Alverant

Re: Stigmata or other manifestations of divinity As he's a DNPC you can give him whatever you want and not worry about the "how", especially if he's an antagonist to the players. But if you insist, I would give him a good PRE and related skills. Maybe a clerical rank. Remember in the real world, there are people who amassed followers who were convinced of his/her divine nature. That would be ironically fitting in a supers campaign to have a normal person be more powerful than an actual paranormal.

Re: Gaspode the Talking Dog Thanks, but I like the idea given in the first response to http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/81138-Things-that-trigger-Complications-Limitations in that it should cost 0 points. It's not really the Gaspode making people interpret his talking as an inner voice or someone else in the crowd. It's the person's own preconceptions doing it. Call it species prejudice. For example if someone is convinced all Trolls are stupid and hears a troll give a lecture about calculus then the person is going to think the Troll is just parroting what is being whispered to her or she memorized the lecture before hand. That person won't even consider that she is a Troll who is smart enough to give the lecture on her own. So a person who knows that dogs can't talk will invent reasons why they heard the phrase, "You're a worthless jerk." after kicking some mutt. So if the person is doing it to themselves, why should it cost points?

One of the characters in Terry Prachett's Discworld series is a talking dog named Gaspode. No, I'm not going to ask how to build him. It would be easy; remove Animal Intelligence limitation and add English and Wolf languages. No, I'm wondering how to build another one of his "abilities". [from his wikipedia entry] However, since everyone knows that dogs can't speak, people tend to interpret his speech as their own personal thoughts, a tendency which Gaspode regularly uses to wangle food from passers by. The few people immune to this effect are those open minded enough to consider the possibility of a talking dog. Would this be the telepathy power or simply the skills psychology or ventriloquism to make people think that Gaspode's voice is either their own inner voice or a random voice in the crowd? I'd probably add a -1/4 limitation regardless for "Doesn't work on anyone who thinks a talking dog is possible" which would pretty much be anyone who the GM thinks would further the plot.

Re: Thoughts on the new Champions Universe for 6E My main complaint is with Defender. He's an powered armored hero whose costume doesn't look much like powered armor. It looks more like spandex with a helmet. Worse it leaves his jaw and neck exposed. I could see someone like Grond saying "Hero has twist of top!" or a good punch to the face taking his head off. Witchcraft needs a better name. Dr.Destroyer should NOT be a mage. His power should come from the fruits of his own genius and not some mysterious shadow dimension. Ironclad is a bet better built as a gladiator. But I don't like a brick using a HKA weapon. They should either have a club or (ideally) go barehanded. Replacing Nightwind with Kinetix, very good idea. But I would still like to see Nightwind as an example character.

Re: GMing style, what else apart from 'Round the Table'? "New is a relative term" At this point all of the players have years of experience RPing. The "newest" one is the wife of one of the players. She has to look up the rules half the time, but she's a very good role player. Experience isn't the problem. The role-playing style is. Everyone wants to have fun. It's just that some people's definition of fun involves challenging the GM and other players (note I said players, not characters).

Re: GMing style, what else apart from 'Round the Table'? I'm not sure how much info would be helpful. We have 6 players (self included) made up of 2 married couples, the brother of the wife of one of the couples, and myself. But we're pretty independent and like having complete freedom in designing our characters. As such in all our campaigns no characters have ever been connected before teaming up (even when requested by the GM). The backgrounds are too diverse to forge any real common points of interest. The teams function more like a business than anything. There's very little teamwork in and out of combat and non-hero business. That makes things extra tough. My first real GMing in years is a Dark Champions campaign and I did ask that the other players take it easy on me and try to write characters who could connect with each other. No such luck. The characters had NOTHING in common and the players were too busy IRL to try and rework their backgrounds so there were some links. That's what made me want to come here and ask for help. At the end of one session one character was seriously wounded and effectively out of action for the next session (I flirted with trying to stick to a calendar). I tried to engage him but he didn't want to do anything but rest and recover. Can't blame him when you're at 2 BODY. I like all the advice so far. What I really need is a way to get the players to participate more. I like the idea of a player who's "off camera" take over the role of NPC. I would have to see if my group would go for it though.

Re: Oil spill I only have one character who can breath underwater, Snark-E. He would gather the people responsible for this (BP executives) and they're "toys" (cars, planes, etc) then use them to plug the hole in the pipe. If they're REALLY nice about it, he'll give them scuba-gear beforehand and maybe use them last.

I've been part of a regular gaming group for a while. We alternate GMs and I've been behind the screen a few times. But it seems like in all the games the GM turns to each player in turn and spends about half an hour developing their own plot line then a fight pops up related to one of the plots and everyone does the combat. It's fun and everything, but it's like unless you're taking notes for the group (a necessary and thankless task) a player spends several hours doing nothing. They're watching other players take their turn most of the time. That doesn't seem fair. Sure, you can try to weave two or more plots together so those two players can actually role play longer. But how long can you keep that up? How many amazing coincidences can you use before it gets forced? Maybe we've been doing it wrong all these years. I want to hear about what alternatives a GM has to "OK what do you do?"

