gojira

Re: Memoirs of failed concepts Three things I noticed. 1) "Only when serving god's purpse" on everything. If this character is not serving god's purpose, he's usless. OTOH, the GM is obliged to make your disadvantage count by requiring this character to occasionaly go on missions which do not serve god's purpose (whereupon he's promptly usless). This makes it hard to play by the rules yet still have fun with this character. 2) 5 points for being poor. Cardinals are not poor. They don't have personal posessions but the church provides for them completely at their rank. 3) Direct intervention by god. I personally prefer to run campaigns that are agnostic. Having one character that glows witha "holy aura" and flies and teleports anywhere in the world and can call angels to protect him... it kinda obviates all other religions on the planet, you know? This changes the social fabric too much and makes it hard for the GM. We all have to play in your world. Or, if jewish rabbis can fly and glow, and muslim imams can glow and fly and american indian medicine men can glow and fly... what the heck is going on? The entire planet becomes a proxy battle for the gods and you know where that leads: Paganism! Also, "Altar Boy" is kinda an iffy name for a cardinal. How about "Cardinal Smitrovich?" Or maybe his nickname: "Sir." P.S. Oh, and I didn't read your entire background story. Way too sleep-inducing long. Shorten it up.

Re: A few more rules questions So if Power Armour Guy has normal PD/ED of 15/15. And his OIHID power suit gives him armour of 10/10. And he currently has his force field runing at 10/10. Does it take three seperate successful Find Weakness roles to reduce all of those defenses in half? Or does the two resistant defense of FF and Armour get lumped together and can be affected by one Find Weakness role?

Re: Who do you trust? Hero Board savants That Gojira guys is pretty smart. Good looking, too.

Re: A few more rules questions 1) Dunno. I think a continuing advantage, but I'm not sure. 2) I've always played that PD/ED goes to 10/10. 3) Walls can have cracks. Tanks have places that aren't well proctected, like slits to see out of, engine parts, tracks, exhaust (put a potato in there), etc. The GM can rule that a wall or a building has "Lack of Weakness", but he shouldn't always. 4) All powers activate as a 0 phase action unless you buy a limitation that says otherwise. Note that attacks always end your phase, so if you make a half-phase attack at the beginning of your turn, you can't activate your force wall afterwards 'cause your turn is over.

Re: The Council of Evil I think you should have two groups. The first group is pretty much what you have now. They are the strong men who run the juntas and the day-to-day affairs of the countries. The second group are industry minded criminals. They provide many of the resources that prop up the junta. If Duchess Industries and The Worldwide League of Crime are still around, add them here. These guys are exploiting resources / people in the countries, and allowing the juntas a "cut," providing resources for the juntas and themselves. Now add a few terrorists, such as the IRA and al Qeda, who have access to blood diamonds from Africa, and some good old fashioned violent drug cartels, and you have a grovy mix of underworld ecomics feeding the evil running the country.

Re: You can't possibly be!! Terrorists attack the first shipment of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. The Flash is first on the scene. He punches out the terrorists, but he also gets some nasty radiation burns. The radiation burns have no effect on him except the usual: a long painful stay in the hospital. He survives, but the need to stay confined to a hospital bed unhinges him slightly, and he decides that there is more to life than being really, really fast and saving the world all the time. Still suffering mildly from the after effects of the burns, he hangs up his asbestos lined sneakers and stays home to watch TV while he figures out what to do with his life. New name: The Flash-in-the-Pan

Re: Favorite Superhero Lines The Uncanny X-Men, #268, late Sept 1990, written by Chris Claremont and penciled by Jim Lee, and one of my all time favorite comics. And, *ahem*, Wolvie's last line is " 'scuse me all to heck!"

Re: Elastic Powers How To Question With leaping, how would you model the ability to bounce off vertical surfaces (ie, the side of a building) or the underside of a horizontal surface? I think I'd use Clinging, with the lim (not linked) "only at the end of a "bounce,"" worth about 1/2 or so. That clinging will add to the cost of "leaping method" though.

