Alverant

Re: Heroes for pay

Re: Would you allow it?: A FF buster Since the OP did say he was watching Star Trek, I assumed his Detect was tech based as in some goggles or set up in powered armor linked to the weapon. If it's tech, I'd say that counts for a lab since scanning for a frequency isn't that hard. Car stereos do it for radio stations. Personally I'd say the Detect was a mandatory part of the power because it justifies the effect of matching shield harmonics. If it's a sense you'd just have to see it in action for a moment to learn what you need to bypass it. To amend my earlier post about the D in AVLD, I'll also want to include hardened FF/FW because Hardened means it's harder to penetrate it by special advantages so it should include this AVLD.

Re: Humans are "Special"

Re: Would you allow it?: A FF buster I'd go with AVLD with the defense being non-FF/FW defenses (probably worth a +1 because the defenses are pretty common) then Indirect to bypass FW completely, then I'd add "requires base Detect Roll" at -1/4 or -0 to simulate attuning the blast to the FF/FW.

Re: Humans are "Special" Another question would be, why would aliens have special abilities except for higher tech? I read this thread from the start and I couldn't think of any reason aliens wouldn't be as adaptable, reproducing, tolerant, social, etc as any human society. I can't "realistically" see why aliens would have super-strength, hyper IQ, psychic powers, and so on. Why should they have abilities and not us? The problem we have is that we haven't seen an alien civilization to compare ourselves to. Nature is a give and take force. Cheetahs are the fastest land animal on the planet, but they're so exhausted after making a kill they can't fight for their meal if something else comes by to claim it. Owls have great eye sight, but their eyeballs take up so much room in their skulls they're rock stupid. Nature hates specialization. If you give an alien race one ability standard, they should have a common weakness. For example if they have better eyesight, give them worse hearing. If they have a diverse and rich culture, they become snobs and disdainful of all other species. A military culture would have less empathy for outsiders. Some other minor ideas for ways aliens can be inferior: * Reproductive restrictions. The species has been isolated within their own groups for so long their races are genetically incompatible by either a strict caste system or physical isolation for most of their evolution. (In humans, an Inuit man and a woman from Bombay can have a child.) * Weaker spacial awareness * Unable to taste/smell certain things (cats can't taste sweet) * Dietary restrictions * Severe sexual dimorphism * Lack of biodiversity on their homeworld * Inability to dream * Poor diplomats * UGLY

Re: The "weirdness magnet" disadvantage I'd do it as a hunted, mildly punish, with NCI since weirdness can happen ANYWHERE. I'd also restrict it to not-so-serious campaigns. In serious campaigns, remove the mildly punish.

Re: Matriarchial Societies If all else fails you can have a female-dominated religion in a theocracy. Women are the child-bearers. A theology could argue that logically the Creator was a woman and would make women, the gender who bears children, first and man second. (In the Real World we have the notion of Mother Nature and related Gaia deities.) In such a religion women would hold all the spiritual power and wield it in secular matters. I'm thinking a structure like the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. I also remember about a Greek play where the women refused to be intimate with their husbands until they stop making war. I'm sure that can be worked into things. I'm tired so I can't connect these thoughts right now. Goodnight.

Re: Characters Losing Their Souls - How To Handle It? I thought about it some more and I think we're going about the problem wrong. The issue is more of helping the GM get out of the corner he painted himself into and less of saying what happens to PC sans-soul. As I understand the OP (Original Poster): 1) Some PCs make a deal that requires them to do something. 2) If the PCs break the deal they loose their souls. 3) The PCs don't know what they'll have to do to fulfill the bargain. 4) The dealmaker will have them do something that will aid Evil. So here's how I will handle it: The PCs are told what each must to to fulfill the bargain. They will be questionable, but not overtly evil. I picture the tasks involving some of the plot hooks of Captain Kronos (you must make sure this person gets to this location after 5pm Thursday). When given the task, the PCs are told what they loose if they fail or refuse. Doing each task will be a session since the whole group will be involved. Any who fail or refused, will loose their soul and you have a session showing them what happens. It was already discussed what soul-less effects are so I'll skip that. Let's just say that in the end, the PCs should REALLY want their souls back. The dealmaker then gives them a grace period before the soul is lost permanently (or reclaimed through force) that was harder than the first task. When the tasks are done and souls are reclaimed, you reveal the effects of completing their tasks so now the PCs have to repair the damage they indirectly did. For example the man who the helped reach his destination on time was actually a mob informant. Getting him at a certain place by 5 led to a short series of events that got him killed. (A made man spotted him with an ADA and figured out what happened.) So now the PCs have to avenge his death and salvage the ADA's case. Ideally when you're done, the PCs won't be making similar agreements in the future.

