John Desmarais

Re: Comics that I miss. In no particular order: StarMan (Jack Knight) Sandman (Wesley Dodds) Sandman (Dream, of the Endless) The (real) Legion of Super Heroes (pre-Crisis) All-Star Comics All-Star Squadron The Invaders (the real ones, stories set in WWI written by Roy Thomas, not that New Invaders nonsense Marvel recently started). New Gods (the first series, by Kirby. Heck, all of his DC work at that time was fun)

Re: Tales of Future Past Yep, it's cool. (It's where I found my pulp era robots).

Re: Loot

Re: Greatest Super Battle Ever Although the entire storyline was weak, the actual final fight between Superman and Doomsday in the death of Superman story was a pretty good knock-down drag-out kinda fight. Others I enjoyed: Wonder Man vs Count Narfaria (Avengers 166 - original series). Not so much for the fight itself, but because it marked a change in the way the writers were handling the character of Wonder Man - finally making him act heroic. Mr. Fantastic vs Dr. Doom (Fantastic Four 200 - original series). Proof that Reed is the most dangerous member of the team. High Evolutionary vs Galactus (FF 175 - original series). Kirby-size cosmic scale.

Re: CHILL - Sense the Unknown (how to in HERO) If it's something everyone can do I would just use a PER roll (modified as appropriate for the situation). If it's something that only some people can do that I would build it as an unusual detect.

Re: The Ultimate Disadvantage, talk about it here Ok, reading through this thread it's apparent that the folks who want such a book are pretty passionate about it, but in all honestly I can't see it having much practical appeal. So many disadvantages are priced based (in part) on "how often this will occur in your campaign" or "how limiting this is in your campaign" and that can be real subjective, varying wildly not just from genre to genre, but from one GM's style to another.

Re: College Professor Skill Level 11 or less, or base INT roll. Your choice. Reasoning: I personally believe that people have a tendancy to grossly overinflate non-combat skill rolls, mostly due (I think) to the fact that they tend to forget that out of combat you can get lots of "extra time" and situational bonus. For almost any skill used out of combat time there is virtually no reason that it should be modified up to a 17 or less every single time. You mileage may vary.

Re: Favorite Marvel 'What If?' Personal fave - What If the Marvel Bullpen became the Fantastic Four. Jack Kirby as the Thing was priceless.

Re: constant spell Another option (albiet an expensive one) is a huge, area affect SPD Supress (using the "standard effect" option and large enough to guarentee that everyone in the area is brought to 0 SPD). Attach a few character limitations to the effect (to limit what the PC can/can't do while the spell is active). I dislike this (personally) because I hate anyhting that impacts the SPD chart - but a Supress is slightly less objectionable than a Drain/Transfer/Aid would be.

Re: constant spell Time Stop This spell seems to make time cease to flow for everyone but you. In fact, you speed up so greatly that all other creatures seem frozen, though they are actually still moving at their normal speeds. You are free to act for 1d4+1 rounds of apparent time. Normal and magical fire, cold, gas, and the like can still harm you. While the time stop is in effect, other creatures are invulnerable to your attacks and spells; you cannot target such creatures with any attack or spell. A spell that affects an area and has a duration longer than the remaining duration of the time stop have their normal effects on other creatures once the time stop ends. Most spellcasters use the additional time to improve their defenses, summon allies, or flee from combat. You cannot move or harm items held, carried, or worn by a creature stuck in normal time, but you can affect any item that is not in another creature’s possession. You are undetectable while time stop lasts. You cannot enter an area protected by an antimagic field while under the effect of time stop. Reading the description initially seems to indicate that you are temporarily moving very quickly. Further reading though seems to point to the PC no longer really being part reality (you can't affect anything or be affected by anything). Extra-Dimensional Movement, "to the Time Stop dimension" linked to +4 SPD to be treated as held phases. A kind GM may simply declare that in the Time Stop demension time flows differently and just give you a few phases to do with as you wish.

Re: Secret Identity taken at a slightly lesser value...

Re: [Campaign] Thrilling Tales of Adventure! Everybody's playing Pulp Hero except me.

Re: Another superhero timeline

I'm sure many of you have seen this before (I had, but it had been a while) but it's such a fun read that's it's worth repeating. This is Steve Perrin's timeline for his superhero games. His timeline includes all of Marvel and DC in addition to the Champions material and some stuff from other sources. It's fun looking at the choices he made to tie thngs together and reconcile the passage of time. Enjoy. http://www.perrinworlds.com/Perrinverse%20Timeline/Timeline.htm

Re: Gamemastering Tutorial Adventures "The Great Supervillain Contest" (or Marvel's "Secret Wars II"). The PCs find themselves (and every other major super hero and villain) transported to a huge arena are are forced to fight.

Re: What's in a Phase? What you need to keep in mind is that, unlike segment and turn, phase is not a unit of time. A segment is one second. A turn is 12 seconds. A phase is an opportunity to execute an action. The number of opportunities a character has during a turn is reflected in their SPD stat.

Re: Dogfight rules -- do they work? Do they work? Yes, for what they were intended for - which is to handle occasional vehicle combat in a game that centers around characters, not vehicles. It's a bit more abstract that normal Hero character combat. I think The Ultimate Vehicle has more detailed vehicle combat rules (but I don't have that book with me so I can't check).

Re: Which supers movies were better than you expected, which were worse? Expected it to be good and it was. Thought it stank on ice, but after reading a few pre-movie quotes from the director this is what I expected. Wanted it to be good, expected it to be bad, found it to be mediocre. Silly, but visually impressive (the characters looked great). Others.... The X-Men movies were better than I had expected them be. My expectations were really low for the first one, but it wasn't bad. I expected the second one to be a typical sequel and found I enjoyed it at least as much as the first. Daredevil. When first announced I had high hopes. As more information was released my hopes faded. When I finally saw it in the theater I wanted to gouge my eyes out.

Re: He's twice the man you are! What is 2x normal STR? SPD? DEX?

Re: d20 Monster Conversion: Babau Demon into HERO

Re: Duration Caps on Spells?

Re: d20 Monster Conversion: Babau Demon into HERO Assign a penalty based on how difficult you think the task is (-3 to -5 is typical for extremely difficult tasks). See chart on page 45 (5th Edition Revised) . Sweep is an optional combat manuever - you don't spend points on it, the GM merely decides at the start of the campaign whether or not the rule will be used in the game. (As optional rules go it pretty commonm - I don't think I've ever seen a GM not allow it in a game). As a concept this is already part of the system. Combat SKill levels can already be used to improve damage instead of CV: 2 levels gives you +1 Damage Class. What constitutes a good OCV is very campaign dependent. What's the average OCV of the players characters?

Re: Duration Caps on Spells? Make them keep track of Long Term END usage.

Re: Old Testament Hero Is this too cool, or what?

Re: Has Anyone Done......