DShomshak

Boebert maybe, but I suspect Greene is only playing dumb. What clinched it for me was the "peach tree dishes." To me that sounds too on the nose, too calculated a mistake. An impersonation of ignorance and stupidity. And right on cue, mainstream media pounced on her and mocked her for it... and right on cue, the Republican base sent Greene more gobs of money. I am told she's the GOP's top fundraiser.
 
Fear Marjorie Taylor Greene. If I'm right, she has the chops to make it into the ruling junta of Fascist America, and maybe even win the Game of Thrones. Playing dumb can be a powerful gambit.
 
Dean Shomshak

Boebert maybe, but I suspect Greene is only playing dumb. What clinched it for me was the "peach tree dishes." To me that sounds too on the nose, too calculated a mistake. An impersonation of ignorance and stupidity. And right on cue, mainstream media pounced on her and mocked her for it... and right on cue, the Republican base sent Greene more gobs of money. I am told she's the GOP's top fundraiser.
 
Fear Marjorie Taylor Greene. If I'm right, she has the chops to make it into the ruling junta of Fascist America, and maybe even win the Game of Thrones. Playing dumb can be a powerful gambit.
 
Dean Shomshak

Grace Gallowglass, aka The Engineer, strikes me as another who might create martial-arts robots. Robots are her primary servants and physical combatants, and she's already more than a bit wackadoodle. 😋
 
EDIT: Not precisely robots as we usually conceive of them, but the Phazor (ruler) of Malva is protected by a corps of bodyguards known as the Shadow Guard. They're synthetic humanoids programmed for absolute loyalty to the Phazor, and great skill in the Malvan martial art of Haruji, as well as stealth, deception, and observation skills -- essentially alien ninjas. They can also turn invisible. And they have four arms. And are nearly as strong as Grond, but faster and more agile, maybe even tougher, and much smarter. (See Champions Beyond.)
 
I could see the Phazor dispatching a Shadow Guard on a covert mission to Earth. It would be a nightmare for most PCs to face.

As many as the GM wants, of course!
 
But I would prefer just one, to keep a distinctive style.
 
Example: Fencing. If you've seen The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, remember the scene where Tom Baker brings the statue of Kali to life as a six-armed golem armed with swords, fighting Sinbad's whole crew at once? Or if a big stone statue seems like it ought to have 40+ STR, how about a cockpunk robot fencer with a rapier, or Darth Maul's two-bladed lightsaber?
 
But this classification does not require actual Martial Arts as a game mechanic. It just means the character principally fights HTH but doesn't depend on raw STR for damage. Like, say, an ungodly fast robot -- hey, let's add the Kali golem's six arms, just for fun -- but each hand delivers a powerful electrical shock when it hits.
 
Dunno if the CU has any technologists who would build anything so fanciful, but I could see Zorran the /Artificer building magitech constructs like this.
 
ADDENDUM: Ah! Now I know. Doctor Crandall Herzog, later to become the Overbrain. He used to supply technical services to various criminal and terrorist groups and secret government programs. If somebody paid him to build robot martial artists, he'd shrug, take their money, and do it. I dare say he was a bit wackadoodle even before becoming a disembodied brain.
 
Dean Shomshak

The Mountains of Madness. 

Back from the weekend's gaming!
 
One consequence of this project was that I had to actually *read* all the villains' origin stories. And yes, many of them were a bit repetitive. However, I won't blame Steve Long for that because I don't know how many characters he created specifically for those three books.
 
Perhaps oddly, considering I tend to go into my villains' histories and personalities more than perhaps many readers care, I am completely okay with a basic "Person gets powers and becomes a criminal." It probably says something unpleasant about me, but I find it *entirely plausible* that many, perhaps a majority, of people would become criminals if they suddenly found they could do whatever they wanted and almost nobody could stop them. Hummingbird is my favorite, paradigmatic case for this: Her telepathic and mind control powers appeared when she was a teenager, and she did what most teenagers would do with such invasive powers. Or at least as teenagers are often portrayed.
 
It's the *heroes* who I think need greater care in explaining why they risk their lives to fight the villains. But that is another topic, worthy of its own thread.
 
