garou

Re: Need help with...The List... One person that I would want to remove would be Foxbat. Not because he is a genius, not because he is uber-powerful, but because he is nuts. He's a veritable loose cannon, and, as a hyper-intelligent supervillain, I want to minimize all the random elements which could possibly disrupt my plan. After all, you can predict what Dr. Silverback will do, or Mechanon, or Defender, or even Firewing. But with Foxbat, there is a 50-50 chance that he decides to "help" you, in the same way that a two-year-old can "help" in the kitchen - well-intended perhaps, but potentially very, very messy.

Re: WWYCD: Registration All characters - it entirely depends on how it works. If registration is along the lines of "superhero name, list of powers, means of contacting superhero" it's not a big deal, and they would probably comply. If registration means turning over information on vulnerabilities, secret IDs, etc - virtual non-compliance. After all, even if the information is truly not on networked machines (which limits its usefulness), how long before Menton mind-controls some poor working schlub and grabs all the secret IDs - and sells them off to the highest bidder? Or posts them on the web?

Re: Psych lim for consideration (input desired) Nah, he can continue to fight without them (but I might make that an Enraged trigger or something), but his phase 12 action will always be to start up the Images. Since I'm making them without Focus (probably), it might not be easy to stop him, but I could see them being Restrainable or it taking Gestures or something. As I said, since he only needs them for that first phase (and yeah, it affects him even in his secret ID, so if he gets in a fight, he could blow the whole secret right there), it's probably only a 5pt Psych Lim.

I am making an NPC (who may become a PC when we switch GMs) in a Teen Champions game, and I wanted some other thoughts on this disadvantage. Background: Character (currently called Kid Rock, until I come up with something better) has some Sonic powers. As a teen, they're pretty basic, will probably be an EB, Flash v. Hearing group, and one or two others. So far, pretty basic. But, before he can take any combat action (other than running away), he slaps down his boombox (or iPod, walkman, or even beats out a couple beats on some pipes with improvised drumsticks), and the "backup members" of the band appear. Basically, they're going to be Images (restricted to the same band members, only vs. Sight, etc), who "appear" and perform "backup" to his sonic abilities. They're not linked to his powers, so Dispelling them won't cause him to suddenly lose his Sonic Blast. I'm not explaining it well, but I want it to be that, when combat starts, instead of firing an EB at a target, he first calls up the backup singers, and then combat can begin. He also cannot effectively ambush, since his surprise attack would be to cue the music and strike a chord. I'm thinking that it's a 5pt Psych Lim, at most - it will limit him once in every combat, but no more than that. (Heck, I might change it such that, even before running away, he would have to summon the singers, giving Mechanon an extra shot at him before he can run.) Thoughts?

Re: WWYCD: Lost in a world without Supers; 9/11/2001 Whisper of the Shadowed Mind would have absolutely no problem stopping 9/11 from happening. The average terrorist has an EGO of 10-12, and zip for mental defences. Whisper is more than capable of Mind Scanning the entire eastern seaboard, finding them, and Mind Controlling them into giving themselves up before it happens. He then starts scanning Afghanistan for OBL. When he finds him (and he will), he has OBL make a statement on live TV, while wearing a pink tutu and eating a ham sandwich. Whammo He'd love to stop them. Odds are good that he couldn't - his flight is still pretty erratic. He'd probably get the bright idea of trying to either fight his way into the White House to convince the powers-that-be that Bad Things Are Going to Happen, or, possibly trying to shut down the airport in question by ripping up several of the runways. He'd probably fail in his attempt, but at least he would have tried.

Re: COH/COV conversions I think I did, actually, in my quick, off-the-cuff construction. I thought about adding Gestures, too, since the TP Foe animation has you stop dead in your tracks (Concentration), and make a definite Gesture, and then, after a half-phase or segment (probably the latter) the foe appears in front of you, if successful. It's potentially abusive, but I would rather see it in a game than the Tunnelling, N-Ray vision, invisible egoist.

