Alverant

Re: The things I've learned playing a Martial Artist

While that's good advice on many levels, remember that just because something is possible in a given style doesn't mean that any given character can automatically do it. Letting martial artists do things for free just because the real-world style allows it has potential to cause equity issues with other players who have to pay points for everything they get.

 

Also, don't fall into the trap of mistaking the player for the character. One player in my last game group was a nationally-ranked martial artist and instructor. His character was good, but didn't have near the variety of manuevers that the player did. So the player had to be reminded periodically that his character was less skilled than he was (at least in that area). Granted, that's probably a rare case among gamers...

I never said "for free". I said real world experience can be used to justify BUYING some powers. In 4th ed UMA Kenjutsu does not have a takedown maneuver. Yet two classes a weak for two weeks by a somewhat typically (un)athletic gamer learned how to swing a bamboo sword to make the target fall down. Now if I can learn it in about 4 hours (minus the regular practice time) what can a dedicated character do in the days between adventures?

Re: The things I've learned playing a Martial Artist

This may sound a little strange, but if someone is teaching a class in the same MA as your character, you should consider taking it. Or at least one like it if you pick a more exotic MA.

First it teaches you skills that can last a lifetime.

Second it gets you out of the house.

Third, you WILL learn how to your character more effectively. I have a character who used Kendo (Japanese sword fighting) because I was taking a class in Kundo (Korean sword fighting). I surprised the GM a few times by using Disarm a few times because I just learned how to do it in class. Remember OAFs are suppose to be a limitation, use them!

Fourth, as good as the marital arts books are, they are no substitute for the real thing. If you know more about what the MA involves, you can justify buying different powers and more maneuvers. Especially if you can demonstrate them to/on the GM.

Re: Anywhere but your own country

This probably won't count but I'm in a Fantasy setting in its own world. The problem I have is the lack of connections it has with our own world. If you don't feel a connection to the campaign setting, it is sometimes hard to get involved. So many American players may not be keen on having a campaign set outside the US. To be done well the GM and players will have to remember the cultural differences and if one of the group knows more about it then the rest, he (or she) will either be correcting the group or be frustrated at the mistakes or have a really thick skin.

Re: COH/COV conversions

Actually, teleport foe costs End. You could argue that it also requires Concentration (since you stop moving), and Extra Time (delayed phase or extra segment - I'd have to time it or something). Plus, the Clairvoyance is Only for targeting enemies, linked to the teleport, only for sight, etc.

 

I'm guessing that you could build the whole thing for about 70 points for both powers - it's abusive, but not substantially so. And, the side effect of a miss is something like Angers entire mob, 11- (14- is you aim for an LT or Boss and miss).

You're right in that it does cost END, but since in Hero the END depends on the active points of a power, this would clost a boat load of END. In CoH, the END spent on the power is quickly recovered, but in Hero you'd need to buy something like +30 Recovery only for TP Foe. I figure it was cheaper to buy it at 0END.

Re: COH/COV conversions

I don't think some powers translate well. Early in CoH/V you can get this great power called "Teleport Foe". You can target an enemy, run behind some cover, then teleport him to you from about 100 yards. So in Hero terms we have Teleport 50", useable as attack, ranged, indirect, 0End, only to bring target to you, enemies only (recall friend is a seperate power) PLUS clairivoyance for targeting beyond LoS. So we have a potentially Cosmic level power being bought by characters after 4 or so months of weekly gaming. Oh, and other powers bought along the way. This power winds up costing the same as any other available to you. It's abusive and very useful if you're soloing or have a friend with the Tripmine power.

Re: You've taken over the world. Now what?

It sort of depends on how you define "world domination." The brute force "destroy all military resistance and force everyone follow my rules" method is entertaining but requires the continuous, widespread application of force to maintain. In that sense it's a logistical nightmare, and only a supremely overconfident villain would imagine he could hold off entropy indefinitely.