I am more dissatisfied with the sheer repetition of origin stories. Yet another explosion in the lab or exposure to toxic waste... Sure, they're classics, but for me they slide from "trope" to "tiresome" when I see them all together. I am sure it doesn't feel that way to players in actual games since, as Chris Taylor observes, the players often don't care. But it's also why I atgtempted the "Shared Origins" project: origins that had a *reason* to happen over and over again.
 
Anyway, I hope I soon have time to move on to the next stage of analysis. Honest, I do have something. I hope other people find it interesting.
 
Dean Shomshak

Another way to classify the CV characters is by their powers. This sometimes gets *more* subjective than origin types, because there are judgment calls about the boundaries of power types and whether a given power is really important to a character. But again, some trends might become visible.
 
* MENTALISTS are the most objectively definable, because Mental Powers are a distinct and definite set. You have them or you don’t. But I also include a few Powers such as Images, if the utility for the character is to modify another character’s actions through deceit.
 
* BRICKS, at least, are straightforward. Mostly. The question is how much Strength a character needs to be classified as a brick. I decided to make 40 STR the cutoff. Many characters have 30 STR just because it’s really useful to have at least 30 STR (especially in past editions with Figured Characteristics). But in a Superheroic game, a 6d6 punch is not a meaningful attack. So I insist on a minimum of 40.
 
* ENERGY PROJECTORS are blurrier, though. Anyone who principally attacks at range with non-Mental Powers is probably an Energy Projector. But if a character emphasizes ranged Drains, Entangles, Transforms, Change Environment, and other attacks that are more, hm, “battlefield control” than causing direct harm, I might file them under “Other” instead of (or in addition to) Energy Projector. But I repeat, this is *very* subjective.
 
* MARTIAL ARTISTS also get blurry around the edges. It’s for more than characters who use the Martial Arts mechanic: I also include many characters who emphasize nonranged attacks whose damage is not primarily due to Strength, such as a person with a shock-stick or a blade. But some unranged attacks are strange enough that I call these “Other” as well, such as characters with Damage Shield or stunning Phase Touches. I can’t pretend that these allocations are all that objective, either.
 
* OTHER accounts for Powers that push the boundaries of the big four categories further than I like, or characters that emphasize Powers such as movement or Shape Shift that aren’t directly used to cause harm. For instance, Vixen’s chief power is her intangibility: She has Martial Arts, but her damage classes are too low for this to be a major part of the character.
 
* COMPLEX characters fit in three or more categories. For instance, Tartarus is principally a brick but he also has Hellfire Blasts and some Mental Powers. Whenever possible, though, I try to pare characters down to their top two classes.
 
A WORD ABOUT POWER POOLS: I generally ignore them in classifying characters, because in most cases they would automatically make characters Complex. I stick to the Powers listed on the character sheet as always usable. So, Dr. Destroyer gets classified as a Brick and Enerrgy Projector — not because he couldn’t produce Mental Powers or other stuff from his whacking great VPP, but he won’t always do so. Or Dr Yin Wu gets filed under Martial Artist (his principle attack mode) and Other (Summoning his army of monsters), even though the sample Powers for his VPP include ranged attacks that could make him an Energy Projector.
 
The Power Class breakdown works out like this:
 
Brick: 76 characters; 26%
Energy Projector: 139 characters; 48%
Martial Artist: 53 characters; 18%
Mentalist: 45 characters; 15%
Other: 39 characters; 13% (but many of these could arguably be filed as Energy Projectors or Martial Artists)
Complex: 30 characters; 10%
 
Nothing here seems noteworthy. The analysis gets more interesting, IMO, when you *intersect* the two classifying methods to find, say, the Power breakdown for Supernatural Beings or the Origin breakdown for bricks. Forthcoming.
 
Dean Shomshak

SUPERNATURAL BEINGS:
 
Brick: 9 characters; 30%
Energy Projector: 10 characters; 33%
Martial Artist: 2 characters; 7%
Mentalist: 6 characters; 20%
Other: 6 characters; 20%
Complex: 9 characters; 30%
 
Male: 23 characters; 77%
Female: 7 characters; 23%
Other: —
 
TOTAL: 30 characters
 
The first thing I notice is the prevalence of complex characters. This is partly because supernatural creatures can have lots of different powers (and Powers), and partly because supernaturals are heavily represented among Master Villains who tend not to be one-trick ponies. But some of them could be pruned back to two power classes if you decide that some of their Powers shouldn’t count as major aspects. 
 