Re: Ruling on this situation... Short answer: It's easier that way. Long answer: Because STR is not just a function of the size of a character's biceps. One of the oddities of the cyberpunk genre (which is rarely explored) is that, if someone suddenly were to exchange your arms with cyberarms capable of crushing bricks into powder, and which had, in laboratory conditions, bench pressed a Honda, you still would not be able to walk out into the street and pick up a car. You could try it, and then feel the pain as your new cyberarms are ripped from their sockets. Lifting is a function of the arms, but also the backs and legs - and most people can carry much more if it is placed on their backs/shoulders than if they try to hold it in their arms. So, we have to imagine STR is a function of overall bodily strength. For flight powers which are musclar, and inherent to the character (eg, wings), then flying while carrying an encumbering load makes perfect sense - there is no reason why the wings should be less strong than anything else. (I mean, we've already accepted the impossible fact of a winged human flying, really. . .) Likewise, for any mechanical device, we may presume that the inventor of said device said (again, eg) "The Ubersuit can lift 10 tons. I'd better make sure that the flight boots/jetpack/gravity nullifier can handle that load as well as the load of the suit and the operator." Telekinesis & magic - no problem. If someone is using teke-based flight (and has teke-based lifting abilities), or a magical equivalent, then, again, the spell or powers were designed, or operates, with those limitations in mind. Again, everying eventually boils down to my short answer: it's easier.

Re: COH/COV conversions

Re: one year to change the world Actually, he probably could, but there would be problems in doing so. Consider: Metropolis is a large city, and crimes occur throughout. Some areas will have greater concentration than others, but we can safely assume that no area is crime-free. For Superman to go around, preventing all crimes that occur within the city (or the greater Metropolis area), then he would have to move quite quickly - maybe not so fast as to cause a sonic boom, but certainly at hundreds of miles per hour. Through city streets. Near lots of normal people - who would certainly be affected by the wind rush. Minor accidents occur, possibly serious ones, as people are toppled into traffic, into each other, etc. Superman would also have to resolve each crime quickly - taking only seconds to do so. He rushes in, incapacitates the criminal, and then must either arrange for the perp to be taken into custody or do so himself (with another high-speed trip, though not nearly as fast, since they cannot withstand the speed). While it is possible to stop a mugging in only a second or two, it's rough (very rough) on the mugger. Perhaps he doesn't have to do more than break fingers as he pulls the gun out of their hand at superspeed. Running around the city, constantly preventing every single crime also wreaks havok on the whole secret identity thing. And, it means that his attention is diverted, possibly allowing Braniac/Lex/Doomsday/et al a head-start on some nefarious plan. Heck, Supes might miss that one critical second in which he could prevent Braniac from vaporizing some mid-American city, because he is saving Miss Polly Pureheart from a random mugging. Plus, if Supes went around, stopping every crime, Metropolis could fire 75% of the police force, possibly more. This causes employment problems throughout the city. The fire department starts demanding help with fires - or, alternatively, demands that supers not help with fires. Supes would also have to testify in many cases - after all, he is taking the place of the arresting officer. He could do it - but it is unfeasible, not impossible. It's a waste of resources, really. And the world had better be more than a blur when he is tooling around at superspeed (ditto for the Flash). Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before Supes is flying along, moving at full superspeed toward a nasty villain rampaging through downtown Metropolis, when he plows through (and I do mean through) a crowd of people, killing dozens because he couldn't perceive them.

Re: Teen Champions - $9 Yeah - I won a couple auctions earlier this week from that seller (including a copy of Teen Champions). I didn't see the others, or I likely would have posted them.

Re: WWYCD choosing between two villains to stop? All characters - deal with minor villain now. Although they would arrive at the conclusion through different means, most approach it this way: 1) Minor Villain is committing a crime now. 2) Major might be committing a crime elsewhere, or might not. Major could be planning on ambushing hero; major could be gathering minions, major could be sleeping. Patrolling is an inefficient way of attempting to find major villain in any case. 3) Since there is (currently) insufficient data to take down or confront Major villain, I choose to deal with minor villain and then continue search for major. Of course, Whisper would think along those lines, whereas Whammo would simply charge (unthinking, as usual) into combat, because Bad Things Are Happening Here and Now. A better question might be: while you are fighting this minor villain, you hear (via police scanner, super-hearing, decoder ring) that major villain is striking elsewhere in the city right now - do you continue current fight, or go deal with the greater threat?

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... It tastes kind of like chicken - but then again, doesn't everything?

Re: WWYCD: "Dude, you stole my shtick!" I didn't. OTOH, there is no way that Whammo would either.

Re: WWYCD: "Dude, you stole my shtick!" Whammo - immediately calls an attorney and begins to investige claims of copyright infringement. (Whammo is hoping to make it big as a rock star, and is using his superhero status as the appropriate springboard.)

