MitchellS

Re: Champions/Algernon Files Universes The best part of the Algernon Files books is how well they fit into every four color superhero universe. There's a big thread over on the M&M forum [when it's not crashed due to free rpg day] combining the FCU, CU, and TAFU into one big whole. I use plenty of the TAF information in my own Legacy Universe game without problems.

Re: The cranky thread Some nut-job says he hacked Bloomsbury Publishing and posted death spoilers for the new Harry Potter book over at insecure.org. My kids came across the spoilers because the site information was given on scifi.com. The internet ticks me off sometimes.

Re: Villains Vandals And Vermin (VVV) I don't consider the art to be the major issue with the book [though I don't necessarily like most of the art in the book]. You can use a good character in your game even if you don't like the picture [and you can use a good picture even if you don't like the write-up]. The problem with VVV, IMO, is that the character choices are uninspiring, the backgrounds are uninteresting, and the write-ups are ill-conceived and unoriginal. That doesn't mean every character in the book was bad but for me the needles were well hidden in the hay stack.

Re: Sand Staff You forgot the -1/2 HtH limitation. That would drop the cost to 18 points.

Re: Villains Vandals And Vermin (VVV) I have no problem with rewriting characters to my needs [i've been doing it for years and I'm always converting Champions characters to M&M]. What I have a problem with are characters that aren't even in the ballpark of being usable for the game. I don't have much use for a character like Vesper with his 6d6 punch, 4 speed, and 12/10 defense. An average Viper agent is 8d6, 3 speed, and 10 defense.

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"? The character needs to be played intelligently. In most instances the martial artist is going to have a defense in the 15 range. That right there means they're not going to take any body on most attacks of 15d6 or less [maybe 1 or 2 with a lucky roll, but usually none]. If the character encounters someone using more dice then their defense then they need to think about using the various combat maneuvers to their advantage. Dodging, rolling with the blow, diving for cover, and blocking [either as a delay or an abort] can be very effecting at keeping lower defense characters in a battle. The real trick is for players to not just assume their pd/ed is going to cover every situation. There's a reason why those combat maneuvers are in the game. Champions is a game where body damage is going to be fairly rare. It's designed to be 4-color rather then realistic. Bricks are almost never going to take body damage [there's just no foes who can throw 30d6+ attacks to get past most bricks' 30-35 defense. The real equalizer in Champions is stun. A 15-20d6 attack is going to hurt even if it can't bruise the target.

Re: Tiger Beetle! Sight has a fixed cost of 25 points. Putting megascale on it is cheap. 1 level of megascale costs 6 points and when you throw on a linked to megascale movement you end up with a cost of 4 points [the level of megascale vision bought needs to match the level of megascale movement bought though]. That's far cheaper then N-ray and enhanced perception.

Re: I am a comic book dinosaur. Forget the comics. Buy the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited DVDs instead.

Re: Question about Hawkman villains That is really basically it. He's a tough man with peak to slightly enhanced strength who uses archaic weapons to fight crime [mace, axe, net, shield, etc]. He has an nth metal belt that allows him to levitate [it's sometimes said the wings give him a slight strength enhancement and the ability to heal quicker. That just depends on the version of the characters].The wings allow him to fly through shoulder muscle manipulation. During the silver age he had enhanced eyesight and at times could talk with birds.

Re: Villains Vandals And Vermin (VVV) There's a difference between mook and joke. Bulldozer's a mook. Buzzsaw [and the others like him in the book] are a joke.

Re: Human Maximums My games used to use 30 for the Primary Characteristics. PD/ED were at 18. Speed was a 7. Recovery of 15. End and stun as figured from maximums.

Re: Question about Hawkman villains There's a whole list here: http://www.dcuguide.com/hawkworld/bio_rogues.php

Re: "Charges Never Recover" and Frameworks

Re: Villains Vandals And Vermin (VVV) B-? Really? How bad does something have to be to get a D on your scale?

Re: "Charges Never Recover" and Frameworks The thing is that there's a difference between charges that do recover and those that don't. The player and GM get to agree on a reasonable time frame on when the potion bottles get refilled. That doesn't mean it won't take a week of brewing to refill the bottles. It just means you won't have to repay the character points for additional brewings after the first one. What the does not recovery limitation is saying is that you must repay the character points every time the charges run out. That has nothing to do with how long the recovery process might take. The special effects could allow you to replay the points 5 seconds after the charges run out and get all new charge.