Re: Characters Losing Their Souls - How To Handle It? In the Big Eyes Small Mouth system there are 3 basic stats: Mind, Body, and Soul. I bring this up because the Soul is an explicit stat apart from the other two. It's part of neither Mind nor Body. That's my take on this discussion. I have issues with some of the suggestions for loosing one soul. For example if a soul is life force and a soulless character can't recover or has reduced ability to heal damage and recover END, then what about animals? If they don't have souls, shouldn't they also have the reduced ability to heal damage and rest? Also if souls are the ability to love and experience joy, then how can our pets show us affection? As for morality, animals have that too though in more primal and basic forms. I would take a loss of soul to be more abstract and metaphysical. 1) You can only perform magic that the new soul's owner grants you. 2) You loose all creativity. Not just in terms of art and writing, but even in small ways like telling little white lies to explain to your boss why you took a 3 hour lunch as your superhero ID foiled a bank robbery. 3) Likewise you can no longer become inspired and think abstractly. 4) You become suspectible to be Turned like undead and being Mind Controlled. 5) Soul-based magic has no affect on you, for good or ill. 6) You no longer appreciate things like music or beauty and honor. 7) You act more like an animal in attitude and slowly become more uncivilized. 8) Travel to higher planes is impossible, higher beings no longer recognize you as human. 9) Death is permenant (even for a comic book death) until the soul is recovered. But you may be turned into a true undead. 10) Other strange things start to happen. Animals don't like you. Babies cry if you're near. Your vision looks like someone is turning down the Color setting on an old TV. No or altered shadow. Automatic doors, electronic scales, digital cameras, etc no longer register your existance. Feeling incomplete. Bizarre dreams of your soul calling out to you. Apethetic behavior to things not directly related to your survival. The characters should feel something is missing that they can't quite put their finger on. Then what happened comes to them in a rush. Recovering/freeing their soul suddenly becomes very important and only becomes more urgent as time passes.

Re: Toying with new character concepts I remember in one of the 4th ed books there was a villain group called Prism and every member had a name based on the colors of the rainbow (Bluestreak [minibrick, speedster, football player], Purple Haze [psychedelic power]). Green was an aging supermodel and was jealous of younger women. She got involved in some chemical accident that made her into green slime. (Going from memory so I'm not 100% accurate.) She had some stealth abilities with the sfx being the ability to ooze her body through small places. The slime itself was a drain multipower including a COM drain.

Re: What If? Empire Wins I was wondering what would happen if the Borg invaded the Senate World (whatever it's called) during the battle at the beginning of Episode III. The drones would easily be controlled and assimilated. Anakin and Kenobi are captured as they exit hyperspace and suddenly every borg out there gets a massive infusion of midiclorians (sp) and knowledge on how to use the Force.

With the X-com remake (UFO: Extraterrestrials) being released it got me thinking about the possibility of running an X-com style campaign. For those who don't know, the premise of the games is that your planet is slowly being invaded by aliens. You have to manage multiple bases, research new weapons, build new equipment, uncover the real threat, and of course fight the aliens. The PCs would be soldiers, field scientists, psionics, medics, etc defending their planet. Now the combat part is easy (I have some ideas on how to make it go faster since we're dealing with speeds from 2-5). But how would I do the other aspects of the campaign like research or the making of new weapons? Would they happen off-game for instance we start a session with the commander issuing out the Gauss Rifle mk 3? Or would the scientist PC have to make a few rolls and start working on it during the game?

Re: Help with an alternate world: Amazon Earth

Re: ARGENT Super Villians I see Argent to be like Viper but with a more science/business aspect. Any supervillains it has would be employees. Interface is closely tied to Argent but no longer technically an employee. He does part-time work for them in exchange for maintenance and upgrades. Other villains with similar requirements (high tech parts) would also be employees. The closest thing they would have as full time supervillains are squads in powered armor say 300-325 in points. Nothing that could take on a superhero one on one, but a squad of them with some training would be very effective.

Has anyone ever had any problems with the players having knowledge of events between the Pulp age and today? Things like which companies to invest in, inventions, who to avoid and who to befriend? If so, how do you deal with it? The worst I've seen (and done) was with my Chicago native character talk about the Cubbies. "We're gonna win big this year." "We can't keep losing forever! We'll get the pennant in 10, 20 years tops!" It was all tongue-in-cheek and everyone got a nice chuckle out of it.

