Captain Pants

Re: I'm going to have a WHAT? Agreed. Most of what I brought up can be addressed in-game. Speaking personally, none of my PCs are ever going to get pregnant. I would feel very bad if one of my PCs had a miscarriage, but if a pregant PC is in combat, it would be totally unrealistic if the possibility of miscarriage didn't exist. - Cap

Re: I'm going to have a WHAT? As an expectant father in 4 months, one thing I'm quite surprised hasn't been addressed is the danger to the fetus. Barring the obvious exception of self-defense, a pregnant superheroine could, conceivably, be brought up on charges of child endangerment, as well be harrassed by children's rights activist groups. A superheroine may be able to take a lot of damage and put up with only a few minor penalties to DEX, but the fetus is another story. Even a metahuman fetus wouldn't believably have the same defenses as its mother. And even if the mother had a lot of defense, merely the act of taking knockback or falling several feet could conceivably cause a miscarriage. For those reasons, I think it would be unacceptably reckless for just about any pregnant superheroine to stay on active duty. I'm not saying they need to stay in the kitchen without shoes on, by any means -- it's just that going into combat pregnant would be like playing Dodgeball with your favorite bunny rabbit strapped to your chest. It's just... not a good idea. - Cap

Re: Campaign Idea - Suggestions Gratefully Welcome From your sources, I'm guessing what you're going for is semi-dark fantasy, taking place in the modern age. I'd suggest starting out by introducing a MDQ (Major Dramatic Question) from the get-go. Introduce something mysterious the players will be curious about, but have no leads to. Think "Lost" or "X-Files." Hint at the big shocker at the end of "season one" throughout your sessions, but don't lay it on too thick, or give them too much. Just feed them enough to keep them intrigued. Then, make all your sessions primarily about whatever one-shot you're running, and sprinkle in tidbits leading back to the MDQ, or at least clues they won't be able to make sense of until much later. Be careful not to give them too much, but don't keep things too close to the vest, either. Place your encounters or plot leads in differing areas of their home city, and introduce the NPC movers and shakers. It will give them a sense for how the city works, get to know familiar landmarks, etc. Note: Key NPCs can be corporations as well as people. And lastly, use only antagonists that unquestionably enforce the genre. For example, if it's megacorps you want to focus on, introduce the PCs to corporate enforcers, evidence of their corruption, results of their experiments, or anything else that fleshes them out. If it's like Dresen Files or Buffy, have new twists on vampires, werewolves, or demons be the main dish, but leave subtle signs there is a guiding hand in the background. Hope that helped.

Re: Who Do You Tthink Thay Will Lock Up In "Stronghold" (the book)? And... why does Ripper need to be replaced? He's been redone in the new VIPER book.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... "I QUIT!" - Quote from NPC PRIMUS agent who had just rolled a 17 on a roll to disarm a mini-fusion bomb, causing its timer to reset from 10 minutes to 5 seconds.

