lapsedgamer

Re: Matt the Bruins' character art thread I've seen that Mondrian patterned dress somewhere before, and I liked it then. Nice work. That type of design would be nice for a light controller with holographic powers. You have a great style. Are you using Photoshop for coloring over the black lines you scan in, or are you in Illustrator for the whole thing?

Re: Gliding = Untrackable? I suppose I could see the Desolid build. What that limitation worth, -1 ? Actually, I was thinking more of something exotic like a mental sense or enhanced hearing or something. Invisibility to smell/taste would take care of tracking by scent, which is why i suggested it. However, the Desolid build is interesting. It is actually more efficient for being completely untraceable. It's a little uber, but it is efficient. I guess what gives me pause is figuring out a remedy to it. Tracking by scent that affects desolid? Dispel Desolid Area Effect (only to reveal traces)? I think inobvious, or even invisible, on movement as a naked modifier works pretty well. The remedy is just to buy higher PER rolls to overcome the minuses to see traces.

Re: Gliding = Untrackable? I would say that the gliding build would cover leaving no footprints. Combine that with invisibility to the smell/taste group (no fringe) and you've pretty much got it. The only problem with that would be someone that had tracking and/or discriminatory built onto a non-tracking sense. In Hero terms it's hard to build an absolute, but how often would you see that sort of tracking build. Sounds like a nemesis in the making. Makes good dramatic sense to me.

Re: Need some serious help GM 101: The PCs should never be powerless any longer than necessary to move the plot forward. The PCs powerlessness should rarely be the method of moving the plot forward. Any downturn in their fortunes should be balanced out by some sort of reward down the road. Depending on the personalities involved, the wait for that reward should not be that great. It depends on just how sadistic the GM is trying to be to me. Will going along with the plot result in a dead body with you to blame? If you do decide to go all vengeance is mine, will your characters end up red smears? I wouldn't immediately go to the police, as any shadow organization worth its salt has co-opted the legitimate government at least to some extent. The media might be an option, but it depends on how deep the conspiracy runs. Besides the satisfaction of gaming is having your PCs fix their own problems.

Re: Pixar's the Incredibles The 2 DVD set for the Incredibles has extras that include personnel files for the supers that appear in the background that were presumably on Syndrome's computers. They list the powers attributed to all of them, and that is what guys are referring to above for the most part. I never saw Dash do a hardcore Champions style Move Through, but he did a lot of Move Bys on his sister. He wasn't really trying to hurt her, so the damage involved was negligible. On the other and, he did bowl over a guard on the island at speed to save his sister. I might rule that a Move Through. YMMV. He was hell on wheels with that speed punch against that one guard, but I would model that as just a few dice of hand-to-hand attack. That seems to be the official build for that now. I like it better than a naked Autofire on Strength. It's easier to deal with. It all depends on the rubber science used to explain the particular character's abilities. Some speedsters are just as fragile as normal people except for the aura that protects them at high speed. Some become invulnerable by virtue of the mechanism that allows them to move quickly but are normal at rest. I am thinking Cannonball and Northstar from Marvel. Some have armored costumes. The Flashes of DC are all pretty fragile IIRC, they usually just dodge everything or go intangible. Dash seems to be just a lot tougher than a normal kid all the time. However, as I said above the Incredi-verse may just have a rule that says that no one dies until it moves the story forward. Definitely. Especially if you are playing it up for kids.

Re: Pixar's the Incredibles Sure, to some extent that's true. However, you also have to take into account the mechanics of the game system. If you are playing someone who may use Move Through and Move By on a regular basis or my have a turn mode related accident, you need to be somewhat tough. Also, you don't want to fold like Kleenex when a low-level NPC gets in a lucky shot.

Re: Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains when will it be on the shelf? This is not something that they have prioritized for many reasons that they have explained before. I finally broke down and bought the PDF. It was OK, not great. However, the extended anticipation was not worth it. If they ever get the thing printed, I may or may not buy one for the sake of completeness in my collection. I have resolved the issue in my mind, and would humbly submit that the wait has probably gone a long way to killing what they said was already lukewarm demand. No one is perfect, and the business climate is not the friendliest now, so I have some sympathy. However, this was not the company's finest hour. Overall, the products have been solid since DOJ took over, so I'm still rooting for them, but that's just my honest opinion.

Re: Somebody needs to write this villain up now!

Re: Pixar's the Incredibles While I agree he's tough, I don't think I'd read too much into things like this in the Incredi-verse. Either all of the supers have some sort of resistant protection, or the rules of physics are generally played much looser (maybe both). The only person I saw who really suffered the effects of derring-do was Mr. Sansweet, and that was part of the gag. People were worried about dying, but it didn't seem like it was actually that easy to kill a super by accident unless it was funny. Dash clearly did not want to be shot, but he shrugged of damage that would kill most folks. You assume that Syndrome had a forcefield or armor in his costume, even little Buddy got a pass when he was flying around on those jet boot. I smell house rules that make supers exceprionally tough except when confronted by super powers and super tech. The damage done to them by the normal environment and incidentals should be played down to keep things going briskly. "What could happen? We're superheroes."

