Intrope

Re: In order to prevent Munchkinish... Well, what is the van actually doing here? Is the armory van a teleport platform, that can send a weapon from the van to the character? or is it a teleportation projector, that can teleport tagged weapons from any point in the radius to her? I'm assuming the former is the case. In that case, buy them as OIHID, with an additional -0 or -1/4 limitation 'only within 1km of van' (If she's a completely urban character -0 is probably the right value; if she might be in the bush at some time, -1/4). Restrainable might also be appropriate, if the number of weapons in the van is limited (if the van has lots of guns, she can just whistle up a spare every time she's disarmed). If it's the later, then in most cases no limitation is appropriate; it'd almost be the same as just having an RKA for the character, not through a focus.

Re: Need help with names! All these are actually names of anime/manga, but meh: Gunslinger Girl Dark Angel Overfiend

Re: Miko of the Morning Mist Steel Angel Kurumi and Adventures of Mini-Goddess were also brought over, even with their short episode lengths (Mini-goddes eps are about 5 minutes long!) So there's reason to hope, anyway.

Re: Miko of the Morning Mist That sounds quite good, thanks for the recommendation! BTW, do you have any idea if it's been licensed for US release?

And Mr. Velveeta returns to the fray! Now, slightly less vulnerable to trivial amounts of power defense. Mr. Velveeta Player: Intrope Val Char Cost 5 STR -5 5 DEX -15 5 CON -10 5 BODY -10 5 INT -5 5 EGO -10 5 PRE -5 5 COM -2 1 PD 0 0 ED -1 5 SPD 35 2 REC 0 96 END 43 11 STUN 0 1" RUN-100" SWIM-20" LEAP-1Characteristics Cost: 2 Cost Power END 90 Pseudo-Cheesification Beam: Major Transform 6d6 (Anything into Processed Cheese Food (note: contains no cheese), being dipped into French wine) 9 60 Cheesy Invisibility Power: Invisibility to Sight, Hearing, Mental, Smell/Taste, Touch and Radio Groups and Spatial Awareness , No Fringe 6 72 Cheesing my way through space!: Teleportation 12", Trigger (Next time I fire my Cheesification Beam; +1/4), Safe Blind Teleport (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Invisible Power Effects (Fully Invisible; +1) (72 Active Points) 0 Powers Cost: 222 Cost Skill 36 +18 with any single attack Skills Cost: 36 Cost Talent 90 Lightning Reflexes: +60 DEX to act first with All Actions Talents Cost: 90 Total Character Cost: 350 Val Disadvantages 10 Bad Legs: (Frequently, Slightly Impairing) 30 Vulnerability: 2 x STUN Physical Killing Attacks (Very Common) 30 Vulnerability: 2 x BODY Physical Killing Attacks (Very Common) Disadvantage Points: 70 Base Points: 200 Experience Required: 80 Total Experience Available: 0 Experience Unspent: 0 This should no longer have dumb math errors (crosses fingers). BTW, the combat strategy is: On Dex 65, Turn on invisibility (0-phase), set trigger for teleport (half-phase; note that he has to pick the target hex at this point. Note that if he has to make a targeting roll for his teleport, he'll almost certainly miss--hence the safe teleport!). Attack foe with Pseudo-Cheesification Beam (triggers teleport). Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Yah, he's a one-hit wonder...if we don't see too many other entrants, perhaps I'll make another wombat, with less degenerate powers

Re: accepting rules suggestions for 1st Annual Combat Wombat Steel Cage Grudge Match! Urk! I think the answer to your question is 'dies horribly'; you can tell how frequently I use Transform in play, I think...for the moment I'm going to withdraw Mr. Velveeta for a quick re-think. I'll come back tomorrow... And thanks for proofreading; I should be more careful with Hero Designer (with great power ) especially when I'm giggling over the idea of Psuedo-Cheesification Beams BTW, I think my trigger is legal: it takes 1/2 phase to set, and goes off after I fire the attack (invisibly moving after I attack). A quick read of the FAQ seems to support this as a legal, if abusable, tactic. I'm anxious to see some of the other entrants...half the fun will be seeing who comes up with the most amusingly abusive construct!

Re: accepting rules suggestions for 1st Annual Combat Wombat Steel Cage Grudge Match! A couple of questions occurred to me over dinner: When we start a battle, do we start with defensive powers up or down? Is the flag in the Capture scenarios breakable, and what happens if it's annihilated?