Re: VIPER and the Serpent Lantern. GM brainstorm This is an intriguing plot idea. Here are my ideas: We know Nama can see into the future. If he sees Takofanes or Destroyer taking his power, he's in a position to do something about it. Were I Nama, I would send the Supreme Serpent a vision ordering him to secure the Lantern before it gets compromised. We also know (assuming you follow the book verbatim) that the Supreme Serpent knows exactly where the Lantern is... he just isn't telling anyone. So the SS faces a double threat: First, the loss of his immortality/power base (Nama), and second, the exposure of the Lantern to the VIPER High Council. If the Council gets its hands on the Lantern again, he’ll be forced to swear by it and get his hands tied. We know he’s a master tactician. So, he’ll want to be discreet. Based on all that, I came up with the following: 1) The best way to keep such a major secret is not to tell anyone, so he starts out by trying to handle it himself. He counts on subtlety and anonymity to protect him. His initial mission fails; the Lantern gets taken and he gets beaten to a pulp, but rescued by the PCs (whom you’ve already placed nearby)… but it’s not too late. The Lantern is still en route to its new master (I’m going to pick Destroyer – I chose him because Takofanes could take it to a pocket dimension, and then everyone would be screwed.) 2) Knowing he’s in over his head and becoming desperate, SS recruits the PCs to help him, presenting himself as an archaeologist. He tells them it’s some ancient Christian relic known for its terrible power… something with some historical basis, perhaps even the Mandragalore. He tells them he planted a tracking device on it before it was taken, and gives them a tracking device. 3) To get it, the PCs will need to not only chase down Destroyer’s minion(s), but also deal with the super-zombies that are ALSO chasing down Destroyer’s minion(s). An ideal single minion for this would be Raksasha, IMHO, but you could substitute an armored division or Gigaton for more combat potential… 4) In the confusion, the PCs might actually stand a chance of taking the Lantern for themselves. If they do succeed, SS will, of course, then ambush them and take the Lantern, if he can. If the PCs keep it and give SS the finger (a likely possibility, regardless of how convincing he was), the PCs will now be targeted by Destroyer, Takofanes, and VIPER… with VIPER having the edge by knowing where they are. 5) If the PCs fail and the minion escapes, all heck breaks loose. Destroyer and Takofanes now start slugging it out in different parts of the world as they try to find it. Meanwhile, the minion is hiding, now realizing how hot the item is. The world is spun into chaos. The PCs can deal with any number of disasters as a result. 6) This segement takes place off-screen. Amidst all of this, SS still has the tracking device and knows exactly where the Lantern is. Knowing he’s past keeping it secret, he takes the problem to the Council. But as always, he has something sneaky and underhanded planned so that once it gets rescued (successfully this time), he’ll make the Lantern disappear again. The Lantern can be somewhere far-off, like in Destroyer’s mobile base in the ocean, in the Mogave desert, or whatnot. It may still be with the PCs. Time to call in the heavy hitters – Dragon Squad it is, complete with Viperia. They get sent after the Lantern. 7) Combat combat, yadda yadda. Upon the mission’s success, Dragon Squad gets the Lantern, but then gets ambushed, perhaps by a space-based weapon of VIPER’s. SS takes and hides the Lantern again, then leaves evidence that the PCs now have it – killing 4 birds with one stone. Now the Council, Takofanes, Destroyer, and the PCs are otherwise engaged as he decides on what to do with it. He leaves clues to what he did, however. Those are up to you. 8) The PCs will thus fall under siege by the two most powerful supervillains in the world as well as the largest, most powerful terrorist organization. They must now try to figure out where the Lantern really went and why they’re being blamed, all before one of them gets its hands on them. You’d have to keep the pressure on, but always leave them some avenue of narrow escape. Leave them some clues to follow, enough for them to have a chance to figure out what really happened. Then, in the moment of truth, they can expose SS’s plan to the Council, ruining his standing in VIPER and causing all three organizations to go after SS instead, while also fighting amongst themselves the whole time. 9) SS now goes into hiding, and can’t destroy the Lantern for fear of retaliation. Nama contacts the PCs and tells them where SS is, that the Lantern must be destroyed, and requests that SS be taken to the caves where Nama lives so SS can face his final justice. Comments are welcome.

Re: Devious Idea that may work once....once... I used to have this problem. When I first started GMing Champions at the tender age of 15 (19 years ago), I had a group of players who were used to playing AD&D, and their focus was on combat and getting loot. Genre convention? What's that? All they saw were numbers on a sheet. At the time, I solved the problem passive-aggressively by using fewer focus-oriented villains, having any interesting foci disappear from unconscious villains, or making them too hard to take. Powered armor villains, for example, had armor that was extremely difficult and dangerous to take off. It was simple, and it worked. Later, after reading how the rules suggested I handle it, I started just bluntly informing players that in a Champions game, per the rules, foci gained without paying points will fall apart, be lost, stop working, etc. They can pick them up and use them in combat if they can... shortly thereafter, it's dead weight. If they whine and cry, I just explain that it's there to enforce the genre and game balance. If an item is of particular interest, and I allow it, a player can make it part of his repetoir by committing all of his forthcoming experience to paying for it, but it doesn't work until he pays all the points. Sort of like layaway. It does cause some whining among d20 addicts and focus hogs, but as long as you're firm and consistent, they should eventually give up. If they don't, you can always tell them to shut up or leave. - Cap

