Tom McCarthy

Everyone should have an achilles heel. Leave yourself open to at least two exotic attack types.

IIRC, the late 80's comic book Blue Beetle from DC inherited the name from his uncle Dan Garrett, who gained powers from a (lost) mystical blue scarab. And yeah, that's a fun looking writeup.

You can be quite impressive with the following base set of abilities: STR 50 DEX 23 CON 28 SPD 5 25 PD 25 ED 15, 15 Damage Resistance +9" running +2 levels with hand to hand You should be able to crank out very high damage on move throughs.

I just have the basics. Character sheets for each character, for players who forget. Character sheets for each villain, rarely used. A summary sheet/speed chart for each fight. The characters are sorted by DEX down the left, then their name appears in each of the next 12 columns according to their phases. Below that is a line for each with CON, REC, PD/rPD, ED/rED, MV, major attacks and vulnarabilites/disads, OCV, DCV, levels, and STUN. A few have END; for most END isn't a factor. The adventure usually has some kind of a flowchart or ideas for major encounters and how to get from one to the next. Major combat scenes have a map.

Assume Jon Carter is a human soldier/adventurer, with combat statistics along the lines of: DEX 18, base OCV 6, base DCV 6, STR 15, +2 skill levels with hand to hand combat, and armed with a sword (1D6+1 HKA) He is battling a lightly armoured, but well armed knight aboard a mount, say along these lines: Knight: DEX 11, base OCV 4, base DCV 4, STR 13, spear (1D6+1 HKA) or crossbow (1D6 RKA) Mount: DEX 14, base OCV 5, base DCV 5, STR 13, 1/2D6 HKA bite (1D6+1 w/STR). On phase 12, Carter attempts to strike down the mount, but he's being cagey and defensive (levels to DCV). He attacks with the sword, with OCV 6 and DCV 8 against hand to hand attacks. He strikes the mount, and does a small amount of damage. Against his DCV of 8, the knight and mount are hard pressed to hit him in return. Carter tries the same move on his next phase, and again has little effect, and the mount gets lucky and bites him. Bleeding from the wound, he decides to be more aggressive, and shifts his levels to increasing damage. Normally he slashes for 2D6+1 HKA, he adds the levels to get an extra DC (2 1/2 D6 HKA), and so will do extra damage. This time the knight gets lucky, and spears him in the arm. Carter's in trouble now, but he has brought down the mount. He puts levels into DCV, but the knight draws the crossbow, and Carter's levels offer no protection against ranged attacks...

I just call it SFX and roleplaying, though Spider-Man happens to have a rules recourse through Entangle.

If I was going to go to the trouble to write it up as a program, I'd probably run each hit about 100 times and then average the damage after defences over the 100 hits and use that to judge the effectiveness of the attack.

I think Steve said it's a (sometimes inaccurate) estimate of power level by an UNTIL tech, frequently around 1/10th of the AP.

Classic Enemies, Mind Games, VIPER, all great books with tons of use. Zodiac Conspiracy was great inspiration, but had some issues regarding details; ditto for Alien Enemies. Champions Presents #1 & 2 were strong material, as was Champions in 3-D. High-Tech Enemies and Mutant File had a lower percentage of the material used, as did Allies, Atlantis, Watchers of the Dragon (great read, though), Hudson City Blues and Enemies Assemble or Enemies For Hire.

I've certainly considered starting players with 350 points and not giving points for disads. I hadn't really considered what the reward would be when those "free" disadvantages came into play. The notion of dropping limitations is one I'm less sanguine about; I often find that the limitations, more than the advantages, define the power's SFX and utility. Still, there's already examples of limitations that don't change the cost in ways that adequately reflect value, so I'd have to let this one percolate a bit.

I had a player ask for this just last week, and I told him the game mechanics were simple, but I wouldn't allow it in the campaign. He said he just wanted a way back in the fight whenever he was knocked below -10 STUN (i.e., never knocked out). Everyone around the table joined in explaining that it's not 'in genre' for superheroes to die, but they all get KO'd from time to time. And yeah, this player gets KO'd more than most. He's got a combat monster of a character and he still can't keep him conscious. Another guy has only just reached the point where he stays standing (EB/TK in a multipower on top of SPD 6 and STR 50/CON 38 and 22 persistent defence; in other hands he'd be a campaign breaker).

Well, any skill over 17- typically needs GM approval. So, it's probably about right, but deserves a magnifying glass or such. And you're not the first to suggest this (typically, it's a Batman power). I might use the -10 for a microbiologist to recall some obscure detail of a hitherto little known or rare species. For KS: Stuff, 30-, I'd go beyond -10 to -18 to -20.

Personally, I think your bricks would be more afraid of a decent sized penetrating RKA damage shield... Absorption is by far the funnest for dialogue ("Fool, your puny punches only make me stronger"), to the extent we joke about unusual applications of Absorption (to shrinking, to COM, to growth, to STUN, to INT, etc.). Transfer really gets the players worried though. Transfer PD to STR, in particular, can really make them paranoid.

