Bud Gray

In my current campaign, I have a player who has, for a long time, been wanting their character to be n=the new Archmage. After years of play, I am ready to allow this. However, I'm unsure how to finally enact it. The books mention a long forgotten ritual, but no details. I understand that it's up to the GM to figure it out, but I'm not sure what would work out best. Especially if I have to run it as a regular session with 4 other players who's characters aren't really involved. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.

Re: Philosophical question Where I was really trying to go with this thread wasn't so much to discuss the consequences of altering history. But rather, is it morally right to murder someone, in cold blood, for crimes they have yet to commit? Should a 6-year-old hitler be held accountable for the actions of a 50-year-old hitler? For that matter, should you hold a 20-year-old hitler accountable for the actions of a hitler 30 years older? Some of the responses really do go into some nice detail, and give me a lot to think on. All the responses have been good, even the ones that are a little off topic. So, thanks and keep it coming. Also, sorry I didn't respond a little sooner, it's been a busy week.

I recently got my hands on a copy of Wings of the Valkyrie, and it got me thinking. The adventure puts the players in the position of deciding whether to let Hitler be killed and create a grim future or save him and let him do everything he did in history. The decision doesn't seem that difficult as the future created by letting him be murdered is pretty much worse than the one created by letting him live. This kind of story has been played out before, and I don't have a problem with that. It just seems to me that the morality of the situation is pretty clear cut when you know what the consequences of you actions are before you do them. So I'm just wondering, what if, by murdering him before he comes into power, you change nothing. Everyone who died because of his actions still die, and there is still a WWII, you just change some of the specifics. Or what if you simply don't know what will happen? You just find yourself with the oppertunity, and you know what will happen if you do nothing. And what if instead of having the chance of killing an up-and-coming-politician Hitler, it's the 6-year old child Hitler?

Re: Code vs Killing (Total) This discussion has given me a lot to consider next time my turn comes around again to run Champions for our Sunday group. Not just for CvK but for any psych lim. Thanks for all this good input. I have a question though. I always tell my players that all the character automatically have "Reluctance to Kill" as an automatic disad for 0 points. I believe that's pretty standard for the superhero genre. But now I wondering, based on some of the discussion here, if I shouldn't make it a Moderate CvK and give them all points for it. After all, what really is the difference between Reluctant to Kill and a Moderate CvK? Do you think that seems reasonable?

Re: Would you play… Personally, I love the idea. Especially with that new show, Heroes, still fresh in everyone's minds. Didn't the old 4th edition supplement, The Mutant Files, have a random power generator in it? That would solve the random powers thing. If memory serves me I think it balanced everything out pretty well so you would avoid the silly combos that often popped up in V&V.

Re: Need help finding dice roller Thanks for all the help. Your answers gave me all I need.

I'd like to find some way to roll 3d6 a few hundred time so I can print out a list. That way as I'm running a game I can do secret rolls by just checking off something I pre-rolled rather than having the players hear me rattleing dice behind the screen. Is there a dice roller out there that will help? Thanks in advance.

Re: Movement power as an attack Well, thanks for all the responces. I think I have a handle on this. I should point out however that my players aren't munchkins. This situation arose because I allowed something for the supermage of the group early on without really thinking it through completely. The player used her VVP to send a powerful vampire into limbo just before it could tear the head off another PC. Since the villain team had a ghost on it who could retrieve the vampire, I didn't consider it a problem. This only came up because while running CHampions Battlegrounds the same player considered sending the entire building in one scenario into limbo to keep it from being destroyed by Holocaust. Another player suggested sending Holocaust away. Fortunatly the player with the supermage read The Mystic World, Demon, and Arcane Adversaries, so she knows what bad stuff is out there in the Champions universe on a extra-dimentional level. It's also a house rule in my game that using EDM requires a skill roll to get where you're going, so she is reluctant to risk even worse things happening by abusing the power. The reason I allowed this in the first place is becuase of the Teleportation UUA powers listed in the UNTIL superpowers database. I felt that if those were OK, then EDM, with limits, would also be OK. Anyway, just for the record, this was just me preparing for the worst. The player in question is actually my best player currently, and has never been abusive with her character and never would be in my opinion.