For instance, Takofanes is mostly a ranged combatant, with his undead horde Summoning as a major Other power, but he has a pretty big Mental Blast, Undead Command, and his Power of Command, which I think qualify him as a mentalist. But your mileage may vary. Arguments can also be made regarding Skarn and Tyrannon. OTOH I call Tezcatlipoca a Brick/Other (for his Drains and his battlefield control Darkness), but he I wouldn’t argue if you called him Complex for having a few mental powers and his Soul Strike (which could qualify as a Martial Artist Power).
 
I've waffled over other characters, too.
 
Deadman Walkin’ and Samhain are the only characters I classed as martial artists: DW for his knife use (but not quite being a brick), Sammy for his weird NND antlers. If someone wants to create a supernatural villain with an unusual feel, a non-brick unranged combatant might be a good place to start.
 
Dean Shomshak

MUTANTS/MUTATES:
 
Brick: 12 characters; 18%
Energy Projector: 23 characters; 35%
Martial Artist: 13 characters; 20%
Mentalist: 18 characters; 28%
Other: 7 characters; 11%
Complex: 2 characters; 3%
 
Male: 44 characters; 68%
Female: 21 characters; 31%
Other: 1 character; 2%
 
TOTAL: 65 characters
 
Masquerade is the one nonbinary character.
 
Nothing here surprised me. It seems esthetically right to me (as well as consistent with Marvel mutant portrayals) that mutants should have focused powersets: the only two complex characters are the Rogue expy Eclipse and the mutate Thorn ("plant powers" can cover a lot). Maybe I expected more bricks, but I wouldn't call the proportion strangely low. Mutant mentalists have long been a thing in SF, so the relatively high proportion seems apt. It would probably be even higher if more members of PSI had made the cut to CV2.
 
Dean Shomshak

Gimmicky. Avoid, unless you're building the setting around it -- like, these weapons or other artifacts are central elements of the setting, and it's known that yeah, people have had to do this before to obtain the Big McGuffin.
 
Potentially interesting, especially if you connect this somehow to the "world is broken" premise you alluded to before. Whoever or whatever broke the world, however it happened, leaves the world open to these supernatural influences. Also privides an "endgame" in which the PCs can fix what was broken.
 
Dean Shomshak

SUPERNATURAL BEINGS:
 
Brick: 9 characters; 30%
Energy Projector: 10 characters; 33%
Martial Artist: 2 characters; 7%
Mentalist: 6 characters; 20%
Other: 6 characters; 20%
Complex: 9 characters; 30%
 
Male: 23 characters; 77%
Female: 7 characters; 23%
Other: —
 
TOTAL: 30 characters
 
The first thing I notice is the prevalence of complex characters. This is partly because supernatural creatures can have lots of different powers (and Powers), and partly because supernaturals are heavily represented among Master Villains who tend not to be one-trick ponies. But some of them could be pruned back to two power classes if you decide that some of their Powers shouldn’t count as major aspects. 
 
For instance, Takofanes is mostly a ranged combatant, with his undead horde Summoning as a major Other power, but he has a pretty big Mental Blast, Undead Command, and his Power of Command, which I think qualify him as a mentalist. But your mileage may vary. Arguments can also be made regarding Skarn and Tyrannon. OTOH I call Tezcatlipoca a Brick/Other (for his Drains and his battlefield control Darkness), but he I wouldn’t argue if you called him Complex for having a few mental powers and his Soul Strike (which could qualify as a Martial Artist Power).
 
I've waffled over other characters, too.
 
Deadman Walkin’ and Samhain are the only characters I classed as martial artists: DW for his knife use (but not quite being a brick), Sammy for his weird NND antlers. If someone wants to create a supernatural villain with an unusual feel, a non-brick unranged combatant might be a good place to start.
 
Dean Shomshak

Back from the weekend's gaming!
 
One consequence of this project was that I had to actually *read* all the villains' origin stories. And yes, many of them were a bit repetitive. However, I won't blame Steve Long for that because I don't know how many characters he created specifically for those three books.
 