Re: Regrettable Disads In my Pulp Hero campaign my character has some Wealth and his relatives knew that (a nice big Catholic family). So I took Hunted by Moochers 11-. Unfortunately I forgot to narrow it down to family (or the GM made me take the family part out since we spent so much time away from them). So just about every time my character meets a woman, she's a gold digger. Now if my character gets involved in a romantic plot he's always going to be asking, "Does she love me or my money?" Oh, I also forgot about this disad for a while. I came close to asking the GM if he had issues with women because this. Of course if he reads this, I'm so dead but that's something else.

Re: Limitation Value Suggestions Actually I would think "No Figured" would be included because the limitations are "Only For Throwing" and not "Only For Throwing and Figured Characteristics". But it should mean that every instance of limited STR should be at least -3/4. With -1/2 being from "No Figured" and the rest being from the specialization affects STR as a power and not a Characteristic.

Re: Powering up the Victory Party I don't have the book with me right now, but I think the best way to power up the Victory Party is to either give them more members (as you did with Carnivore) or actually give them legitimate power. What happens if they do win an election while keeping the Nazi attitudes secret? Beating up Nazis are fun and all, but what happens if you beat up the bodyguards of an Alderman? How about contacts in city government? I don't know if any members like stealth, but if one learns how to sneak around well, it would be a big indirect power boost. It doesn't matter how good your crime-mobile is, a cut brake line will still ruin your day.

Re: WWYCD: Let's Rock! Metromancer would use his cyberkinetic spells to be a one-man band for the warm-up act.

Re: Top 10 Action Hero One-Liners Transformers The Movie "I have better things to do tonight than die" Springer "You, who is without mercy, now plead for it? I thought you were made of sterner stuff" Optimus Prime "We can't hold out forever Kup. But we can give them one humongous repair bill!" Hot Rod "Me Grimlock kick butt!" Grimlock Red Dwarf "A swift knee in the happy sacks and he'll drop like everyone else!" Lister "Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast." Ace Rimmer "Princess Vongella, I'm Ace Rimmer. There'll be time for explanations later, and hopefully some sex." Ace Rimmer

Re: Rejected Superhero Names Rejected Superhero Names The Amazing Steve Baker (Secret ID, Steve Baker) Dr.Evil Captain Takes Double Damage from Sonics Dr.Destroyer

Re: Rejected Superhero Names Uh-oh, I have a character called Divine Wind. He's a college student possessed by his samauri ancestor.

Re: Best ever Reason to NOT be a superVillian!! Even Peapod won't deliver to your Fortress of Certain Doom! Once your real identity is known you'll never be able to go out in public peacefully again.

Re: Brainstorming superhero team liaisons In politics who gets appointed can depend less on competence and more on connections. This liaison got the job because, while he's qualified, he pulled in a favor. Maybe he thinks it's an easy job. Maybe he likes the location. Maybe he thinks it's a stepping stone to bigger and better things. Who knows, maybe his motives are pure and wants to be an asset to the superteam. In any case, he's not as good as he think he is. Most of his power comes from his friends and if those feathers get ruffled, things can get ugly. One person on the team is going to be this guy's bud. This superhero can do no wrong. His suspicions are facts. The liaison will go the extra mile and even risk getting one of his connections upset to help the hero. Naturally, the hero is the one who matches up with the liaison's political views. Conversely there will be one teammate who the liaison will hate for ideological reasons (this hero is a mutant, alien, minority {religious or racial}, has different views). If you can't think of something logical bring up a failure in that teammate's past that the liaison can bring up again and again justify his dislike. If the group doesn't like it, then the rhetoric will be toned down but the emotions will be bottled up. Whenever the group thinks they've been infiltrated by a shape shifter or is being mind controlled or is a double agent, guess who the liaison accuses first?

Re: I need to brainstorm some anachronistic items I've noticed a lot of these deal with events in the past century. How far back should we be going for anachronistic items? I know technically anachronistic means "out of time" so even an alternate Miss USA 2007 would qualify, but I get the impression that some antique anachronistic items would be better. A Guttenburg Talmud Romeo and Juliet by Sir Francis Bacon St. Thomas Aquinas paper endorsing usury Ptolemy's Geographia with the meridian through Alexandria All you have to do is take a famous (or not so famous) book or paper and have it say something different in a significant way. (Dante putting usurers in the 6th [not 7th] circle of hell wouldn't be too valuable, but Aquinas doing a 180 from real history would be. Ptolemy putting the meridian through his home city would be in between.)