Re: accepting rules suggestions for 1st Annual Combat Wombat Steel Cage Grudge Match! LOL! Actually, I realized that I'd made two errors: I had no disadvantages, and I had a disadvatage on my speed that's not on the allowed list. That's fixed now...

Re: accepting rules suggestions for 1st Annual Combat Wombat Steel Cage Grudge Match! Well let's start the cheese flowing Mr. Velveeta Player: Intrope Val Char Cost 5 STR -5 5 DEX -15 5 CON -10 5 BODY -10 5 INT -5 5 EGO -10 5 PRE -5 5 COM -2 1 PD 0 1 ED 0 5 SPD 35 2 REC 0 95 END 43 11 STUN 0 1" RUN-100" SWIM-20" LEAP-1Characteristics Cost: 2 Cost Power END 90 Pseudo-Cheesification Beam: Major Transform 2d6 (Anything into Processed Cheese Food (note: contains no cheese), being dipped into French wine), Affects Desolidified Any form of Desolidification (+1/2), Uncontrolled (stopped by application of French wine) (+1/2), Continuous (+1) (90 Active Points) 9 60 Cheesy Invisibility Power: Invisibility to Sight, Hearing, Mental, Smell/Taste, Touch and Radio Groups and Spatial Awareness , No Fringe 6 90 Teleportation 15", Trigger (Whenever I fire my Cheesification Beam; +1/4), Safe Blind Teleport (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Invisible Power Effects (Fully Invisible; +1) (90 Active Points) 0 Powers Cost: 240 Cost Skill 18 +18 with Pseudo-Cheesification Beam Skills Cost: 18 Cost Talent 90 Lightning Reflexes: +90 DEX to act first with Pseudo-Cheesification Beam Talents Cost: 90 Total Character Cost: 350 Val Disadvantages 10 Bad Legs: (Frequently, Slightly Impairing) 30 Vulnerability: 2 x STUN Physical Killing Attacks (Very Common) 30 Vulnerability: 2 x BODY Physical Killing Attacks (Very Common) Disadvantage Points: 70 Base Points: 200 Experience Required: 80 Total Experience Available: 0 Experience Unspent: 0 I noted when working on this that FREd limits sell-back of Primary Chars to 5 'unless GM permits' so I stopped at 5. And of course Figureds are limited to 1 sell-off. Any comments? did I break one of Hyper-Man's rules without realizing it? BTW, do we want to post the characters here or in another thread?

Re: Galactic Champions

Re: All this evil without a Champion to oppose

Re: Lack of Power coverage Although it's not terribly important, I've never been able to come up with a defense v. Usable as an Attack Movement Powers. Especially UaaA Extra-Dimensional Movement. Admittedly, that's pretty rare--but I can't think of any way for even VPP-types to build a defense (other than 'don't get hit' ).

Re: Lack of Power coverage I'd like to expand Clinging into a more general 'Traction Control' power that allows you to define all sorts of different 'surfaces' that you can treat as 'ground'. Like water for instance: I've always thought Flight, not fly(-1/2) was a stupid mechanic for speedsters. I'd like Accurate & No turn mode as standard adders/advantages for all movement powers. A standard Scale mechanic: essentially the same as the Growth/Shrinking table, but it also changes the default size for your hexes. That way, large creatures/vehicles wouldn't need megascale (as often) anyway.

Re: accepting rules suggestions for 1st Annual Combat Wombat Steel Cage Grudge Match! Well, you can count me in; I've just been waiting for the official announcement of the actual ground rules...

Re: Mecha Modeling Advice I might try making each hardpoint a VPP, with Only change in a service depot (-1/2) and Limited Class: only technological weapons and sensor systems (-1/2) limitations on the control cost. Then, pay 5 pts to double the number of hardpoints. That sounds like an AP RKA Area of Effect Unselective linked to an RKA Area of Effect. I might put both Area of Effect and Explosion on the second effect, and declare that the 'Explosion' reduces in units of the original area rather than by hexes. That way, a large area is exploded and a small area is hit with seeking missiles. I don't think most munitions would actually be seriously reduced in a vacuum. As I understand it, most Anti-vehicle weapons don't depend on overpressure as it is (they either peirce the armor and inject liquid metal/explosives into the interior, or explode sending out metal bits to tear up the craft). A Flechette grenade would probably be more useful against space suited persons than a regular explosive design. Only nukes would be noticeably altered (most nuclear damage is overpressure as I understood it). However, nukes also put out massive radiation; as I understood it, this can be tuned and shaped to allow the nukes to be primarily a radiation weapon. This would probably be the perferred solution in space at any rate. Hope that helps!

