Whitewings

Re: Archetype Twists One of the more archetype-bending characters I've created is Champion Wind. She's a teenage mutant... who thinks she's a magical girl. She's dead wrong, but she genuinely believes it, and she's got all the classic trappings: Themed attacks and defences, intelligent animal partner and advisor (a winged horse, how much more magical girl can you get?), even her own signature enemy. All them are actually manifestations of her real power, but she doesn't realize that yet, and her mentor has decided that for now at least it's best she not do so.

Re: The Benchwarmers: Semi-super heroes

Re: Comics are getting too steamy... One issue of Firestorm (Vol. 2, I think - don't ask me the issue number, I was dumb enough not to buy it) involved Killer Frost meeting up with a fire-based enemy of Firestorm's. They get to talking about their problems, particularly romantic, and realize they've got a lot in common, though from different angles: She can't even kiss a guy without freezing him solid, he can't touch a girl without reducing her to briquettes, and they suddenly realize "HEY! You're the perfect wo/man for me!" and they commence to making out, for the next two or three pages. It's as explicit as the editors would allow, and I honestly cannot see anything even mildly offensive in the presentation or artwork. They're even making serious, thoughtful, intelligent plans for giving up their villainous lifestyles now that they've found each other. Of course, Firestorm spots their quite spectacular display, shows up, and breaks up the "impending evil alliance." Should have left well enough alone...

Re: Re-Imaged Hero(ines) Both good entries, though poles apart in tone and style. After due and careful consideration, I've decided to name David Johnston the winner, simply because I think the low-key wandering do-gooder character better fits the name.

Re: The downsides of the Iron Age I won't take Dick Grayson [snip] ordering a team mate to allow herself to be raped. Um... what? Can someone give me some kind of context for this?

Re: Re-Imaged Hero(ines) This was indeed the Starshine I'd been thinking of.

Re: Re-Imaged Hero(ines) Thank you. And the next candidate is Starshine

Re: Re-Imaged Hero(ines) The concept was simple: Create a humanoid robot with a personality sufficiently human-like to be useful in low-profile police-like urban operations, but also tough enough and powerful enough to survive metahuman opposition. Simple, but impossible. A humanoid frame simply couldn't contain the mechanisms for the secondary purpose, and a non-humanoid frame would defeat the primary purpose. So two robots were created. The first was a pretty girl of average size, loaded with every bit of communications, sensory and recording gear she could hold, a long-duration power supply, and made as durable as possible while still being able to pass for normal (even in bed, if need be). The second was a huge, metallic, blatantly robotic monstrosity, a cross between a wildcat and a spitting cobra, massively armoured, heavily armed, fast and quick, but with almost no brainpower of its own: Only enough to recieve and implement the "Heel!" "Come to me!" and "Home!" signals. All else is handled by a direct plug-in to the humanoid, which takes over the monster, turning the beast into an extension of herself. In a fit of whimsy, the units have been code-named Sugar and Spike.

Re: WWYCD: A Christmas Carol, Champions Style! The year they came out in book form, in most cases, and they still sell quite steadily in many, many editions and printings. The same is true of Ayn Rand, by the way: Many of her works were on the best seller lists and are still in print.

Re: WWYCD: A Christmas Carol, Champions Style! Oh, yes. Oh, very much yes. Without even getting up I can see several: Gulliver's Travels, Treasure Island, Doctor Dolittle, and Ivanhoe (which I'm pretty sure is earlier). All of Robert Lois Stevenson's works are still in print, and Lewis Carrol's. Victor Hugo, the Brontë sisters, Emily Dickinson, all of them can found in most better bookstores or any decent library.

Re: WWYCD - little girls and diplomatic troubles

Re: WWYCD: A Christmas Carol, Champions Style! McCoy: I think you're missing something about the original Christmas Carol story. It's not really about Christmas or Scrooge's feelings toward it; it's about caring, compassion, love and mercy, all of which Scrooge loathes, in both reality and symbol. So instead of being a powerful novel about a man who learns the value of compassion and love, the novel, still powerful, would become a tale about a man who overcomes spirits seeking to teach him false and foolish values, and his successful rejection of them and confirmation of his ways as right and true. It would become a novel triumphantly crying the "virtues" of callous, greedy and heartless actions, of selfishness and ruthless and unbounded self-interest. Would Dolphin honestly consider this to be better, or at least no worse, than the current state of affairs? Oh, and yes, Scrooge would want to destroy Christmas. He hates the holiday and all it represents. No, it's not necessarily rational, but Scrooge isn't all that rational on the subject. Besides, he's not a manufacturer, he's a moneylender. Christmas puts no money in his pocket.

Re: WWYCD: Fuel for the fire

Re: WWYCD: Fuel for the fire Faye happens to know enough chemistry to know that contrary to popular belief, gasoline doesn't ignite easily, and is very hard to make explode. So she'd hit the bug with the equivalent of a welding torch: A hot, short, very tightly focussed jet to ignite the gasoline on its back. With any luck at all, the bug will drop the hostages when it starts to feel the pain burning.

Re: WWYCD: So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish... Liane would ask Wave what her people know about this (if they don't know anything about the disappearances then nobody does). If they can't help, worry. There's really not much she can do about this kind of thing. Faye lives a fairly short bus ride away from two universities and an oceanographic research institute. She'll go talk to them, and also go looking for orcas. Orcas are part of the dolphin family. Then expand the search to check on the river dolphins of China and India, the lake dolphins of China, and so on. There are *lots* of different kinds of dolphins. Ika would try to contact the relevant totems, as would Menagerie.