 

Then there's the classic "holding the world hostage" scenario, in which you wipe out a tremendous amount of land/people/resources with your doomsday weapon and threaten the same fate to any government that doesn't acquiesce to your demands. This only requires that your doomsday weapon remain untouchable, which is far less arrogant than assuming you can micromanage the entire world by force. Depending on what your demands are, you might not even be the only villain to achieve world domination. Maybe you could start a club.

 

One combination of the two is the "smoky back-room tyrant." This is where you exert just enough control on world leaders/governments, be it through resources, blackmail, military threat, etc., to coerce them into giving you what you want. It takes a lot of careful work and thus requires a high degree of (over)confidence, but it doesn't require nearly as much power as straight brute force.

 

A much easier variation of the brute force approach is "transforming the world into your plaything." This is where some plot device puts total control in your lap. Examples would be reverting mankind to the stone age, mind-controlling the entire human race, freezing time, etc. This doesn't require much arrogance at all. It does require an absurd amount of power.

 

In any case, while it breaks the mold, I think it would be interesting to have a world-conquering villain with little confidence in his own abilities.

Great post. This made me realize another important aspect of world domination: motivation. Why does someone want to take over?

Ego: These are the guys who think it's their destiny or are somehow entitled to rule the planet. They usually don't plan too far after "take over world" so they're easy to topple and may actually surrender/quit when they realize the complications involved. If you can get the team mystic to send them to "The Garden of Earthly Delights" or another "dream fulfillment" dimension, all the better. (Dr.Destroyer)

Agenda: On the other end of the spectrum for some it's what they'll do after they take over the world is their motivation for doing in the first place. Enviromental, religious, revenge, social, whatever they want to change the world and controlling the planet is just step 1. This gives the ultimate "ends don't justify the means" moral lesson. Sure Earth's biosphere will be restored when Dr.Bad ultimate plan is complete, but the human population will undergo a 5.5 billion reduction. On the plus side, you may be able to trick some of the more witless bad guys into believing they got their way. (Viper and Genocide)

Next the Universe: Earth is just a stepping stone to the rest of the galaxy. This could be an alien with advanced tech and may beneficial for just about everyone, but a tyrannt is still a tyrannt. Someone who conquers by force usually isn't a peaceful ruler.

Scorched Earth: It's like Agenda, but the agenda is so horrendous it should be listed seperately. The world this one villian leaves behind isn't worth living in. Demon and Mechanon are prime examples.

It's cool!: Like Ego but more lame. If this guy became Emperor, it would be like those decadant Roman Emperors we've read about. Just find a way to keep them happy and out of the way. Better yet, let them try. They'll either become frustrated or interfere with an acutal threat. This also includes those where taking over the world because it makes their real desires easier. Human experimentation is so much easier once those pesky laws are out of the way.

Re: You've taken over the world. Now what?

In the end' date=' of course, an evil world tyrant exists to be overthrown. So, as a GM I'd develop weak points in the strategy while offering the PCs an opportunity to ally with [i']another[/i] would-be world conquerer to throw off the shackles.

Now do the supervillians realize this or not? Part of the reason why my character is a hero is that he realized if he turned evil he'd get the stuffing beat out of him and thrown in jail, unless he got his soul devowered by a demon or worse. Supervillians with an eye on world domination should have "overconfident" or "arrogant" psych lims if they think the can easily rule the world. Evil characters with realistic expectations are dangerous in a whole different ways.

Re: Unlucky in Love?

I'd like to see an optional rule that allows Luck and Unluck to be specialized to a certain situation (love, job, traveling, etc). It's still worth the same amount of points, but you roll more often. For example your character is going on a trip. With normal Unluck you roll once to see if something bad happens. But Unluck while Traveling, you would roll at every stage of the trip; packing, drive to the airport, waiting on the jet, on the jet, landing at the other airport, hotel, and so on. Something bad is bound to go wrong somewhere.

