release a mutagenic compound into the water supply to turn everyone into snake that he could control. Black Mamba got wind of it before the players and started hiring people to help him steal technology(including some potential dangerous prototypes)to help him develop a treatment/cure for the mutagen. I deliberately placed one well known killer on the roster(who Mamba was stringing along) to give the players something else to worry about. One potential complication for the players(which happened to my group) is that if they come in hard and fast they run the risk of fighting Mamba's group in the lab, which could(and in this case did) result in the destruction of Mamba's work...

Hard to envision an Avengers team being posted in Pennsylvania when it's so close to NY. The quinjets can cover the distance in just a few minutes. But I can think of a couple of scenarios for putting a team there. 1) You get a Heroes for Hire scenario(sort of) where someone more local to Pittsburgh decides to form a team out there(Luke Cage, Warbird). This may or may not be a true Heroes for Hire scenario. 2) Option two, someone decides to start a mainstream school ala X-Men but for nonmutants that has nominal connections to the Avengers. They can then patrol the US Midwest(a generally low traffic, low risk area) to gain experience. Possible instructors(depending on the circumstances of your campaign): Photon, She Hulk, Demolition Man, Falcon, Wasp, Hank Pym, Hawkeye.

Sorry, Chuck, couldn't resist one more. But your point about Nabu IS a primal force of the universe...well, like I said, Doc wins those kinds of fights fairly often and Hall only began to figure out what he was doing in the latest JSA issues and his limited. When Hall gets more experience, he might be a better match, but Doc would win through sheer experience at this point.

Chuckg - 1. Last post for me, these things never get anywhere because everyone is sure that their favorite universe would win that no one ever changes anyone elses mind. It's been mildly fun but time to move on for me. 2. Fate is supposed to be in Doc Strange's class but having seen a fair amount of Fate and read a ton of Doc Strange....sorry Fate isn't in Doc's class. He's supposed to be, but Doc beats primal forces of the universe on his good days. Holds off the Power Gem of the Infinity Gauntlet, on a good day. Mops up a guy like Mordo on an easy day. Besides, Doc has a LOT more experience than Hall does right now and that would make a huge difference.

Maybe they've gotten better recently, but I can still remember a lot of situations where they would "scout the opposition" only to fall back on their basic tactics of plow ahead once it comes down to the fight. I mean it's a standard joke in the DCU books that the JLA tactics are basically "We just plow in and wait for Bats to figure it out". Sure, the individual people don't necessarily engage everyone at hand to hand, but there is rarely any attempt to coordinate attacks, trade partners, or engage in anything resembling true battlefield strategy in many of those fights. This is why Batman has to beat the Martians by himself in the opening story arc, for example.

Chuckg - I agree that they CAN fight as a unit very well, but as you yourself pointed out, they usually don't, until they find themselves in trouble - which is the kind of opening a well led opposing team could exploit to make it a very difficult comeback. Let's face it, the JLA can outpower just about anything that they get thrown on the field with(one of the reasons I've never been a big fan of the book, just certain characters in their individual books) - hence they tend to, as a group, fight as if they have that classic Thor/Superman disad - Heroicly Stupid. People with such disad charge blindly into combat ignoring half of their abilities and try to turn every fight into a slugfest. While this tactic works fine against many foes, when confronted with a particularly intelligent or powerful foe, it usually means they get their butts kicked in round one and have to try and regroup. Hence, we get an even fight because the DC people, especially if the JLA is "in charge" probably just try to plow in and overpower the less powerful Marvel characters - who led by Cap, Wasp, Cyke, and Jean Grey fight with an intelligent strategy from the start.

I agree. It should be a physical limitation. You don't get extra character points if you're blind - just disad points.

Make it a Variable Power Pool where every power must take "side effect" disadvantage and either"Useable Against others" or "Useable by others" power advantage. (make the fire bigger by buying +8d6EB AOE useable by others, the sword gets +1d6HKA usable by others, etc)

It's well established that the DCU operates on a larger power scale...HOWEVER...Marvel characters in general, heroes especially, tend to fight smarter because they are used to fighting things that are far more powerful than they are. JLA has gotten better, but the last time I checked in on JLA(which was about a year ago for a couple of issues), they still didn't fight nearly as cohesively as, say, the Avengers or the X-Men(especially with Cyclops in charge). This makes it an essentially even fight and it would come down to match ups. Flip a coin.

Actually, to me it sounds like Absorption that funnells into a movement power, possibly PD as a secondary power so that your character can withstand the impact of the bounce.

The original poster said it was a "super persuasion" skill and questioned if you could even convince a bank teller you gave them extra money. This then, isn't Mind Control since, by definition, Mind Control could accomplish such a thing with a good enough roll - you would just have to convince the teller not to count real closely. Just buy 4 or 5 levels with the appropriate skills, or maybe +20 PRE, -1/4 only for skill rolls. Something like that.