Re: Armor Piercing on normal attacks: Is it useful? Isn't that what Piercing is? - Cap

On a whim, I decided to compare average damages for unmodified normal attacks vs. the same active point attacks with armor piercing. In other words, 60 active points can give you a 12d6 normal attack, or an 8d6 AP attack. Which was better? I was quite surprised at the outcome. This is what I found: AP attacks start doing STUN at earlier point levels, but the benefit is short-lived as the levels go up. It basically introduces a short-lived, bell-curve bump in your damage range… you get a slight gain over what gets past defenses. The gain goes up as active points increase until a point of diminishing returns is reached, and it comes back down. Where the curve is, and how much it’s spread out, depends on your opponent’s DEF and what you roll for damage. With higher rolls, any extra damage from AP is no higher than if you rolled all 3’s, and the “sweet spot†lasts for a much narrower range of points. With lower die rolls, the extra damage from having AP is less, but is spread out over a larger range of point levels. For example, let’s assume an opponent of 35 DEF and rolls of 3 on all dice. An AP attack starts getting damage through at 45 active points, while a normal attack doesn't start getting through until 60 pts. At the peak of its effectiveness, at 65 points, the AP attack does 6 more STUN than its unmodified counterpart. That's right... 6. And if you were to roll all 6's, a normal attack would do 7 more pts than its AP counterpart. BODY is effectively a non-issue -- both attacks don't do any BODY until far later, since the defense is so high. AP attacks do start doing it sooner, with 1 point of BODY at 135 active points… well past most playing levels. As with all bell curves, what goes up must come down. Again taking the example of 35 def, the trend reverses at 70 pts. By the time you get to 85 pts, normal attacks do more damage, and the difference continues to widen as the pts go up. BODY is the same, but the curve is much longer… at 270 active points, ridiculously beyond normal playing levels, normal attacks start doing more BODY. So there you have it... against a DEF 35, with all 3's, you get might get 6 extra STUN, assuming you have exactly the right attack level. AP gets even less effective as the defense goes down – against a def of 20, at its peak, an AP attack does a whopping 4 more STUN… and it’s at 30 pts. Do you know anyone with a 4d6 AP EB? If it’s 40 or above, you’re actually doing less damage than if you just took an 8d6 normal attack. Against a 20 def, normal attacks overtake AP attacks at 55. On the other hand, AP attacks have a clear advantage on BODY at lower levels. AP attacks start doing BODY at 80 pts, and normal attacks don't do more than AP until 160. Following is the difference chart (AP dmg - unmodified dmg) for a 20 DEF and assuming die roll average of 3. Negative numbers indicate a normal attack doing more damage: Act. pts B S 15 0 0 20 0 0 25 0 0 30 0 2 35 0 4 40 0 1 45 0 1 50 0 1 55 0 -2 60 0 -2 65 0 -2 70 0 -5 75 0 -5 80 1 -5 85 1 -8 90 2 -8 95 3 -8 100 3 -11 105 3 -11 110 3 -11 115 2 -14 120 2 -14 125 2 -14 130 1 -17 135 1 -17 140 1 -17 145 0 -20 150 0 -20 155 0 -20 160 -1 -23 - Cap

Just out of curiosity, how many threads do you experienced GMs have in play at a time? Do you have one main plot thread for all your adventures, do you just do one-shots, or a combination of the two? - Cap