I heard of a different variance called Jinx where the levels don't apply to you, but to your friends around you.

Re: You've taken over the world. Now what?

I think Dr. Doom has done that. A couple of times.

He did it in the Marvel 2099 universe. As I remember, he was doing a pretty good job of running it too. The world must be pretty messed up when Dr.Doom does a better job of governing it than the current leaders.

Re: You've taken over the world. Now what?

To quote from Star Wars:

---

Governor Tarkin: The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.

 

General Tagge: But that's impossible. How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?

 

Governor Tarkin: The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.

---

 

That and a whole bunch of hired gunmen will buy you quite a bit of security.

And we all know what happened next, which was part of my point. The empire itself lasted little more than a generation which is a sliver compared to the thousands of years the Republic stood.

We don't really see much of the Star Wars culture apart from the Empire and Rebelion. We know corruption was so common place smuglers and crime lords were pretty much free to do what they wanted (provided it wasn't too much of a thorn in the Empire's side). Descension was strong enough to fund the Rebelion to mass produce and maintain their fighters, cruisers, network of spies, weapons, resources, recruits. The Rebelion itself was able to organize itself to have ranks and medals. Even then what really destroyed the Empire was one father protecting his son.

How would you keep the "whole lot of hired gunmen" from deciding to take over? You can't use cash from the nation you conquered. It's virtually useless. So you'd have to keep a steady stream of outside resources to keep them happy. Even that causes a problem since these mercenaries might decide they can get it all now, instead of later, by going after you.

What you would need is to be vastly superior in power to the people you're taking over so that any rebelion is ineffective, and even that isn't a guarantee. (Remember how effective the Ewoks were in taking out the Empire's technologically advanced soldiers?) Whatever you do, if people still think for themselves, you're going to have to put up with those who would unseat you. So how do you deal with them? How do you plan for them?

I saw the post about taking over Canada and my first thought was "why". Nothing against Canada, but it's a large country with a large population with lots of places to hide. Even if someone was to take over the country, keeping it would be impractical even without the US and other nations coming in to help. Maintaining control over a large group of people has problems. You have to insure loyalty, if not loyalty then you have to supress rebellion. Unless you have vast mind control powers to keep free will from being a problem, you have to have some way to keep control.

In the real world, we have police and military to keep order. Even they have their own internal division to keep them in line. Our government has checks and balances. A villain who takes over a nation would require something similar and a lot stronger. That requires upkeep that the conquerer would have to do by themselves. Do they realize this or are most wannabe rulers short-sighted?

So what do you GMs do? Do your world conquerers have the stradgey and resources to keep control once their master plan succeeds? What do you do if your players ask this to the villain?

Re: Difficulty reaching Super-Hero status

I made a character using a similar idea, a suit of powered armor that focuses on durability than fancy gadgets. The first thing I'd do is boost your armor to campaign max and add Hardened. Maybe throw in Damage Reduction. WWII tanks are still working but not so much tanks from the 70s or so. Back then, things were more durable. Plus Golden age heroes had high defences. To enforce the "durable" notion, you can add Power Defence with the "only for suit" to keep cyberkineticists at bay.

Since the suit is heavy from the steel, add a few extra DC in hand attacks. Also an ex-soldier would have extra running, stun, and endurance. I also don't see any WF. Boosting her PS:Soldier would cover any skills you forgot. Actually, contrary to the other posts, I'd keep the extra air at 12 seconds because if Diesel is smaller than her father and grandfather then there would be extra room inside. Finally you can't go wrong with a dice or two of luck. I second the idea of saving a few points to use for skills you learn as you need them.

I'm talking with my GM about converting my character's Urban Magic multipower into a VPP and I'm crunching some numbers.

In Arcane Adverseries, Adrian Vandaleur has a VPP with the limitation "No more than 2 slots at a time". I assume that means a slot with more than one power counts as one slot. How much would a "one slot at a time" limitation be worth, effectively making it a multipower with an unlimited number of slots?