Perhaps oddly, considering I tend to go into my villains' histories and personalities more than perhaps many readers care, I am completely okay with a basic "Person gets powers and becomes a criminal." It probably says something unpleasant about me, but I find it *entirely plausible* that many, perhaps a majority, of people would become criminals if they suddenly found they could do whatever they wanted and almost nobody could stop them. Hummingbird is my favorite, paradigmatic case for this: Her telepathic and mind control powers appeared when she was a teenager, and she did what most teenagers would do with such invasive powers. Or at least as teenagers are often portrayed.
 
It's the *heroes* who I think need greater care in explaining why they risk their lives to fight the villains. But that is another topic, worthy of its own thread.
 
I am more dissatisfied with the sheer repetition of origin stories. Yet another explosion in the lab or exposure to toxic waste... Sure, they're classics, but for me they slide from "trope" to "tiresome" when I see them all together. I am sure it doesn't feel that way to players in actual games since, as Chris Taylor observes, the players often don't care. But it's also why I atgtempted the "Shared Origins" project: origins that had a *reason* to happen over and over again.
 
Anyway, I hope I soon have time to move on to the next stage of analysis. Honest, I do have something. I hope other people find it interesting.
 
Dean Shomshak

About person gets power, I was asked by my son’s councilor a question what super power would I like. I told her that I’d like super strength will a little invulnerability. However, I can see myself using that for evil/selfishness. You take my parking spot? I’m picking up your car and moving it. Like throwing it.   

Back from the weekend's gaming!
 
One consequence of this project was that I had to actually *read* all the villains' origin stories. And yes, many of them were a bit repetitive. However, I won't blame Steve Long for that because I don't know how many characters he created specifically for those three books.
 
Perhaps oddly, considering I tend to go into my villains' histories and personalities more than perhaps many readers care, I am completely okay with a basic "Person gets powers and becomes a criminal." It probably says something unpleasant about me, but I find it *entirely plausible* that many, perhaps a majority, of people would become criminals if they suddenly found they could do whatever they wanted and almost nobody could stop them. Hummingbird is my favorite, paradigmatic case for this: Her telepathic and mind control powers appeared when she was a teenager, and she did what most teenagers would do with such invasive powers. Or at least as teenagers are often portrayed.
 
It's the *heroes* who I think need greater care in explaining why they risk their lives to fight the villains. But that is another topic, worthy of its own thread.
 
I am more dissatisfied with the sheer repetition of origin stories. Yet another explosion in the lab or exposure to toxic waste... Sure, they're classics, but for me they slide from "trope" to "tiresome" when I see them all together. I am sure it doesn't feel that way to players in actual games since, as Chris Taylor observes, the players often don't care. But it's also why I atgtempted the "Shared Origins" project: origins that had a *reason* to happen over and over again.
 
Anyway, I hope I soon have time to move on to the next stage of analysis. Honest, I do have something. I hope other people find it interesting.
 
Dean Shomshak

I wondered which origin types are particularly popular for the Champions Universe, and what types of Powers go with them the most.
 
Why? Because
1) It might point to character concepts that are cool but have been neglected; and
2) I’m a deranged nerd.
 
So this has been my spare-time project for the last week.
 
The whole CU is very large, but not all of it is equally propmoted. So I’m restricting the domain of analysis to the three volumes of Champions Villains. 292 characters total, not counting “agent” types such as Doctor Destroyer’s robots or Necrull’s Necrullticians. Individual characters only!
 
Here are the categories I devised when I did this analysis for my own Champions settings:
 
* SUPERNATURAL BEINGS are innately magical creatures: demons, dimensional conquerors, undead, etc. Examples: Bloodrage, Takofanes, Tyrannon. Also people with supernatural ancestry, such as Frag.
 
* MUTANTS were born with super-powers in their genes. I also include MUTATES, whose origin stories specifically say that their powers are the result of genetic manipulation (such as anyone given powers by Teleios). Examples: Menton, Hurricane, King Cobra.
 
* ROBOTS AND CONSTRUCTS are artificial beings. They have powers because somebody else built them that way. Robots are of course the result of tech; but golems and similar magically-created artificial beings fit in this category as well. Examples: Mechanon (duh), Syzygy.
 
* ENCHANTED characters were given powers by magic: a curse, a spell cast upon them, a magic potion, or the like. Examples: The Basilisk, Black Fang, Harpy.
 