Re: House Rules: Rigid Armor That seems like a reasonable power to me, but with a stop-sign. I'd definitely limit it's usage, probably by not allowing as many points of Rigid Armor in a category as DC's, so that typical attacks by your 'equals' would not be routinely ignored. On the other hand, I'd probably allow super-heroes to buy Rigid Armor, only versus Real-World Equipment (-1?) as a way to simulate invulnerable to bullets for instance.

Re: Generic Matrix Hovercraft Hmm, that looks good. BTW, I think Morpheus's ship lacks cannon, and is smaller than the other ones. I assume the defense for the EMP NND is 'being an organic being not plugged into the matrix?' or some such. Looks good to me!

Re: Design query 2-Figure 17 Make the brick mode the 'main' character. Give that multiform into the little girl form (just one form). Give that form always on duplication. The multiform power then has a limitation that both duplicates must be in contact in order to revert (-1/4, or maybe -1/2?). If the little girls are normals, then they probably have a low point cost so neither the multiform or the duplication should be expensive.

Re: Realistic Accelleration... This looks good to me! BTW, you have your Non-combat multiple costs off (you started at x2 = 5pts, that should be x4). FYI, if you are using in-between multiple values (like the x19 for the Raptor) you can compute a partial point value: 5 * [ (ln multiple)/(ln 2) ] - 5 (ln == natural log here) for the Raptor's x19, that's 16 pts.

Re: The green alien's burden I don't think that was actually in 3D; there was a similar scenario involving a utopian world where everything was powered via some kind of super-tech power beaming system. Naturally, while your characters are there, it starts acting weird--apparently, somewhere in the core of the system is some incredibly archaic (copper wires! relays! etc.) but critical piece that's failing. Naturally, no-one in this world remembers how to do simple electronics... But the patient-uplift-invaders is a kind of amusing idea, though. Good for a Champs-3D visit, to be sure. But back to the Green Alien's Burden: It might work even better if the GAs weren't actually (or apparently) fascistic (I'm not sure I'm actually seeing how the described being were really fascist in any strong sense anyway). Consider: said aliens come down out of the blue and take over North Korea. And they do so in a way that largely eliminates all the big troubles this could cause--like NK's Gotterdamerung strategy of levelling Seoul (big forcefields?). Moreover, in the aftermath they: declare peaceful intentions (and turn over all NK's WMD to the UN's teams fro destruction). Begin turning all NK into a beautiful place. Set out a timetable for enfranchising the North Koreans (along with education), etc. (For sake of argument, during the takeover the GAs use nothing more lethal than Star Trek Phasers, and don't otherwise display any earth-shattering military might). This could be very interesting scenario--the other world powers would likely be quite unsure of what to do here. Especially since you've replaced one intractable morass with an (apparently) better situation for everyone. Any number of scenarios could play out here, given the right characters: espionage, probing missions, attempts to determine just how powerful these people really are, trying to determine whether they are really aliens, or some kind of front for Dr. D (or Mechanon--maybe he got inspired by ChuckG's peaceful-uplift-invasion , etc.)