Re: Spiderman Vs. Firelord I cannot tell you how many times I read and re-read these two issues. I loved them to death and saw nothing wrong with them. Spidey has had other times when he's become enraged and beaten someone to a pulp, and not just Iron Man 2020 either. I thought they were all done very well, and were very plausible given his personality. Anyone remember Sin-Eater? Spidey's also been known to stagger the Hulk. Despite what anyone else thinks about the matchup, the story and outcome were great if you were a Spidey fan, which I was very much at the time. If you want to believe Spidey can take down just about anybody if he gets mad enough, those comics are great. If you like to reserve judgement or could just take or leave Spidey, then I suspect you wouldn't like Firelord losing. Just to tie up one loose end -- at the time, I believe Spidey had a black, cloth replica of the alien costume, as Venom hadn't shown up yet, but Spidey had already identified it as dangerous and gotten rid of it. So that answers a couple of questions: yes, Venom is afraid of fire, but was nowhere near Firelord, and no, the symbiote was not augmenting Spidey's strength. Ohhhh I have to read them again *rubs hands together* - Cap

Re: Star Wars Hero Question I agree with you on this point. In my experience, I simply found it easier to demand a finite set of abilities, rather than trying to figure out a large list of powers you couldn't do. Also, having that VPP would almost mean the player has ALL the Force powers, and that wouldn't be the case unless he was a master. Amen, brother, that's what I found out. Having loose constraints around what a Jedi or Sith can do just didn't work at all. I wrestled with this decision for awhile. When it all boils down to it, I've found AP to be a very weak advantage (we can get more into that if you'd like). I finally decided it didn't matter how much damage a lightsaber did, as long as they all did the same. A lightsaber has to be able not only to easily kill someone, but also completely chop him in half with a single blow. That means it has to do, assuming average damage and an average person, at least 20 BODY, which is actually almost 6d6. I thought 4d6 was on the low side, myself. I also used the Hit Location chart, which meant if you got hit, you didn't necessarily die, but you were almost assuredly going to lose a body part. For the nicks and non-permanent disability Obi Wan suffered in EpII, I would attribute that to Combat Luck and poor damage rolls. I would also attribute the door-cutting in EpI to the doors having lots of BODY to burn through. Overall, it worked out ok in the game. In one example, I had an unarmed (figuratively, soon to be literally) martial artist try to attack a Jedi with his Damage Shield and FF up (his lightsaber was out). The enemy was parried, and voila! His arm came flying off. And for the most part, Jedi and Sith didn't hit one another with their lightsabers, so the duels went on and on and were usually interrupted by something else. It was perfect. I could not agree more. Were I to do it again, I would use a lot that's been brought up here and other threads. A lot of people have gone through exactly the effort you're describing, and it's a waste of time to reinvent the wheel. - Cap

Re: Star Wars Hero Question

Re: Finally figured out what I hate about Star Wars in RPGs I posted this in another thread, but it seems more relevant here, so here's the part that might be of interest: - Captain Pants