Re: Favorite Superhero Lines Teen Titans Raven: "Evil beware--we have waffles." Cyborg: "Don't do anthing, don't touch anything. SciFi rule number one: You start messing with the past, you end up with monkeys ruling the future."

Re: How to do this Celtic myth power? Just my two bucks (inflation) that I like the Perk idea best, with Luck being a close second. I think the easiest way for the GM to implement this (the Perk or Luck) is just by fiat. Attacked in your home? The GM just rules that you don't die. A police officer arrives on the scene and resuscitates you. You are taken to the hospital and you're ok. Seriously messed up, but ok. You don't need a power, per se. In fact I think a lot of the constructs above are easy for a player to abuse and unbalancing. All you need is a GM who's a good story teller.

Re: Fun commercials I didn't watch it 'cause dial up sux. We need some in game super hero comercials though. Like, what sort of products would Foxbat endorse if he made a comercial?

Re: Entangles Well, not having enough strength to break entangles is an issue. That's your primary "defense" against entangles. On the other hand, the AE is an issue too, that's not usual for a goon level attack. First thing is to talk to the GM and other players about what's fun and what's not. The GM can *always* find a way to shut the players down if he wants to, so it's really up to him. Maybe he felt like you needed a challenge. But some types of players don't like being challenged by lesser foes, so that's I think the first thing to talk about. Note that I like competent agents. It's normal for a lot of (maybe older now) comics to be primarily about fighting agents, and the character being challenged by it, although not seriously. I was re-reading some of my comics just last night, and Jubilee, Wolverine, and Psylocke spent the whole issue just fighting the Hand (ninja clan agents) while they tried to figure out what the real villians were up too. The other issue is that AE. That's an attack that specifically designed to allow a low skill agent to hit a high(er) skill hero. I'm more used to agents with non-AE attacks, which allows heroes to dodge those attacks and avoid the entangle. Still, this may be a lesson from your GM. "Watch out. You guys are vulnerable to AE and entagles. A super villian with those powers will mess you up." The other possibility is that the players messed up somehow. Maybe you should have scouted ahead, made a Detective skill role, or checked with your contacts. Maybe you should have spotted that big nasty entagle gun guarding the front door, and made a stealthy entrance in the back door instead. Full frontal assualts aren't always good. Ok, so that's the first issue, GM and campaign flavor. Next up, tactics. If you can Dive for Cover outside the AE of the entangle, that'll keep you from being hit. Buy up some movement so that you can get outside the AE with your Dive. Jumping in particular is a good MA movement power. Second, sneaky MA or wade-in-fighting MA? If sneaky, hide. You can't be entangled if you aren't seen. Then, attack with suprise and... GRAB! Get that OAF. Movement (to get you to the goon) and a high DEX is just what you need. A good MA should be king here. You don't have to beat him, just take his stuff. What movement powers does the group have? And lastly, strength obviously. If the GM will let a couple of characters ret-con themselves with higher strength, that might be ok if some players are willing to shift points around. Otherwise, you'll have to buy new powes that seem in character to deal with entangles and AE powers in general. That's all I can think of right now! TTFN!

Re: Some ideas for a "DEMON" splinter group needed

Re: Pulp Slang I noticed that the website had "Boonstick" instead of Boomstick. Typo?

Re: Shadowcat- talk about a one-trick expensive pony Just curious: why 20d6? Why not just 1d6 or 2d6? I'm not up on my Kitty Pride lore, but I didn't think her power needed to be that big.

Re: Cool M1 Abrams tank site Man, that's better than porno...

Re: What??!! The Roman Empire fell to pieces while Jesus was still alive??!!