I need a little help. In my current campaign there are a couple characters that have built Extra-dimentional movement as attack powers. My problem is that I'm not sure how to have my villains defend against something like this. Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

If a character has Desolid, usable as attack (basically they can grab someone and drag them unwillingly along, desolid) and the take another character halfway (or all the way) into a solid object and leave them there, what is the effect? Thanks in advance.

I've just started my group on Champions Battlegrounds, and we're running the adventure where Holocaust attempts to destroy a building under construction. We haven't gotten to the fight itself yet and the players are making plans should things go bad. One of the players is running a supermage with a 90 pt cosmic VVP, and she came up with the idea of shifting the entire building into Limbo should things look bad. I told her it's a good idea by me, but I'm gonna require a skill roll to get into the correct dimention and another to get it there in one piece. I also told her I needed to see it written up before I allow it. It seems pretty simple, just extra-dimentional movement, single dimention. But we couldn't agree on how much the whole thing would weigh. The building is only 8 stories tall, the 8th story being nothing more than girders at this point. The Ultimate Brick gives sample weights on the empire state building and on sample materials, but I was wondering if anyone else has run into this situation before. Thanks in advance. -Bud

This has been bugging me for a while, and the answer is probably just staring me in the face and I don't know it, but I figure I'll ask anyway. In the film Blood: The Last Vampire, there are two Chiropterans (sp?) having what appears to be a hyper-sonic conversation. It's basically undetectable by normal human hearing. How would you build something like that? Normally I wouldn't care, but in our champions campaign, where the characters still have a habit of shouting out their tactics in the middle of battle this is actually an interesting way of having villians talk in secret right in front of the heroes. I thought of Mind Link with the appropriate limitations, but this seems a little clunky and over-complicated for such a minor power. What are everyone else's thoughts?

Re: Need help with CoH crossover Oh yeah! This help A LOT!. You guys are really making this easier.

Re: Need help with CoH crossover This helps a lot, Thanks. I still need to track down something on the villains, But this is a great start. Thanks.

Re: Alternate Attack Rolls We tried it in our game tonight. It worked great. I like to give the skill options a try, But that would take a little convincing. Thanks again.

I'm planning on running the Reality Storm adventure, but instead of using the Empire universe characters, I'm thinking of swapping them out for City of Heroes characters. This is because my group has zero knowledge of the characters from Silver Age Sentinels, but most of us do play CoH. Also, one of the guys in the group is running a CoH campaign. The characters I was planning on using are: Villians: Lord Recluse Ghost Widow Captain Mako Black Scorpion Scirocco Heroes: Statesman Sister Psyche Positron Synapse Manticore Hero rescure team from Paragon City Miss Liberty Mynx Silver Swan Infernal Malaise What I need is to know what these characters have for powers. The web sites and comic books give me a little idea, but I was wondering if anyone had a more detailed description of these characters. I know it looks like I setting myself up for a lot of work, but I figure by adding a rescue team from Paragon City, I can have some of the action happen "off screen" and let me focus more on the players. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Re: Alternate Attack Rolls This helps a lot. Now is there any way to make these changes to the Herodesigner?

We have some new players coming into our game. And they are unfamiliar with, and a little intimidated by, the Hero System. One of the things that seems to cause new players difficulty in my experience, is the attack roll. Since they are familiar with D&D, I was thinking of making the attack roll simply 3d6 + OCV vs 11+DCV. Is there anything wrong with this solution? Will it unbalance the game? Or are there other solutions that would work better? Thanks.

