Marketeer

Re: What are the "Cosmic Cubes" of the 5th Ed CU?

Re: New Millennium: Worth mining?

Re: What's the best way to conquer Canada? Of the three, I can only kind of vaguely envision water shortage as a motivation--and even then, desalinization plants on the coasts would be cheaper than invading Canada. You could dramatically play up the political differences between the two countries, then have the US invade to take out a "socialist monster", but that's stretching, and greatly so. You would have to dramatically change the relationship between the two countries for the US to want to invade Canada--the closest I could come is if you made our differing stances on narcotics somehow campaign significant--like some kind of street variant of the 4th ed Cyberline drug, or something.

Re: Self-Exiled Angel -- Character Background Brainstorming I'm pretty sure she'd find your threadcromancy to be a violation of the Way Things Should Be . Incidentally, feel like fleshing out her background a bit more? I think our last back-and-forth was rather amusing and interesting in terms of filling out the character.

Re: Character: Dao Sing, the Zombie Two points: 1) Welcome to the Boards 2) Here, have some Rep for a very vivid and imaginative character build.

Re: What's the best way to conquer Canada? Seriously, if you want to conquer Canada, the easiest/best way I can see it happening is to turn that prodigious land mass and low population density against the country. Many campaigns have a voracious alien race that is akin to the Aliens/Zerg/Brood/Tyrannids/whatever; Canada has a lot of open space with a lot of native organic life--IE, food and fodder to be assimilated into the organic horde. In the US, wiping out such an invasive force would be "relatively" easy simply because you have less open unihabited space for the horde to fester and grow within. Likewise, Russia has a colder climate, which might be less friendly to the invaders. So, by targeting the alien invader carefully, you have a good campaign reason why they attack Canada in particular--and why their initial level success will be higher than if they invade our southern neighbor.

Re: What's the best way to conquer Canada? Er... you do know that Canada has much more land mass than the States, right?

Re: Creating the Silver Age Team Metallia sounds vaguely feminine, particularly if you are going for a Silver Age naming scheme. Metallo is taken, but it is good and evocate. How does "Metallico" sound?

Re: The Supermen I hesitate to suggest it, but depending on how easily you want various races to be able to create additional members of their teams, you might want to look at the various "Power Rangers" TV series' as inspiration. If nothing else they come with large numbers of mechs, as well as various super-weapons that can be shamelessly lifted for campaign use.

Re: Champions Universe Movie Casting Call If it wasn't for the fact that James Earl Jones was so well known as Vader, I'd say James Earl Jones for Destroyer would work just fine.

Re: Campaign cliches we love Another campaign cliche that is rather fun: Many long-term, meaningful relationships start with the couple-to-be trying their level best to maim or kill each other.

Re: The world is a fragile, fragile, place... I can see him being indifferent to a lot of the environment around him, too: 1) Rain, cold, heat, whatever, rolls off his back so he tends to zone it out. 2) This would tend to affect his clothing picks too. Clothes would be less for usefulness/practicality, and more for durability or even aesthetics--a particular shirt may be functionally useless for sub-freezing temperatures, but hey, it goes nice with his skin tone.

Re: Comics you loved...but apparently no one else did As said before, DC's Impact line and Malibu's Ultraverse deserved better than they got. Then again, I love the idea that underlied the "What If?" line of titles, but for a few exceptions, the line never really took off.

Re: Character Idea: A "Transformer" in Champions An additional option: The "Roller" option: (Also known as the "Cassette" option): A Follower or Summon that consists of a separate character who is essentially a part of the main character, or nestled within the main character. Named for the little rolling car that comes out of Optimus Prime's trailer ("More than Meets the Eye", part 2, or the Optimus Prime toy). Also named for Soundwave's various cassettes: Rumble, Frenzy, Ravage, and Lazerbeak. The nice thing with this option is it gives you options even when you are able to use the "main" character--Soundwave + Cassettes teaming up on some poor schmuck.

Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites I'd add J. Michael Stracynski's run of Spider-Man on the Diamond/Steel Best as well. The pacing and storytelling is well done, and the internal logic holds up even in combat sequences. JMS does justice to the fact that Spider-Man isn't just one of the most flexible and adaptable heroes out there, but one of the most experienced; Peter Parker reacts to his world, and has an impact upon lives, in believable ways