Giving a cosmic VPP a 1/2 limitation makes the final cost the same as a multipower with 10 fully powered Ultra slots. If you add on a limitation like "fire magic only", the final cost is the same as a multipower with 7.5 ultra slots. If the "one slot at a time" limitation is -1, the final cost is a multipower with 4 slots.

On one hand I can see some justification, if someone has 10 slots then they probably have enough control to justify converting it into a VPP. But this just seems too cheap. If it's done, not only is the character more versitle, they could have more points to spend. Is this legal?

(All calculations are made without worrying about rounding. I used a 60 point pool as a base and no limitations on the multipower.)

Re: Day jobs for characters...

Here are the less interesting jobs that still turned out to entertaining in game...

Telemarketer

Door-to-door salesman

Shoe Salesman (Yup. Shoe Salesman. No, his name wasn't Al.)

Wouldn't these be an occupation for a superVILLAIN? (especially a telemarketer)

Re: Day jobs for characters...

I have a character who is one of the few experts into the origin and nature of superpowers and does a lot of freelance work for the government and universities. That way any super-battle is explained away as doing research. Another character got rich off his inventions before becoming a superhero. A third is a college student and has to work his tail off to catch up with his studies. But that's OK since he hasn't picked a major yet. He'd be a full time student for life if he had his way. (He doesn't think that far ahead. Everyone is pushing him to take control over his life so he's rebelling by doing nothing.)

Re: I got a new idea for a supervillain team.

Strawberries are high in anti-oxidents which counter free radicals in the body. Free radicals are when there aren't enough electrons in an atom so they steal from other atoms, who in turn steal from others, and so on. Since strawberries counter this, they must have extra electrons which means electricity! So you can justify giving Strawberry moon electric powers, ranged healing (a healing lightning bolt), and other purifing powers. It may not be so suited to a villain, but this would be effective against heroes/police who use tear gas, smoke, etc.

Re: Superheroes and Religion

Amish Superman really isn't that much of a stretch. When you're invulnerable to mundane harm and strong enough to move worlds' date=' total non-violence isn't a problem. Cosmic foes could kill him, but otherwise it's almost the same character.[/quote']

I can see a Superman varient who takes the Amish shunning of technology to a whole new level. Not only does he shun technology, he shuns its effects. He is invulurnable to any harm/effect produced by technology. A gun wouldn't hurt him but Joe Goon's right hook could.

Re: I'm gone

No. I may have use for them a few years down the road.

Mark, may I ask why you're quitting. Are you tired of the game itself? Burnout? Time constraints? Family/girlfriend/wife? You could just need a break. We all need one from time to time. I hope the friends you met while gaming stay friends. I've been gaming with my group for over 3 years and if this group broke up, I'd loose some of the best friends I ever had.

Re: Superheroes and Religion

Still interesting. Would be interesting to see athiest and agnostics broken out of the "none of the above" category.

Agreed. If someone did not give an answer, what would that be listed under. Their main site does break "atheism" down into different types but the prison chart did not. Christianity and Islam are seperated by sect, so why not atheists? Is it hard to define or is there still the "no answer = no religion" confusion?

Re: Superheroes and Religion

Ah, I think there are great reasons to doubt that studies current validity if you are trying to apply the conclusions drawn then to people of today.

 

Todays society and culture has had great changes in religious expression (and the manner it is expressed) since that study was conducted.

 

TB

Yes, if anything the percentage of atheists in prisons has gone down. It's less aceptable today than 80 years ago to attack someone for not being Christian or doing something legal that is against Christian teaching (homosexuality, pronography, being non-Christian, teaching evoltuion, etc). Religion is loosing its shield against the law and atheists are still pretty much in the same boat as before.

Re: Superheroes and Religion

I really don't see what is so off base with this site. It does a pretty good job of looking at what's mentioned in comics and using contexts that are shown to figure out what the most likely religion is for popular comics characters.