Re: WWYCD: A Christmas Carol, Champions Style! Well... some of my characters, specifically Faye and Champion Wind, wolud make dandy Ghosts of Christmas Present, able to carry Scrooge all over London at impossible speeds by blatantly unnatural means. And I doubt Scrooge wolud say no to a valkyrie or a telekinetic powerful to take his *house* on a tour of London if need be.

Re: The Ultimate WWYCD: Ninja or Pirate! Liane has a strong Norse theme going in her powers and appearance. Viking raiders, anyone? Ika predates either concept, but would probably be more ninja-ish: Sneak, scout, spy, strike from concealment, run away real fast. Faye would probably be a pirate. Ninja are supposed to be subtle and sneaky, and secret ID or no, she's about as subtle and sneaky as an erupting volcano. Phoenix would probably go the ninja route. Gymnast, martial artist, and she doesn't simply carry a concealed weapon: She is one.

Re: Your PC's might be underpowered if...

Re: Wierdest powers... He lived in constant fear of Duo Damsel, who alone in the entire LSH could hand him his head on a reliable basis. He could adapt to defeat any one opponent, or to flee from multiple opponents, but once she split she was neither.

Re: WWYCD: An Alien among them Champion Wind will have serious problems starting immediately upon arrival. She looks like an underaged Valkyrie, complete with armour, helm, shield, winged horse, and an axe with a blade apparently made of roiling stormclouds. Even when not transformed, she's very hard to miss in her brightly coloured clothing, and being an obvious alien will not help. Probably, she'll try to get enough local currency for a meal by busking (she's an excellent flautist, and instrumental music doesn't need a common language). Of course, the authorities are guaranteed to show up before the end of her first set, but at least she's not an obvious conqueror type. After that, things will get complicated; she doesn't react well to "I'm in charge because I say so" types. Faye would probably be a bit more emphatic about not going with the government types, and she's got the power to back it up. For her, getting money will be easier: Go to a construction site and start hauling girders without a crane. At the end of the shift, go to the foreman and make the universal "pay up" gesture. A 690 point telekinetic pretty well makes her own rules; once she's got a steady income and understands the local language, she'll start trying to work on a way back home. Ika will probably run for the nearest wild area, then try to contact the spirts. What else would you expect from a timelost cavegirl?

Re: WWYCD: Quantum Leap Liane would try to prevent the Kent State Massacre, which more than any other event put an end to the extreme and wide-spread social activism of the 1960s. Faye would see if she could arrange for Hilter's fall from power, after he got the German economy back on its feet but before he invades the Sudetenland. Stopping the Holocaust is very high on her list of things to do, but Hitler's kickstarting the German economy almost certainly shortened the Great Depression. The irony of Hitler being regarded as one of history's great leaders will not escape her. Ika is from 80,000 years ago. I'm not even sure she could grasp the concept of time travel. But if she could, and assuming that she's learned about them by this time, she'd go back and introduce her tribe to basic inoculation techniques. They'd be crude (take blood from someone who's survived a sickness, put it in a gourd, spin it around, and prick people with thorns dipped in the clear part at the top), but better than nothing.

Re: Re-Imaged Hero(ines) Mitchell Fries has always been a student of philosophy. A bit of a dillentante, actually, not a serious student of the subject. He was a fairly ordinary fellow, he worked in retail helping to run a chain bookstore, and had no more than the minimum dealings with bureaucracies. But he had some, and one day a particularly obnoxious clerk at the Motor Vehicle Branch irritated him greatly and he snapped out "What is your purpose!?" The man immediately fell into a trance-like state, and after a few moments, Mitchell decided to just turn the screen around, pull the keyboard up onto the counter and enter his information himself. He then left, and let the other customers do the same. Eventually, the fellow came out of his trance, and was very upset with all the people who'd ignored "proper procedures." Since then, Mr. Fries has discovered that by asking people, in a firm and commanding tone, philosophical questions, he can force them into contemplative trances. Not being a particularly vicious fellow, he mainly uses this ability to sidestep the terminally indecisive (the person who dithers for twenty minutes at the movie concession stand, for example), avoid time-wasting morons, and to cut through red tape. His peculiar ability has led to his being nicknamed "The Question," and though officially a criminal and a wanted man, the truth is that the local police have far higher priorities.

Re: Superpowered Worlds To use a rough analogy, think of a wheelbarrow or a hand cart, both very common technologies. If our hypothetical ultra-strong people are in fact stronger than the potential draft animals, they might well decide that domesticating these weak creatures to haul stuff isn't worth the bother. We don't generally use dogs to pull things (yes, yes, dog sleds in the arctic, probably other exceptions, I said "generally"), it might well be the same for the mega-mights. Why domesticate and feed something that needs the upkeep of five people but can only do half the work of one?

Re: Champions universe created by magic? Try it this way: You have our world and our laws of physics. They're fixed, set and constant. In the Champions universe, the laws of physics are variable over time. The degree of "looseness" in these laws is what's called magic; in some periods the laws are extremely loose and you have full-on superhero types, and in others the laws are very slightly looser than our own, but only slightly. During these times, only low-end psi powers and other low-key abilities are possible.

I'm playing a high-powered telekinetic, one who wants to become a super-contractor. One ability I'd love for her to develop is pressure welding, or molecular cohesion welding, or Johannsen welding or whatever term you prefer. Basically, you press two objects together hard enough that they fuse, the normal inter-molecular forces that hold matter together coming into play and making the two objects one. How might this ability be represented in HERO terms?