casualplayer

Re: Beating Dr. Destroyer...how do (or did) you do it? Without full-bore Indirect, that doesn't get through the insulation or the casing.

Re: Amalgamated Champions Billionaire mercenary conservative radio talk show host Bruce Spector couldn't stand criminals getting off lightly or scot free one second longer. Donning a costume of shifting ebon darkness and luminscent white, he dominates his midnight til dawn timeslot as The Moonbat! Orphaned princess of a tribe of Kenyan aliens, enslaved by the Shadowarlords of Okaara til she fought her way free, the goddess-beautiful Ororiander blazes across the sky in defense of the defenseless as Stormstarfire! Foster son of Odin, Highfather of New Genesisvartheim, the true son of the implacable, villainous Darkskywalker, tyrant of Asgardapokolips, Thorion fights evil within and without in honor of his rearing and in defiance of his birthright, his astrochariot always close at hand and his mighty maul near.

Re: Epic level Champions

Re: Epic level Champions That sounds like Any-level Champions advice.

Re: The City of ???? The island should have a military base and research station on it, along with many university facilities trying to figure out who, what, where. All of these draw dependents and support personnel and can help to account for your 12 Million, or at least the first million or so. Needs port facilities also to ship and receive freight, and could become the new Norfolk or Groton for the Navy. Not sure if anyone who has seen Lost is ever going to get anywhere near the place though. As far as the name, was the name something hung on the place or found on a street sign when people got there? Is it the product of marketers hoping to spur immigration or something alien that may have been bowdlerized to be more pronounceable by humans? Some thoughts are New Amsterdam, Brigadoon, Eureka, Columbia, Treasure Island, Arkham Isle or Neverland. You can always name it after the discoverer or Fort or Port something or other.

Re: Epic level Champions The character Celestial Archer in The Great Ten would probably qualify. He has shot out the sun (temporarily) and shot a message to his teammates 2000 miles away. When the arrow arrived his teammates commented that if Celestial Archer would have wanted to he could have hit either or both of them with the arrow.

Re: Epic level Champions

Re: Please tell me why this is wrong! For the same reason that you can't punch one section of earth for 90 BODY damage and destroy the planet, you can't affect a block of ice as if it is one monolithic object. You have to strip away layers to be able to affect the layers underneath. Also while you are working to heat the exterior the interior is working to keep things cool. It sounds like the player is arguing for a degree of Indirect and Area Effect that Change Environment doesn't have. It also sounds like one more piece of evidence proving that CE is a PITA.

Re: BioFix - We're here to help! Maybe that's a feature instead of a flaw. The bacteria have to regularly be supplied with some control substance that keeps the environment they live in "hot" or they die out. There's the producer's control over unlicensed distribution. Or maybe that's a distinctive feature of the recipients, an elevated body temp meeting the bacillus halfway between the temp they would like and the temp the host can withstand. Constantly walking that tightrope, feverish and bursting with energy.

Re: Epic level Champions

Re: Epic level Champions One way to handle Epic level games with vast budgets of points is to not allow unrestrained spending where the players just nab every stopsign and caution power on the list. It's amazing the justification that some people can come up with to have Desolidification, Damage Reduction and Danger Sense for their character. Let's just call them The Three D's. There's also the option-paralysis problem of "I can do anything," where the game drags because there are too many choices on how players deal with a problem. As a GM you often have to rely on a Ticking Time Bomb to instill a sense of urgency in your complacent gods. Or use a cosmic GMPC or railroad the plot, neither very welcome ways to motivate. With great power comes great responsibility. Or great ennui.

Re: ANYONE KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT: Monday the eliminator? Monday was a big guy, and single-minded in a Terminator sort of way. He was always operating to advance the aims of the secret society he belonged to, the Son of Man. He had a cybernetic targeting system in his eyes that he concealed with sunglasses because it disturbed people to see them exposed. His gun of choice had a cable that Monday would jack into his temple, IIRC. He had some quasi-mystical powers, nothing flashy, and could take a beating. He had his own back-up storyline that eventually dovetailed into the main Scout storyline.

Re: Beating Dr. Destroyer...how do (or did) you do it? For a book to be successful, it has to have player appeal. Players already know how to ratchet up the points and power, so they don't need a book telling them how to do it. if you put out a book with a whole new level of power and abilities, we all know players who would have to try to submit characters that would be that new level plus just a smidge. Pro from Dover arms race until everyone is throwing 30d6 blasts. A book about reining in and channeling these power levels into interesting games would be very helpful to GMs but wouldn't sell enough to keep the lights on. The problem I have with the most recent Dr. Destroyer is that he is built only to fall to hammer tactics. There aren't enough chinks in his armor. He doesn't even have the limitations of having armor anymore! A character playing with power levels that can hurt Dr. D would turn Eurostar into a smear, so I have to modify one or the other or put a lot of conditional modifiers on my players. +10d6 Only vs. Former Nazi Super Scientists? 1 Recovering Charge Super-Push powers "to their limits and Beyond!?" Steve mentioned Firewing being the premier energy blaster in the CU but he comes in a distant second to Destroyer.

Re: Icons - The Costume and Superpowers Store What if the costumes have pockets, and occasionally things appear in those pockets? Trinkets, notes, keepsakes and such. Clues and leads and curiosities. What if the requirement of the garb, hero or villain, is to be ostentatious and dramatic? Draw eyes and attention and "build the brand." What if some costumes reference and resurrect folklore and myth? A lion's pelt worn like a cape or a tricorner hat or an enormous red plaid, lumberjack's shirt.