Re: What??!! The Roman Empire fell to pieces while Jesus was still alive??!! Well, here's some other guesses: 1. Jesus get killed by the Pharisees a lot earlier than he did. 2. Jesus as "messiah" was looked at to literally overthrow Rome and free individual populations from Rome's control--one of the reasons for it's early (<300 AD) success. 3. With no strong Roman Empire to rail against, St. Paul is not successful at converting masses to Christianity. Christianity is either still born or much much smaller than it is today. Probably local religions (paganism) remain intact. 4. Mohanmed and Islam never happen (one of his inspirations was the intellectual and bookish Christianity.) 5. Arab conquerers convert people to their brand of paganism in the 8th century. 6. Gengis Khan (and his decendants) are much more influental, Europe and the world become more oriental in their outlook. 7. Orientalism retards the growth of the enlightenment in Europe. Large states in Europe never form due to the lack of a strong unifiying Christian faith and orientalism's general influence. 8. Western explorers do not explore as far and a factionalized Europe with smaller states cannot exploit newly discovered lands. Russian gains a much larger foothold in North America as a result. 9. China is not exploited much by western powers and grows apace. Inspired by the Russians they begin to explore and expand wester North America also. 10. Americas become divided more or less equally between Russia, China, and western powers. 11. USA forms but cannot expand into Russian or Chinese settlements. USA is much smaller, possibly reaching only as far as the Mississippi. 12. WWI and esp. WWII never happen. Europe instead is constantly embroiled in a serries of small wars. 13. 20th century sees an expanding Russia and China using the Americas as a power and resource base. First one to get the atomic bomb wins, but this probably doesn't happen until much later, maybe as late as the 21st century, 2005 or so....

Re: Designing a Post human society Ever read Schismatrix? I see a post human society somthing like that. With very few people remaining, individual personalities may play an important role in forming a new society. In mathematical terms, the early system is chaotic until it settles down with new social institutions that dicate societal norms. So it may literally depend on where your characters decide to lead it. Much like Schismatrix, I'd like to see individual personality cults head off to the stars. No use haninging around waiting for some else to wipe out humanity once again, lets spread our people around.

Re: The Akane Tendo Culinary Institute I think Katherine pretty much has the right answers to both questions. With regards to Kasumi, I think it's just an exaggerated japanese politeness ethic. She does preceive threats. Like in one of the early manga scenes with Ryoga, she hears him outside and thinks it may be a burglar. So she politely helps Akane find a more violent weapon to bash him. She's being polite.

Re: Help with a character's powers I played CoH in beta, over a year ago, so I'm having problems remembering exactly how it worked. But pretty much I'd say any beam attack is just an EB vs ED. Physical attacks would be more for guns and swords. Some attacks had more range or less (or more) knock back, or other side effects. But if the effect of an attack is just damage, then it's just a EB vs. PD or ED, your choice. Repulsars would be either extra knockback, or no damage at all (only does knockback). (I remember my Tech? Defender? had an attack that also tossed enemies a fair distance away. I'd model that as an attack that does extra knockback.) You can't link armour and DR, as Mike said. But you could use the same OIF (Power Armour) for both.

Re: Hyperdrive Looks good. I'm glad you mentioned that he gets tired easily, I was about to say that your REC was way too low. A speester with swim speed 2" and a leap of 2"? I'd increase those a bit. Anyone who's fast should be able to swim faster (comic book logic here). And if you can run at 25" you should be able to jump that far just by keep your feet in the air for a second. I'd say 6" swim and 6-12" leap would be ok, depending one how many points you want to spend.

Re: Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich Review The first Freedom Force was awsome as well. Does the current online mode of the new FF allow you to play with others cooperatively? That was the only flaw in the online mode of the first one. Well, that and the dorks online with 30k point characters. This should be a blast if we can play cooperatively. Someone could act as GM, and take a group through an adventure. No, no, no. That's not how you do it. Here's the real, uber experienced on-line gamer's method: 1. Wait for someone else to make a mod. 2. Download!

Re: Character Design Theory I flip through the various books looking for something cool, interesting, or different. Then I use that as a base and modify it to taste. Usually I keep the stats about where they are. Then I start switching powers around to get it closer to what I've decided I want. Then I throw out the disad list and make a new one, based entirely on my character concept. Usually I find or draw a different picture for the new character. If that doesn't work, I whip out my power suit character, Iron Guy, and play him.

Re: Character for Review: Pinky This is awesome, and kinda frightening at the same time. It also explains a lot of the advertising I see on TV. Wonderful job.