* WEIRD SCIENCE covers all those lab accidents, exposures to industrial waste or atomic radiation, and empowerment processes that are scientific but aren’t specifically called out as exclusively based on gene-splicing. (Though some origin stories are not clear on this point.) Examples: Durak, Bulldozer, everyone in Project Sunburst, Sunspot.
 
 
* CYBORGS started out as normal people but gained powers by having bits added to them. Usually techm but I extend the concept to magical additions (such as a magical gem permanently affixed to the character’s body) or other surgical modification. Examples: Interface, Fiacho, Cairngorm, Howler.
 
* SORCERER characters cast spells. Examples: Doctor Yin Wu, Demonologist, Talisman.
 
* INVENTOR characters build gdgets (including, but not limited to, powered armor) or otherwise do things using SCIENCE! It’s implied that they can build new tech, even if they don’t have VPPs — they aren’t limited to just one device or suite of gadgets. Examples: Doctor Destroyer, Teleios, Utility, Binder, Doctor Philippe Moreau.
 
* TRAINING: If a character’s powers come down to extraordinary skills that aren’t super-tech or sorcery, they go here. Mostly martial artists, but there might be others such as a super-thief with incredible skills but uses mundane tech, Examples: Scorpia, Green Dragon, the Cahokian.
 
* WEAPON: The character’s powers derive from a device that could be taken away, whether it’s tech, magic, or undefined. Moreover, the character lacks the skills to replace or alter the device easily. Examples: the Warlord (he didn’t build his own battlesuit), the Crowns of Krim, Lazer.
 
* MASTERMINDS would be powerful just from the people and resources they command, even if they didn’t have any other source of power. Example: Franklin Stone and Doctor Philippe Moreau are “pure” Masterminds; Doctor Destroyer, King Cobra, and the Warlord have extensive organizations in addition to their personal powers; Baron Nihil and Tyrannon rule entire populations; and the Demonologist can Summon whatever demons he wants, while the Engineer creates robots at will.
 
* ALIENS aren’t human, but aren’t specifically supernatural. Extraterrestrials such as Herculan and Firewing go here; but so does Leviathan (a Lemurian) and Ape-X (uplifted gorilla). This is often a “meta-origin,” worth noting even if not being human is not specifically the source of powers (as Herculan was artificially given powers that are not natural to his species, the Fassai).
 
* OTHER is anything so rare and weird that it doesn’t justify creating a new category, or the source of the character’s powers simply is not known. Example: Timelapse, Glacier.
 
* COMPLEX: Characters can fit within multiple categories, as the dimension lord Skarn is both a supernatural being and a sorcerer, or Cheshire Cat is both a highly trained martial artist and gained teleportation powers through weird science. But if a character fits in three or more categories, I just call it “Complex.” Example: Josiah Brimstone has one set of powers as a sorcerer, another set from the demon that’s fused to him, and a third set from magical devices. OTOH I make exceptions for Masterminds and Aliens, as these tend to be meta-origins — and I try to limit assigning categories based on what’s really important to a character. Just packing a gun or minor gadget, for instance, isn’t enough to place a character as using a Weapon.
 
Placing characters in origin categories can be iffy. Like, I don’t assign every character with martial arts on the character sheet to the Training category: Often its just an add-on and the character would function as a superbeing without it. And as the discussion of Weird Scienct and Mutate characters suggests, the line between them can be blurry. But the goal is to spot patterns, not to precisely classify every character.
 
Here’s the result:
 
Supernatural Beings: 30 characters; 10%
Mutants/Mutates: 65 characters; 22%
Robots/Constructs: 8 characters; 3%
Enchanted: 23 characters; 8%
Weird Science: 54 characters; 18%
Cyborgs: 9 characters; 3%
Sorcerers: 33 characters; 11%
Inventors: 26 characters; 9%
Training: 31 characters; 11%
Weapon: 44 characters; 15%
Mastermind: 25 characters; 9%
Alien: 17 characters; 6%
Other/Unknown: 9 characters; 3%
Complex: 3 characters; 1%
 
Further analysis available if anyone's interested.
 
Dean Shomshak

Back from the weekend's gaming!
 
One consequence of this project was that I had to actually *read* all the villains' origin stories. And yes, many of them were a bit repetitive. However, I won't blame Steve Long for that because I don't know how many characters he created specifically for those three books.
 