Re: Megascale Movement and Perception

Re: Star Wars Hero Question For my $.02, building Force powers using a VPP will create a game that's almost, but not quite, completely unlike Star Wars. You wind up with people using the Force to do Transforms, or shoot any kind of Energy Blast, Flight, or even Growth. None of those would be appropriate Jedi abilities. I tried doing Star Wars with the Hero system and met a few barriers to really representing the universe. Were I to do it again, I would predetermine a finite set of abilities for players to choose from, limitations and all, for them to put into a Force Powers multipower. My NPC Sith would have a list as well. I used Star Wars RPG materials and the various Jedi Knight FPS games from Lucasarts for inspiration on powers. The main problem is that the system is just so flexible, and the Jedi aren't nearly so. For instance, without the above constraints, one player took "Fine Control" over his TK, and also happened to have a Kendo-inspired martial art. It seemed fine at the time, but later I found he could use his lightsaber martial art at a distance with his TK... something Yoda has certainly never done, and he's supposed to be Da Bomb. This player also chose to be able to block ranged attacks with his hands, rather than relying on the lightsaber... not my picture of a standard Jedi. He also didn't want to have concentrate to use his TK. It doesn't take much... a little tweak here, and little tweak there, and voila! You have a non-Jedi Knight. Congrats. A lot of up front work has to go into it to enforce the background, or you'll wind up with characters with Star Wars-inspired powers, but seem... off. Also, I found it challenging to create a Sith villain who could take on large packs of Jedi Knights and survive, without getting obscene. Using the rules as they are, and assuming lightsabers will kill you with one hit, a defender had better abort to a dodge or block if he's being attacked. If a Jedi attacks first, or there are several Jedi attacking, a lone Sith spends all his time blocking or dodging and can't get a shot in edgewise unless he wants to abruptly die. The only way he can attack is if you jack up his SPD, which seemed like cheating to me. And how do you stop him from being disarmed by Kendo-Man with his +5 DC (translation: +25 STR to disarm), without getting silly? What I wound up doing was giving them a Force Field, Requires a Skill Roll, along with a linked Damage Shield equivalent to their saber damage. Sabers were built as 4d6 HKA, NND, Does Body, not vs. Lightsabers or Force Fields. I made the Skill Roll a new skill called "Sword Mastery," which was subject to skill vs. skill. Jedi could also take this FF/Dmg Shield for the same effect, so it came down to skill vs. skill rolls, which I could easily jack up on the Sith without going overboard. - Captain Pants

Re: weird villain concepts I have been privvy to, and played: 1. Screaming Mimi: voice powers (like Howler) that also make her enemies soil themselves if they failed an EGO roll. This came about without knowledge of the Marvel comics villainess. The soiling was a special effect only... there were no direct combat results. 2. Hershey Highwayman: An energy blaster who moves around like Iceman. You can figure out what he uses instead of ice, and it's not chocolate, either. Works with Screaming Mimi. 3. The Flasher: He opens his coat, and you can't see anything for quite awhile. 4. Non-Man: Invisible (to everything, no fringe) and Desolid, always on. He's also mute. Otherwise known as "Pointless Man," as in, "What's the point?" 5. Duo Denim: A Hunted for a PC made for a GM who thought "duodenum" was a funny sounding word. He was a crazed, psycopathic killer who killed his victims with his deadly two-pair-of-pants kata. This came about before I chose my handle, incidentally. Though now that I think about it, I was Majikthise at the time (pronouced "Magic Thighs"), so I seem to have an obsession with legs. 6. Candle Man. A fellow prisoner of Duo Denim, Candle Man had one power: he could produce a one candlepower flame at the tip of his finger. - Captain Pants

Re: Favorite Abuse I had one player come up with the following construct in 3rd Ed: 10d6 Aid to STUN, Trigger: Unconsciousness, 0 END, Persistent When he did that, all the other players said, "Ooooh! Good idea!" and took it too. So, I had a group of, well, Weeble-Wobbles. They Weebled and Wobbled, but they wouldn't fall down. I finally had to tell them the max they could roll on the dice was as much as they could have Aided per day. - CP

Re: What was you most powerful Attack vs. Supervillian???