Re: BioFix - We're here to help! I would think the tandem of the bacteria would make the perfect Navy SEAL. It would also make it possible to colonize and farm the seafloor. I'm not sure what effect not getting tired would have on the need for sleep, but you could go any number of ways. Bacteria also has a nasty tendency to evolve to its environment and migrate to environments you least expect. What if this got into the food chain? Could a dolphin survive on land with this in its system? Not to pick nits but the oxygenerating bacteria would likely have to live somewhere other than the digestive system, for the oxygen to get to the lungs. Maybe it's a throat culture?

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. Libroccoli?

Re: CHAMPIONS VILLAINS -- What Do *You* Want To See? Could probably nab a template from the Bestiary and graft it to Durak. Turn Ogre into an Oni.

Re: Beating Dr. Destroyer...how do (or did) you do it? I'm hurt, Mega-P. The first time my team encountered Dr. D was when he was coming to Muerte's laboratory to see the results of a project that he had delegated to Muerte, which was giganto-mutagenic experiments done on the brother of the team's powerhouse which turned him into Grond. Not his home turf, not his chosen battlefield and nothing worth staying and fighting to the death over. There were people on the team who were alt-dimension immigrants and unscanables, so Dr. D was not prepared and I've always played him as being pathological adverse to uncertainty. He fought a terrifying several minutes and then retreated to his jet. IIRC correctly in 4th ed. his personal Flight speed was pretty mediocre. The second time my team met him they confronted him on Destruga, and each member of the team had a lethal Cover on them the moment they entered the airspace. It was a diplomatic mission and one of the members didn't take it seriously, actually trying to play a prank on Dr. D. Destroyer vocalized "Lightbearer, irrevocable, initiate" and a hyper-agile missile chased Lightbearer for several miles before exploding and annihilating his body. Good thing Lightbearer was mostly soulforce by that point! There were some Neutral Ground encounters and a chessmatch played with people as pieces for the control of Olympus that involved Destroyer also, but these were the feature encounters. There were also games where Dr. Destroyer was the motivator but so many levels removed that the players never figured it out. I find the more recent versions of Dr. Destroyer's storylines and support materials to be amazing and his personal stats to be ridiculous and unusable.

Re: Order of the Stick Side quest!

Re: Beating Dr. Destroyer...how do (or did) you do it? Bold mine. If that doesn't sound like Spidey or Robin to you, I don't know what is. (In Robin's case, lower raw DEX higher DCV Levels Based on Acrobatics Roll but still) Plus all of these characters have an insane Dive for Cover. Part of the tactic is to get Dr. D to go full OCV so that his DCV is as low as possible, setting up for the powerhouse. Part of the tactic is also making it look like the attack just barely missed, perhaps with Acting, instead of "nyah nyah can't touch this" to keep the person focused and furious at you, not making optimal offensive and targeting decisions. If you run Dr. Destroyer as dispassionately selecting from his arsenal and resources, then he wins. Then again if you ignore his arrogance and need to demonstrate his superiority, then he has already conquered Khazakhstan, cosied up to China or Russia to have a veto buddy on the Security Counsel and will have the rest of the world brought to heel in short order.

Re: Beating Dr. Destroyer...how do (or did) you do it? Mostly to deal with Dr. Destroyer you need the archetype that appears in heaps of comics but gets short shrift in Champions, the Annoying Avoider or Jester. The punning acrobat who taunts the Overconfident, Arrogant bad guy into taking his shots at the most unlikely target just so he will shut up once and for all! Robin, Beast Boy/Changeling, Spider-Man, Impulse, Nightcrawler, many more before everything got so serious. The character that, even though you know his DCV is in the stratosphere, you just want to strangle and the baddie burns attacks on him. Sometimes the Jester is setting up for his own attacks, like Spidey vs. Firelord, but most often it's for his hard-hitting teammates. Sometimes the character is more of a damage sponge than a DCV Beast, like Kitty Pryde and Captain America. Everyone wants to be the homerun hitter in HERO but there are a lot of people on a successful team.

Re: Need Opinions Regarding a Change to Drain and Other Adjustment Powers. It's what I use but only for diminished characteristics/Powers. Penalizing someone for having a high REC by having their Aids fade faster will start a fight.

Re: CHAMPIONS VILLAINS -- What Do *You* Want To See?

Re: Beating Dr. Destroyer...how do (or did) you do it? In 4th ed. my group Shockwave did manage to drive Dr. D off and thwart his plans. The team had a jinx magician that could short out each of his powers, but only after he used them, which was stripping his arsenal. They had some nimble distractors to draw fire, giving the fragile tricksters a chance to work their magic and setting the powerhouse up for his explosive haymaker, which was IIRC an 18d6 explosion paired with a 22d6 move-thru/haymaker. It was perfect teamwork a matter of moments after the team martial artist one-shot Professor Muerte with a boot to the head, so their morale was high. The 2nd time they met one of the team died. It was a radiation accident kind of death but, still, Dr. D snuffed him out like a candleflame.

Re: Need Opinions Regarding a Change to Drain and Other Adjustment Powers. Try using REC as the recovery value for adjustment powers, keeping 5 as the fade rate for boosts. One number to clean up all diminished characteristics and powers during Post 12.