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game I try to do 2, somewhat. The problem I kept having with #1 is that, after a few weeks, some of the active players (who were not trying to add to the roster) would say "To heck with this - there aren't enough active people" and quit. It's a nice catch-22 situation. I did get in a couple missions last night - enough to come across one with 2 +3 or +4 bosses, and earn a fair amount of debt. I've started running a mission, recruiting for a bit, run another mission, recruit, etc. It cuts my play time, but I don't feel as bad about it. For what it's worth - I don't care if we only have 30 people. 75 would be great, but not if it's full of jerks, inactive toons, alts, etc. I'm trying for quality, but I do need a certain number of warm bodies in order to do raids, SG missions, etc.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game I've been splitting my time between CoH and CoV, but I'm beginning to get annoyed with CoV. I like the game, but I'm really working at building a SG. SO, I go out and recruit, get people who say that they are really committed players, really active, really dedicated, etc. Within 48 hours, half of them quit. It's not that we don't have a functional base (we do, though it is still on the small plot), and we have about 20 active ppl. It just seems that too many want to bail for a "better" SG, rather than help build up an existing group. And believe me, when you spend 12 hours over a weekend doing nothing but recruiting, it gets really annoying to have people keep quitting on you. (The irony is that, if many of them had stayed for even a week, we'd have better than 40 active members, instead of 20.) Sorry - just had to vent there.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Oh well - I did the Scrooge mission with my main villain, and the goody-two-shoes version with my main hero. Badges are nice, but I'm more concerned with playing and having fun than collecting them all.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game It wasn't earlier, but I haven't been seeing many presents either. It would be my luck to get killed by one of the last spawned groups of frosties.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game When my Controller hit 22, I was able to almost fully slot everything with SOs. This was before they halved the debt in missions, and got rid of debt from levels 6-10 as well. Not sure how many SO's I have on my MM right now. 6? 8? Something like that. I could have afforded more, but I have been giving gifts of influence to lower-level toons in my SG. As long as my bots are fully slotted with SOs, I'm happy.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game I was in Siren's Call, heading toward a mission. Got within 50 yards or so before I got popped. The problem with the PvP zones are, IMO: Coloring on the names of the other side, as I said before. Deucedly hard to tell dead from death-dealing juggernaut when both are orange. When you are close enough, you can see them move, but you can get sniped from a range where you can't tell fataility from foe. Search function - I can see how many other villains are out there, but have no clue what the hero density is like. If there are only 6 villains, and 345,783,457 heroes, I'd rather not venture out there, thank you. You can have SOs at lvl 22. I managed a couple. But there is a huge disparity between the level 15 and level 25 character. I admit, were I in the higher-lvl toons cape, I'd be tempted to obliterate the lower-powered toons, but I would probably abstain, since it just doesn't seem. .. sporting. It may not be very villainous, but there's also not much challenge, either. That doesn't make it fun for me or them.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Not sure what the level for Bloody Bay was. It might have been 15th. Supposedly, there is a mechanic for preventing higher-level toons fom running roughshod over the lower levels, but I am not convinced that it works. I will say that a 7 level advantage, coupled with the inherent power disparity between a scrapper and a mastermind travelling sans pets = 1 dead MM, instantly. (Okay, not instantly - hit, stunned, fell, landed, DoT took effect, died before I could trigger the inspiration.) The biggest problem I had with the PvP zones is that the "enemy" characters have orange names. And, after playing healing and rez patrol for something like 8 months, orange name = no threat, not imminent death.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game You might find some random teams or players who get upset if you don't play the way "they" expect you to, but if you say "Lvl X power/power defender LFT. I fight like a blaster" then they have no reason to think that you will do the "traditional" defender heal/buff thing. If you are going very far from the normal play of the ATs, just let people know when you team with them. Most players probably won't have a problem with it.

Re: Fantasy Cliches The armies of evil will number in the hundreds of thousands, possibly the millions. They will be overrunning the world like ants on sugar. The heroes will be a small band of plucky adventurers, or possibly a small army. Nonetheless, despite being rank amateurs and outnumbered by a factor of 10:1 or more, the heroes will win.

Re: WWYCD: I, The Jury

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game You can get by with a bit less, but not much. So, since I have 5 people, I have a total of 100k, plus the 60k or so that has been earned, of which, I account for about 50%. When I logged out tonight, we had enough for the control room (nothing in it), and about 62k beyond that. If I am dilligent, and can get another 5 people, it can work - but it's getting the people started that's the pain.