In my experience in superhero games, the agents need to use normal damage attacks. It's all in the rule of large numbers, and it's the 4-colour genre. For a super agents game, I think you need to look at 6-8 DCs of normal or killing damage. Indeed, I think you might want to try and find the old Dark Champions supplement and its guidelines for damage and defences, and optional combat rules (wounding, flinching, disabling wounds, limited defences, etc.). Completely off topic rant... In a superheroes game, agents aren't scary because one of them can hurt you; rather they are scary because there's so many of them one WILL hit you and hurt you a bit. 10 DC of normal attack is noteworthy because it will do about 32-38 STUN reliably, and cost a hero some STUN. If you go to a 10 DC killing attack, the heroes typically will still shrug off the 11-12 BODY, but with a D6-1 STUN multiplier, you'll frequently get 11-24 STUN (negligible), occasionally get 33-36 STUN (same as normal), and occasionally rack up 48 or 60 STUN (CON stunned or KO'd hero). Either the heroes are afraid of the BODY the agents can do (very workable in Dark Champions, not very 4-colour) or the STUN's what's important, and KA's just have too much variation in STUN damage. If only one agent in 10 hits, I want the hero to feel it but not be KO'd. Normal damage does the job.

One of the guys in my campaign is a martial artist possessed by a Chinese spirit, making him a 'Ninja Her'-styled cinema hero. He is poorly dubbed (DF: Mouth movements do not match spoken words; hard to roleplay, but lots of fun). DF: Oddly coloured and spiky hair may be appropriate.

I'd leave the DEF the same, but reduce the dice of BODY, 1 die per hex to fill. Yep, they just won't spread far. Of course, there may be serious game balance issues here; agents just won't break out of a DEF 5 entangle, even with 1 BODY.

Teleport, usable as attack at range I asked the player what he'd be using it for. Sounded like pure delaying tactics or dispersion type things, so I said OK. It didn't sound like he would abuse it. The first time the team gets attacked in their penthouse base, he teleported an enemy agent to the floor below. And the player next to him says, 'Just put them outside.' And so, agent after agent began disappearing and reappearing outside, and dropping 20 stories... The moral is that abusable powers frequently will be abused unless the author knows better. Ignorance or lack of creativity is not sufficiently limiting.

My understanding is this: If your base character pays 60 points, he can change into one other form, that form costing 300 points. For 65 points, he can change into one of two other 300 point forms. For 70 points, one of 3 or 4 other 300 point forms. For 75 points, he can change into one of some 5 to 8 other 300 point forms. Arguably, by the time you hit 85 points, you have a form for just about any eventuality.

It sure looks like 75 points to me.

IHA I think the IHA in the new Champions Universe has a decidedly prejudiced view against any and all sources of superpowers, not just mutants and mutation. I'm not sure if they mistake all powers for mutation, or just don't like powers in general. Anyway, they're far more likely to attack the likes of Ironclad and Witchcraft than our old standby Genocide was.

I played around with having the lowest DEX in the phase declare first, but act last. The value of a high DEX went through the roof. I tried having all the actions in the phase declared before any were resolved. It was a little better, but only marginally so. Declaring the whole turn ? I don't think you can make anything but broad indications of strategy.

I don't know if I'd read it... Gregory Benford has an arc of novels which include bands of refugee or nomadic humans trying to survive after the robots have ejected them from the cities they built. Essentially, the AIs have decided to eliminate them and they are struggling to survive and find a way off planet. This is the fringe of military SF, since it's SF, combined with tactics and combat, but with more 'pack' culture than military heirarchy culture.

I don't know if it fits the Champions Universe In my own campaign, I've got one player who really wants to play in an angst-filled prejudiced riddled mutant-hating campaign world. And I've got 4 players who are mutants and don't. I think it's a genuine subgenre of superhero adventure, and I think Hero Games should consider doing such a book someday. It has its own tone, its own unusual characteristics ('the enemy of my enemy' takes on interesting tone when all three factions have conflicted at one time or another). I just don't know if it will work except as a tiny corner of the Champions Universe. I certainly struggle with the idea that one 350 pt mutant wants Hunted by IHA (11-, more pow, kill) while another wants Hunted by IHA (8-, less pow, capture); or that the same two have reaction to their DF: Mutant at opposite ends of the scale. Perhaps if the mutant hating agenda came to a climax in the Champions Universe, you could have one timeline where events snapped back to 4-colour and another where prejudice remained. You could isolate the setting geographically, but I'm not certain about the wisdom of portraying a particular geographic region as less tolerant than the rest of the world (As a campaignsetting, it might be neat to say all those pogroms against mutants happen in Springfield, USA, but what about when people from Illinois find out you mean Springfield, Ill ?).

In a related vein... I'm reading the TPB of Avengers: The Korvac Saga. In a battle at the harbour, a villain punches Ms. Marvel and she lands "hundreds of yards away". Even if she is flying (-1D6 on knockback), no one in Champions should hit hard enough to knock someone back hundreds of yards (100"+). A rudimentary knowledge of physics might be the basis of that throwing table. To lift an object, you give it potential energy (PE). PE doubles as the mass of the object doubles; +5 STR lifts twice as much because you can give twice the energy. To throw something twice as far (assuming a relatively horizontal throw), you need to give it twice the velocity. But twice the velocity is actually 4 times the energy (since this is kinetic energy (KE), and KE is a function of mass times velocity squared). So, twice the distance takes +10 STR. A skillful thrower might be able to pick the optimum angle at which to throw; it really does vary a bit based on the aerodynamic properties of the object and how well you can exert your strength (some objects are so easily accelerated, you can't effectively throw with all your strength, etc.). Given the right angle, it really is more like twice the KE/twice the STR gives twice the distance.

http://www.concentric.net/~Los/ft/lossf.htm Rot Hafen isn't conventionally published SF, but it's interesting to see Military SF written by an actual Special Ops soldier/instructor, and it really is an Alien War story. You've got Armor, Starship Troopers, adn Forever War, so I'd say you've got 3 very distinct tones for the power armoured grunts. You've got that well covered. Dune, for better or worse, had some things to say about how to build an elite fanatical unit of warriors, and those ideas have certainly been used by Games Workshop, among others.