Re: All I need to know about superheroing I learned from Video Games Things I learned from (Street) Fighting Games that can apply to Champions: 1) "Ultimate" or "Super" attacks cannot be used at the beginning of a battle. Instead, you must build up rage/chi/"pie"/whatever before you can unleash your Mega-Death-Beam attack. 2) The best way to make sure your big whammy hits is to hit your opponent first. This is known as a "combo" in Fighting Games, and "CON stunning" in Hero. 3) A properly trained martial artist is every bit the match for a military specialist with a gun. 3a) Conversely, the martial artist with no mystic chi mastery powers will spend a great deal of time taking damage. See Also: Seeker 4) The "Soviet" or "Russian" character will always be at least a pseudo-brick, and will most likely specialize in some form of grappling. See Also: Zangief (Street Fighter II), Ivan (4th ed Classic Organizations) 5) Martial Artists are inexplicably drawn together to fight in large tournaments . Even though the point of the tournament is always of great metaphysical or cosmic importance, there will be a great deal of media fanfare, which inevitably leads to superstardom for at least one participant. See Also: Ken, Fei Long (Street Fighter), Johny Cage (Mortal Kombat), Seeker (4th ed Ultimate Martial Artist--how many contacts does the man have?)

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible? A solution that I have found for Battlesuits, and balancing in general, is a general principle of "sliding generosity": Within a given group of players/characters, I am more generous with cost-breaks or "efficient" builds and constructs if they are the first time a character has them. Conversely, a character with a lot of discounts, particularly borderline ones, is scrutinized much more carefully. For example, I am generally fairly lenient about ECs, and what can be squeezed into them. On a character who already has OIHID or OIF, however, I tend to be a little more discerning. Naturally, the OIF/OIHIDer has actually taken a limitation that will come up in game play, I won't offset that too much by giving everyone else free-and-clear ECs. The principle is more one of equal scrutiny rather than "equal breaks". By making sure the players as a group are given equal opportunity to take appropriate limitations and discounts, I keep the group as a whole on par with each other, and that makes it easier to write and pace sessions so that everyone is involved and has a good time.

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible? I view the Battlesuit issue in the same light as the OIHID issue and the Focus issue: that the big concern is keeping tabs on the overall efficiency and scope of the character relative to the rest of the group. Any broad-ranging limitation upon powers bears scrutiny, not just for mechanical balance but because I don't want one player/character taking a disproportionate part of the overall campaign spotlight. For example, an OIHID character can typically earn 30-50 points in savings. Even if that goes into, say, mental attributes and skills, this makes the character much more broadly applicable and useful than an equivalent character without the limitation. Does that make the character unreasonable or abusive? No, not at all. But on the other hand, 40 points or so of savings is a lot. For example, taken as Disadvantages, that would be along the lines of "Hunted by Menton on a 14-"; I wouldn't allow that disadvantage lightly, either. The issue for me in regard to OIHID, OIF, and so on is that often, these Limitations are totally appropriate in terms of character concept, it's just that their impact upon overall game tone is significant. I wouldn't disallow them out of hand, but I would certainly monitor them closely.

Re: Death of Heroes Blackberry would be sorely missed by the people she left behind. Some would be angry, others sad, all would be distressed at the loss of a bright light in the world. Her funeral would not be a big public affair, but a surprisingly large number of friends and "enemies" (who, in spite of their best efforts, would still be her friends) would attend. There'd be no violence, even though her web of connections was wide. I can definitely see a "closure" subplot opening up for everyone else, but Blackberry would almost certainly remain dead.

Re: Old vs new: Obsidian vs Ironclad Seeker's like a STUN Battery... nobody attacks anybody else until Seeker goes down.

Re: Old vs new: Obsidian vs Ironclad Agree with the "which version of Obsidian?" line of reasoning. The 250-pt. Obsidian suffers from buying a significant chunk of his STR as Growth and Density Increase, so he's not only 100 pts. weaker, he's inefficiently built. The 450-pt. Obsidian still has a big chunk of his points tied down in Growth and Density Increase, but he's still got enough extra points on top of that to make up for the handicap. In terms of sheer fanboyish "who do I prefer?" style, Obsidian all the way, I like the "Brick scientist" schtick.

Re: 10 seconds of Godlike knowledge... As a source of visual inspiration, I would point you at the now-discontinued "Action Man" cartoon, by Mainframe Entertainment. Catch a few episodes and see if that doesn't get some creative juices flowing.

Re: 10 seconds of Godlike knowledge... DCV is very appropriate, or just generally higher DEX ("if I do it this way, I'll finish the somersault rather than land on my face") Higher mental stats in general also fits the overall theme. A good way to simulate this would also be just a large number of Overall Skill Levels, representing the fact that if he focuses himself, he can get things done.

Re: [WHAT IF?] Frank Castle was the Spirit of Vengence Granted; I think that's why the creator of the concept went with a hypothetical "Frank Castle's daughter" (Ie, someone not quite as obsessed and psychotic as Frank) as the host for Ghost Rider.

Re: Would Stargate SG-1 work in a Marvel Universe? ...just wait 'til Thor meets the "Asgard"...