Re: nations with royal families Not sure if it counts as a royal family, but the Vatican does have a monarch-for-life of sorts who is elected by a kind of nobility. There's no real chance of a dynasty or family. But in a fictional history a family who knows what could happen.

Re: So, are Bricks more expensive in 6th Edition? I see Damage Negation as a way to render immunity. As a GM I would nigh-require any DN to only be vs a particular kind of attack. If done right, it's a way to make villains that require heroes to defeat and can't be handled by local police. For example 6d6 Damage Negation vs conventional weapons (-1/2) is a mere 20 points but makes you immune to whatever the cops have. You don't have to worry about lucky shots to the head or defeat by a thousand "2 stun gets through" attacks for example. Meanwhile a hero with 6d6 heat ray vision would have better luck than a dozen cops since his attack won't be blocked by DN. OTOH if the national guard just happen to be nearby guarding a shipment of bazookas that would be a different story.

Re: So, are Bricks more expensive in 6th Edition? Yeah, I don't like the wording of that either. On one hand, it's great for new players because it's clear about how many points you have to spend (400 pts not 325+75 in disads). Plus it's clear as to how many disads you are required to have, one way or another. So a new player can have however few disads he/she wants but still have to come up with 75 points total. But us veteran players still see it as base plus disads.

Re: WHY CSL's One advantage to CSL is that it's easier to justify limitations on them to make it cheaper. If you're going to apply a limitation on the CV stats (like a focus) it's harder to justify; you're usually left with a suit of armor or a magic maguffin amulet. CSLs with a focus limitation can be weapon sites, a higher quality weapon, etc. More importantly as a CSL focus you can toss the focus to someone else who needs it (usually done in Heroic level campaigns).

I remember reading about stooge-jitsu in an old issue of Adventurer's Club for 4th edition. Has anyone converted it to 6th? I lost my AC collection a few years ago in a flood and didn't really miss them except for little things like this.

Re: Please help me understand I hope there's no Dragon Slave spell. (Tried to do it in the Fanasty campaign my group sometimes runs and the GM didn't allow it.) For a new playing a VPP can be very confusing. I would suggest having the main spells in a multipower then giving her like a 10pt VPP for other minor spells. Here the VPP wouldn't need much defining, just guestimate if a spell can be done in 10 points and allow it. Provided it's not used in combat and you let other players buy it for their powers it should not be an issue. Example spells for the VPP Magic fishing line: Bonuses to Fishing skill (used in I think the 2nd episode of Slayers) Bump of Direction (toss stick in the air and it lands pointing north) Life Support Breath Water Darkness 1 Hex Shatter Spell (1 pip RKA vs fragile objects)

Re: Must have books If you've been away for a while I think Villainy Amok would be useful to give you adventure ideas and ways to set your campaign apart from others. Everyman gives you a host of NPCs to use. Depending on your level of realism I would suggest getting a history book and atlas of the campaign city if you're going to hold it in a real city. Google is also handy for finding bits of flavor text. Say one of the characters has a favorite bar, well you can give the bar a real name and have pictures. I did this in my Dark Champions campaign and I think people noticed the effort.

Re: THE Grim Reaper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_caps Basically it's capital letters shrunk to the size of lower case letters. In some books the first line or word of each chapter is done this way.

Re: THE Grim Reaper

Re: THE Grim Reaper

Re: THE Grim Reaper 100 PRE only for fear attacks (all creatures fear Death) There's also the Terry Pratchett version of Grim Reaper who speaks in lower case who would have a DNPC Death of Rats worth 0 points since DoR can't be harmed any more than the Reaper. I can see Death being a hero in an "angel of mercy" way. In the Incarnations of Immortality series he was more sympathetic to people. He made frequent use of the time-stop watch to talk with his clients to make it easier for them and has honored a few last requests. He also answered "fan" mail and promised a little girl who feared dying in her sleep that he will wake her up if that is her destiny. It was a pretty good series if you're patient. Even Satan becomes a somewhat-sympathic figure (or at least as much as the incarnation of Evil can be).

Re: Champions movie I wouldn't use Dr.Destroyer directly. I'd make someone else the main villain. Maybe the Ultimates. Then at the end you pull the clichie of Dr.D sitting in a throne saying "All is unfolding as I have foreseen." Then work it up in the second movie, drop a few more hints. And in the third movie they have to fight him. Since the first movie is almost always an origin story, we shouldn't have a bunch of new heroes defeat one of the biggest baddies in the campaign.

Re: Champions movie

Re: Arabian Knights There's an anime called El-Hazard the Magnificent World that had an Arabian theme which someone converted to Hero system. There was an RPG book by BESM but is long out of print (your local game store MIGHT have a copy). It's not pure Arabian Knights but it does provide an interesting setting.

Re: Dimensional Fun! I remember in Champions Worldwide the member of Tiger Squad who has cold-based powers got his power by pulling it in from another dimension.

Re: Dimensional Fun! I remember TV Heaven with the white clouds and philly cream cheese. The planet which is really an Edomite. The original planes of the Edomites and their enemies.

Re: Would you play a game with pre-generated characters?