Re: Alan Moore's "1963" I loved that series. I have to admit the Fantastic Four stand-ins didn't impress me, but the Spider-Man homage, Fury, was note perfect and is waiting to be used in that game I am always threatening to run. Moore really got the whole tone of 60s Marvel books right in that series though. I'm sorry he never finished it.

Re: Pixar's the Incredibles Man, I've seen that movie maybe half a dozen times, and I've never realized that Gazerbeam was Bob's lawyer, though it makes so much sense.

Re: Hand Attack Power + Martial Arts One of the few things I genuinely like more in 6th is the care they took in sorting out that adding damage mess. It is much easier to deal with than ever before even with advantaged attacks .

Re: Pixar's the Incredibles All the supers in the Incredibles universe seemed to have a fairly high degree of resiliency.

Re: 11 Victoria's Secret models hit the catwalk as superheroines This really illustrates what we are talking about when we add Striking Appearance and Distracting Costume to a build.

Re: Pixar's the Incredibles I didn't realize those characters had been done up in any detail. Are you basing that on the Incredible DVD extras from the two-disc set, or is there another source? I have to admit that I only watched part of the extras though I own that set. I do remember some lists of powers in that. I might dust it off an take a closer look. I forgot to mention Violet because basically I think those powers go together now after reading the Fantastic Four for so long. Also, strength and toughness together are a given in supers builds. The only time you don't see them together is when they are trying to subvert the trope. I didn't realize Mr. Incredible had actual Danger Sense. I just thought he was supposed to be really good. You know, I'm still geeking out over it.

Re: Pixar's the Incredibles The Incredible's world seems to lend itself to some very simple builds as well. It seemed that most folks, except Jack-Jack and Syndrome only had one power or a real tight group of powers based on a theme. Ideal for beginning players and GMs. Check out these as a starting point. I must always show Surbrook's Stuff love when it comes to movie write-ups. http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptationswesternanimation/wanimatedchar.html

Re: A vehicle for shrinking characters This actually leads to kind of an interesting concept for an uber powerful shrinker. Let's say the character could undertake nanotech engineering projects to build different sorts of nanomachines or dispel powers based on nanotechnology. I think the dispel would be a long term thing, as it would simulate reprogramming or building nanites to destroy the others that gave individuals powers. Taken to its farthest application, they could alter those powers, or even gift an individual with powers. That's a lot of points of Transform. Really kind of frighteneing if you think about it. I can also see powers that only work in the microverse. This car is just a vehcle that only works in the Microverse for example.

Re: Speaking of unholy abominations... You know, that's kind of catchy. I'm sure it will make into some video game trailer somewhere. Rep for amusing me.

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore

Re: Megascale Movement, Lightspeed, and Escape Velocity The effects of powers on the environment and such are basically handwaved within the genre rules of the Champions setting. I was talking more about the little things in character building. If I build a Flash rip-off of some sort, I like to add in things like a naked Rapid advantage for normal sight and hearing and resistant protection through a special costume or a force-field-like aura. I just like doing that, and I also like builds by others where those little grace notes have been considered. I wouldn't as a GM necessarily demand that, but I think even with the most generic of builds there should be some stuff like that included. It's not necessarily wanting to go Iron Age, I just have always enjoyed it when the comics writers tried to explain things, even with implausible rubber science. You have to remember that the Silver Age started with this kind of stuff with the Flash. Unless the player said that he wanted to play up a theoretical limitation and wrote his character that way, I wouldn't severely penalize him, or penalize him at all for that matter.. That's not in keeping with the general Champions guidelines.

Re: World-building: When what works for the heroes works for everyone? If you want to go dark, think Gattaca. Anyone without this superior line of descent would be relegated to second-class citizenship. Think of someone who would be outstanding in our world being merely acceptable in this universe and being forced to eke out a living at subsistence levels due to the severe skewing of nature's Bell curve. I'm imagining a caste system based on your level of superiority from a set baseline. If you want to go darker, what if there were normal folk who actively tried to level the playing field. You would finally have a reasonable explanation for Marvel's mutant hysteria storyline. These people really are taking over the world, and they really do have an unfair advantage over normal folk.

Re: Megascale Movement, Lightspeed, and Escape Velocity I have to agree. When properly monitored it fixes a problem that was very common in earlier editions of the game. Even at starting point totals, some characters should have the ability to travel between cities easily, or to attain orbital flight. You could never do this before. In the past to get that build, you would just have to throw points at it until the character ended up costing 500 points or more just in movement powers. I'm not saying it can't be abused, but it comes in handy when used maturely.

Re: Megascale Movement, Lightspeed, and Escape Velocity I always try to enforce this when I build a character, and I look for it in other people's builds as well. Unless the character is specifically built to highlight some limitation I expect some sort powers and stats in the build to handle these issues and some discussion of the rationale in the write-up.

Re: Ragdoll You may look at a layered approach using Damage Reduction and Negation. This might get pricey, but Desolid with attacks that affect the physical world are pricey too. I think a Damage Reduction/Negation combo would be simpler to build.

Re: What Champions Universe character would you gender change? I'm just the opposite. I know exactly who Selena Gomez is even though it's a little creepy that I do at my age. What? She's cute? If I was like twenty years younger I would have the energy to stalk her properly.