Re: "Charges Never Recover" and Frameworks In a Champions game most players aren't going to want to spend character points on something that they can't keep using indefinitely, IMO. I could see it on a self-destruction slot in a gadget's framework [to blow up a captured battlesuit or fusion-ray pistol] but those things would be rare. I did have a character once who had a "nine lives" healing ability though.

Re: Villains Vandals And Vermin (VVV) I'm sure there are people playing Teen Champions games and such but the CU was set up for 350 point play. Villains with 11 defense, 18 con, and 6d6 attacks really aren't going to go far in the CU. It's possible, but IMO we're paying Hero Games for their creativity. I can buy USPD and pick from a list all by myself. I don't need to pay Steve or Darren to do that for me. It does seem as if Steve and Darren have two different campaign levels when writing for the CU. I don't see much of Steve going through 30 though. Steve tends to make a lot of 20 dex characters and tends to cap-out around 27 or so in most cases.

Re: Tiger Beetle!

Re: "Charges Never Recover" and Frameworks The examples would need to fit the genre. There are a lot of "disposable" magic items that would fit that mold in the fantasy genre [a staff might have several magical functions but when they're used-up they never recover and you're left with just a good quality staff]. Of course you're generally not paying character points for those items.

Re: Tiger Beetle! It was stated by Steve some time ago that you needed to buy megascale sight linked to your megascale movement in order to be able to see at those speeds. Of course no one has purchased it in any of the books that I can remember seeing. So technically every speedster with megascale movement is running blind.

Re: Is it Dex or is it Speed? In that instance the coding would take a pre-set amount of time [1 minute, 5 minutes, 25 minutes, etc, determined by the GM at the onset] and the player would take time penalties for trying to do it quicker, before the delta force dude could get in. The character's speed score would have nothing to do with it.

Re: Villains Vandals And Vermin (VVV) I do run a darker style of game [i like the new DEMON] but even then many of these characters wouldn't fit in my game. I don't find Fleshtone to be too bad but when compiled with the others it seems to become redundant [too many characters doing the same basic thing]. Putting the poor artwork and uninspired backgrounds aside, I find most of these characters are just incredibly poorly constructed. Dexes and defenses all over the place with a general reduction in Con in many cases due to using End Reserves. That leaves far too many characters who can be stunned by simple 10d6-11d6 attacks. On top of that many of the characters are just cookie-cutter in design. It's like Steve opened the USPD and just picked things right out of the book without any thought of originality. Do we really need another brick like Dreadnaught who has the same "brick trick" multipower everyone else has? Where's the originality? Does the mentalists have to have the same 60 point multipowers with the same mind control, mental illusion, ego attack that everyone has? I'm not even going to try to figure out the Dark Champions power level characters like Ambush, Arachne, Buzzsaw, Lynx, and others. What game has use for characters whose damage is in the 3 to 6 DC range?

Re: Villains Vandals And Vermin (VVV)

Re: Villains Vandals And Vermin (VVV) I don't find VVV to be terrible, I just don't find the characters to be very comic-booky. In many instances it feels more like I'm reading a bio on someone from the Wildcards series rather then someone in a comic book. There are some good characters in the book but the majority seem to be filler. It's just too much of the same thing: bad thing happened to me so I turned bad. When you compound uninspired characters with mostly uninspired artwork you're left with a book that only has a handful of characters I'll ever use. I don't regret the purchase [i support the Champions line] but this book's going to end up sitting on the shelf next to a bunch of 3e/4e Enemies books that I've never used as well.

Re: 6th Edition Hero System I believe that's mostly correct. Your eloquence is better then mine. A universal game should be, IMO, universal. It should make logical sense from start to end. If it doesn't make sense from one end to the other then don't call it universal. Call it what it really is: several genre-based games all trying to pretend they're universal, and failing because they really aren't. I see two ways around the problem. Either reconfigure the entire game to one benchmark level or reconfigure each genre to only work with itself. I don't really care which way Hero goes with it. I only know that I don't want my 12d6, 30 resistant defense supers finding it impossible to even scratch a 30 defense, 7d6 rka tank [and getting wiped out when it fires the cannon]; and at the same time I don't want that superhero taking 48 stun due to a lucky roll from a desert eagle pistol.