Re: What was you most powerful Attack vs. Supervillian??? In this campaign, we came up with rules saying that if your attack was big, you had caps for your OCV. Low attack, you could have a high OCV. Even the GM was beholden to these rules, which I was ok with. Enter my villain. He's a robot. Similar to Ankylosaur, he has a tail that can whip around and knock someone silly. But wait, it's big, so its OCV has to be low. No problem, says the GM. He's also got a 1 hex AE Entangle, Entangle and Character Both Take Damage. Squirt, the target is now DCV 3, and hittable by the big nasty tail. I just could not wait to wail on someone. Well, I had a player in my game playing the "Pink Ninja," a deadly assassin who had a double-bladed katana (the blades next to each other) of 3d6 HKA (4d6 w/ STR) and, as it turns out, a bike that could go Mach 1.5. Pink Ninja takes one look at the robot and figures out somehow (perhaps my body language?) that it's going to tear someone a new bunghole. So he revs up his bike, holds out his sword, and punches it, a la Jackie Chan in Rumble In The Bronx. Of course, the sword can only do a maximum of 6d6, but it's enough to stun the robot, and of course everyone else jumps on it and destroys it. But wait, it's not over. Pink Ninja now must make a Combat Driving roll to stay steady at Mach 1.5 after having just performed this little gem of a maneuver. What should the negative be, anyway, when you're going Mach 1.5 on a two-wheeled vehicle, you stick a sword out the window, and you hit something? -10? -20? I settled on -10, and of course he failed, and crashed his motorcycle at Mach 1.5. Without, I might add, the benefit of a helmet or biking leathers. Bad safety, Pink Ninja. Bad. Let's look at this, shall we? Mach 1.5 equals 1,112.182 miles per hour; 1,789.884 kilometers per hour; 894,942 hexes per hour; 2,983.14 Hexes per Turn, and more importantly, 249 Hexes per Segment, and 249d6 (not all at once... he bounced, skipped, was stopped here and there by people, fire hydrants, cement poles, cars, that sort of thing) . Henceforth, the Pink Ninja became known as the Pink Smear, and the day was saved. Yay, Pink Ninjasmear, for killing my great plot device along with yourself. Now, if that math is correct, the guy who flew into the mountain at Mach 4 would have been going 2965.82 mph, 4773.024 kph, 7955.04 Hexes per Turn, and 663 Hexes per Segment. I think I goofed last time and based his damage on Hexes per Turn. So let's hear it for the lucky Superbaddie... he took 663d6 instead of 7,955d6, for an average of 2,320 STUN and 663 BODY. - Captain Pants

Re: What was you most powerful Attack vs. Supervillian???

Re: What was you most powerful Attack vs. Supervillian??? I just did the math. It was 7,951 Inches Per Phase, so he would have taken 7951d6 of damage, for an average of 27,828 STUN and 7,951 BODY. That's assuming, of course, the mountain we TP'd him into could handle all that damage. - Cap

When I tried to reply to the previous thread, I kept getting this: Anyway, to answer your question: The effect I'm going for is to have her throw her autofire shurikens and have them stick into something (a PC, perhaps), which would "arm" them. Then she could detonate them all as a zero phase action whenever she chose to, by pressing a button. So my question is multifold: 1. Does she need a two-trigger power (the shurikens sticking into something, plus her button push)? 2. Since the KA is autofire, does she also need to take autofire on the exploding EB, or is it sufficient merely to say that the EB is dependent on the each of the shurikens being "armed"? 3. If I do need to take AF for the EB, would each shuriken automatically explode, or would the ones who hit their intended target be the only ones to explode? - Captain Pants

I'm trying to make an NPC that has shurikens she can throw (several at once), then detonate remotely by hand. My main question is: once I've launched all the "Triggers" involved, does she then need Autofire on the explosion as well, or would each shuriken from the autofire explode via the Trigger once she activates them? See below: 1) HKA 1/2d6 (1d6+1 w/STR), 16 Charges (+0), Range Based On STR (+1/4), Linked (-1/4) (12 Active Points) (Real Cost: 12) PLUS 2) EB 11d6, 16 Charges (+0), Trigger (Activating the Trigger requires a Zero Phase Action, Trigger requires a Turn or more to reset; +1/4), Indirect (Same origin, always fired away from attacker; +1/4), Explosion (+1/2), Penetrating (+1/2) (137 Active Points) (Real Cost: 137) - Cap

I just learned from Simon in the HDv2 thread that Summon and Autofire is a legal combination, per Steve Long. What are the mechanics for that? I've always been militant that Autofire only be used for attack powers, and obviously there aren't any attack rolls for Summon. Plus, you can Summon any number of creatures you want, as long as you pay the +5 per x2. So where does AF come in? I apologize in advance for any inconvenience, as this has likely been covered already somewhere in the forums. I did look for it, but I couldn't find it. -- Pants