Re: Super Pope? Well, along those lines, does the President of the United States have super powers? The Prime Minister of Great Britan? How about the Dlai Lama? I myself prefer to leave them as they are in the real world. There are enough supers running around to take the spotlight away from the PCs. I don't need to make it worse by making famous, powerful, real world people into supers as well. Besides, where's the fun in having the PCs show up to save the Pope from some super villian only to have him jump up and kick butt without their help? From a more serious, religious, standpoint. I feel the whole point to the Christian religion is faith. Handing down superpowers to Christain followers kinda undermines that faith IMHO. I do like the idea of supers who have strong religious convictions. It's a little frustraiting that the comic book industry overlooks that concept. I'm also one of those player/GMs who would be a little offended by the idea of casting the Pope as some sort of superpowered NPC. If his powers are actually handed down from God, it really does sort of "stat" our Lord. Even if you aren't really giving Him stats, you are putting him in the same boat as fictional gods like Thor and Horus. And if you define a super powered Pope as a deluded mutant or gadgeted super spy, you're being rather disrespectful. I'm Lutheran myself, but I still have great respect for the Pope. Well, that's my 2 cents anyway. BTW, I saw on the news just as I logged in that the Pope passed away a little while ago. I give my most heartfelt condolences.

Re: Dr. Kirby Loo Wow, Thanks for all the info guys. I wasn't sure if The fiendish Dr. Loo was just a plot device or not. I'm rewriting Los Asesinoes and wasn't sure what to do about the ninja's background. This actually helps a lot.

I've seen mention of this person in some old 4th ed write-ups, but I've never seen any detailed information about his character. Who is this guy and are there any write-ups out there? Also, is he coming back in 5th ed? Thanks.

Re: Role play during combat Well, actually we have none. We switch off with GMs every 3-4 adventures, so my campaign (Millenium City) is only 3 adventures in when we switched over to my friend who is running City Of Heroes. And his is just one adventure in. Our characters in the current one are too new and we haven't meshed as a team yet so we have no tactics. Even in long established campaigns we never focused too much on tactics. I also think Storn is right. The social contract is missing and part of that is my fault. This Sunday will give me a chance to try the suggestions presented here and maybe become an example during play. I think the real problem is just bad habit. Too many games of old school D&D, where combat is all about the XP and just a way of getting the "phat lewt."

Re: Storage and transport of minis I actually use an inexpensive plastic storage box I got a Wal-Mart for less than $20, then I used the "egg-crate" foam padding for a mattress (it has littel foam "teeth") and cut it to fit into the box. The teeth make foam pockets to protect the minis. I laid one sheet over top the other to make two layer and another turned upside down to lay over top to protect them from the lid. It's cheap, but effective. You may want to pay a little extra for a more heavy duty box than what I got if you're going to transport them a lot. Mine was more for storage than transport.

Re: Role play during combat Thanks for all the good advice, and please keep it coming. I sent a link to my group so they could see what everyone is saying. As far as Minis though, we have latched on to using miniatures in complex combats. It something we started not too long ago and that has actually helped us stay focused on the game a little when the combat starts. Now we can see where everyone is and everyone can get a better idea of the battlefield. I know this might distract from role-playing a little, but I feel the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. Does anyone out there use minis in their game and still keep up the role-play? How do you avoid having the players become distracted by the props? -Buddy

Some of the players in my group have expressed dismay at the amount of combat that happens in our games. Not just the ones I run and not just the Hero system, but it seems to come up more in our superhero campaigns. I often remind them that when we start rolling dice for combat, that doesn't mean that the role-playing should stop. But they still fall into a habit of stepping out of character when combat begins. I'm not exempt from this behavior as our last session showed (but I wasn't feeling well so I think I could be forgiven.) I was wondering if anyone had any advice for keeping everyone in character during combat and the game still flowing. When I'm behind the screen I try to stay in character with my villians and NPCs but when the combats get big, that can be tough. Thanks in advance. -Buddy