 

Is it so amazing that the vast majority of comics characters are Christian or Jewish (taking into consideration the demographics of NYC)?

 

I think you are discounting it because it doesn't fit with your world view.

 

"Oh, there aren't any/enough Neo-Pagans mentioned, this list is crap."

 

"Megalomaniacal Narcisists who bow to no power are listed as being athiest/agnostic. This list has to be crap."

 

TB

Well they label some evil characters as atheists without cause. Maybe it's because they don't fit into this authors world view? Yes I am discounting much of what he says, but that's not just because of my world view. It is because in some cases the evidence is pretty flimsy including how he states the vast majority of villains are atheist/agnostic bue doesn't say WHY.

Re: Superheroes and Religion

I wouldn’t be surprised if atheists and agnostics are disproportionately underrepresented among convicted criminals; most of the atheists I’ve known are good people.

 

But may I ask for a source on your statistics? I’d be interested in looking them up.

 

Lucius Alexander

STUDIES: ATHEISTS SUPPLY LESS THAN 1% OF PRISON POPULATIONS

by Wayne Aiken, North Carolina Director

I will concede the study is about 80 years old, but there's no reason to doubt the numbers changed that much. After all, we still accept writings that are many times older. Plus in Christianity, God forgives everyone. Why worry about being moral if you can be forgiven so easily? It would be interesting to run the study again though, just to see how it is today.

Re: Superheroes and Religion

I didn't explore the site that thoroughly, but it did look like for each character some kind of "evidence" was cited.

 

As for villains and atheism, possibly the reasoning is that a villain is almost by definition breaking the moral codes of most religions, and so is probably not a sincere practicioner of any such religion. I'd consider such reasoning faulty, but it may be the reasoning used.

Yeah, that reasoning is pretty week. Actually so is his evidence. About 10% of the US population are atheists, agnostics, etc if their reasoning was correct we'd make up the same amount (or more) in prisons. Yet only 0.1% of prisoners are atheists, agnostics, etc. Anyway, I took another look at the site and just about everyone has links giving evidence EXCEPT for most of the atheists. There is no "pure" atheist villain (not a type of atheist or one who later converted) who is labeled that without explination. Curiously enough, every atheist (and all but one agnostic) hero is given justification. transmetahuman is probably right, the labels are ones given by default based on false stereotypes.

Re: Superheroes and Religion

I'm kind of curious as to how they come to the conclusion that these characters are of thier particular religion. Some of them I know for certain since they've flat out said so in the comics but what of others? Or have I not not read enough comics in my life?

Agreed.

I've also noticed the reluctance to say heroes are atheists. But he seems to have no problem saying "Most super-villains in mainstream comic books are atheists, agnostics, or simply non-religious.Aside from a few major villains, the list below primarily focuses on villains who have a known religious affiliation other than atheism." Then in the following lists includes quite a few who he says are atheists. Why does is assumption made that villains are atheists and not heroes?

Re: Foxbat: A place in your campaign?

In the campaign I'm in, Foxbat is a LOON! Unfortunately he popular, very rich, and very lucky as well, but first and foremost he's a LOON. Oh, he also has a very competent butler and horde of lawyers who are very well paid and know there are few problems that Foxbat causes that can't be fixed by adding zeroes to a check. He's sometimes a villain, but the populas doesn't take him seriously. He gets these wild ideas that don't strictly work out but always wind up making money for him.

In the campaign he has a crush on our female character who, while an adult, is still emotionally about the same as a child. To her boys are still gross and kissing them is icky. Foxbat (who is mature in comparison) doesn't let that stop his attempts to romance her. That's good for us because we don't mind protecting her from his advances. Did you know that when frozen in time, Foxbat makes a great club and throwing object?

So in the end we have a LOON who's schemes both amuse the city and generate money thereby (in addition to his lawyers) keep him safe from a righteous pounding from probably the only group of people who don't like him.