Die Puny Humans! Well, I've ground out 5 Mechanon v. Champs rounds. I used the warehouse map. M started near a large box, the champs are on the east wall and near the garage door. (see the attached map). In rounds 1 & 2, Mechanon could use Rapid Fire attack. He also put all levels to OCV in these battles. Round 1 was a loss for the machine, mainly because he missed his initial 3-shot rapid fire on a 17! That, and Ironclad connected with a 19d6 leaping move through when M was embedded in a wall. Round 2 was a victory for M, largely because he had better luck with the rapid fire. He was down to 17 STUN though. In round 3, Mechanon did not use Rapid Fire, but put his 3 overall levels in DCV. This actually seems to be a much better plan, the victory was very solid (he was down to about 37 STUN). In rounds 4 & 5, I had Mechanon forgo his 18d6 blast (because I essentially NEVER saw any reason to do anything else). He sticks with the 3 overall in DCV though. Round 4 was another loss, largely because Ironclad connected (OCV 7 v 11, rolled 7) with a 19d6 move through. (M took 55 STUN from the move through & knockback!). Round 5 was rough for the machine; he opened with a flash attack on Sapphire and Defender. However, Ironclad was doing GREAT, beating Mechanon into the center boxes over and over. Again, a relatively lucky hit by Ironclad finished him; while dodging near the end of turn (14 DCV) Ironclad connected (he and Sapphire had coordinated, and his 12 OCV connected). Notes: I had Witchcraft use an Ego Haymaker on the opening segment, it lands in 1 so M has no chance to move. After that, regular Ego attack is her weapon (If she had a 6 speed, she haymaker them on 2 and 4 and almost certainly connect; but with a 5 speed she's better off using regular for measly STUN). I didn't allow 3 point levels to be used for ranged DCV. Defender's Entangle is very weak against Mechanon. He only needs to roll 1 above average with his AP disintigrator to have a full phase! Without the 18d6 EB, Ironclad is very tough to stop. Worse: Ironclad should generally not Dodge, since the resulting 10 DCV isn't high enough. Instead, he should Roll with the Punch, which is very effective (especially given that the extra knockback doesn't bother Ironclad). For that reason, he should always manuever to keep open space behind him. In general, I had any character targeted by Mechanon Dodge, at least in the early segments in battle (except Ironclad, who rolls with it). This seems to work well (Better for Nighthawk than anyone else, of course). But given Mechanon's damage output, it's probably the best option. Mechanon starts a lot of phases prone. He needs Knockback Resistance in the worst way! (or better yet, position shift for his flight!). Conclusion: I think the battle isn't as lopsided in Mechanon's favor as I thought, actually. The best tactic for the Champions is probably to coordinate between Nighthawk, Defender and Sapphire (well, whichever of them didn't get target with the EB). If Mechanon can be knocked back (and hence prone), Ironclad can try the Move-through, which is very damaging. If Mechanon has his 18d6 blast, then taking out Ironclad early is probably the right way to go (and follow that with Flashing the other Champions, who have no doubt clustered as they approach). I've also attached my 5 battle transcripts for anyone that cares to read them.

Re: Mental Attacks Using Normal CV VS CV Heartless strike? Have a heart stike?

Re: Knockback and 1/2 DCV I'd also assumed that people embedded in walls via knockback counted as 'Prone' along with people who are flying and still in the air after being knocked back. In any case, you take the penalty (1/2 DCV and must spend a half-phase to right yourself). Of course, that assumes you're still concious after the knockback!

Is Mechanon treated as Human-class, Alien-class or Machine-class mind? (Or all of these?). The text (Champions p205, 1st para under Powers/Tactics) says that he reacts to mental powers 'just like an organic mind', but it's not clear to me whether that's saying that he's not immune to mental powers like an automaton (but in machine-class as an intelligent machine) or whether it's saying he's supposed to be treated as Human-class (or maybe as Alien-class). As a related question, in a typical champions campaign how much would Physical Lim: treated as multiple classes of mind be worth?

Re: Champions vs. Mechanon Well, with 15 EGO and 18 MD, she can't even get EGO with her Mind Control or Illusions, and here Ego Attack will do 3 STUN. I guess she could Haymaker her Ego Attack for 10 STUN (and with ECV 8 v. Mech's 5 she'd actually do more damage than Sapphire, I think). Her best VPP use is probably something like: Spell of Protection from Technology: 8rED FF Hardened, Usable by Others and Self, x4 targets, No END & persistent. That's 30 pts, if I'm not mistaken. Of course, she probably should NOT be allowed to use spells like that (It makes the rest of the Champions noticeably tougher after all). Other than that, I'd just recommend ditching the VPP, and pointing some points into her helpful witcheries (bring the FF up to 13/13 and the flight to 13" No END) and add the rest as more MP slots. That way her defenses wouldn't be so low, and she could have more special attacks (I'd go with all exotic attacks just for flavor). I may try running a combat or two of Mechanon v. Meatbags later too. Would be good practice for my rusty skills--And it's always fun to beat up the Champions