Perhaps oddly, considering I tend to go into my villains' histories and personalities more than perhaps many readers care, I am completely okay with a basic "Person gets powers and becomes a criminal." It probably says something unpleasant about me, but I find it *entirely plausible* that many, perhaps a majority, of people would become criminals if they suddenly found they could do whatever they wanted and almost nobody could stop them. Hummingbird is my favorite, paradigmatic case for this: Her telepathic and mind control powers appeared when she was a teenager, and she did what most teenagers would do with such invasive powers. Or at least as teenagers are often portrayed.
 
It's the *heroes* who I think need greater care in explaining why they risk their lives to fight the villains. But that is another topic, worthy of its own thread.
 
I am more dissatisfied with the sheer repetition of origin stories. Yet another explosion in the lab or exposure to toxic waste... Sure, they're classics, but for me they slide from "trope" to "tiresome" when I see them all together. I am sure it doesn't feel that way to players in actual games since, as Chris Taylor observes, the players often don't care. But it's also why I atgtempted the "Shared Origins" project: origins that had a *reason* to happen over and over again.
 
Anyway, I hope I soon have time to move on to the next stage of analysis. Honest, I do have something. I hope other people find it interesting.
 
Dean Shomshak

Trump's Trading Card Grift is Worse than You Think

The limits of cyborgs:
 
I won't argue that the boundaries have to be exactly where I drew them. This is also, btw, relevant for the Robot/Construct category, and for the same reason: I decided to privilege the quality of "builtness" aspect over the "tech or magic" aspect. But I do see the argument the other way. In which case the two CU characters I classified as magical constructs -- Corundum and Oubliette -- become supernatural beings, while, yes, Cairngorm and Evil Eye are filed under Enchanted. The enchantments just happen to be concentrated in artificial and physically distinct bits that are at least theoretically separable.
 
(And I might have classified Tak as a magical cyborg for the Dragon Crown, except I did try to keep power origin categories down to 2 -- not counting Mastermind or Alien -- by focusing on the most important powers. And the Dragon Crown, for all its presumed importance as one of the Crowns of Krim, doesn't do more than Aid mgic that is already ridiculously powerful. And the Scepter of the Undying King is just a special effect, since it can't be taken from Tak even in principle. So I just file Tak under Supernatural Being, Sorcerer and Mastermind. YMMV.)
 
Oubliette, btw, was one of the more difficult choices for me. Corundum's entry clearly calls "her" a golem. But Oubliette, though called out as an artificial being, seems more like a spirit in many ways. Conversely, suppose Takofanes calls up a few damned souls, shreds them and melts the tatters into a new demon that will follow all the rules for demons from then on, including the potential to be Summoned? Built, in a sense, but in that case I think I'd file the character as a Supernatural Being. <shrug> Edge cases, man. Though one can sometimes generate interesting characters specifically by seeking edge cases.
 
Incidentally, cyborgs -- whether one insists on pure tech or not -- are another case where the CV books seem oddly deficient. I remember Marvel having entire teams of bionic villains; and there were quite a few pre-5th ed Champions villains to draw upon, IIRC.
 
Dean Shomshak
 
PS: Thanks for the kind wishes, my eyes feel much better now, thanks to antibiotics.

The limits of cyborgs:
 
I won't argue that the boundaries have to be exactly where I drew them. This is also, btw, relevant for the Robot/Construct category, and for the same reason: I decided to privilege the quality of "builtness" aspect over the "tech or magic" aspect. But I do see the argument the other way. In which case the two CU characters I classified as magical constructs -- Corundum and Oubliette -- become supernatural beings, while, yes, Cairngorm and Evil Eye are filed under Enchanted. The enchantments just happen to be concentrated in artificial and physically distinct bits that are at least theoretically separable.
 
(And I might have classified Tak as a magical cyborg for the Dragon Crown, except I did try to keep power origin categories down to 2 -- not counting Mastermind or Alien -- by focusing on the most important powers. And the Dragon Crown, for all its presumed importance as one of the Crowns of Krim, doesn't do more than Aid mgic that is already ridiculously powerful. And the Scepter of the Undying King is just a special effect, since it can't be taken from Tak even in principle. So I just file Tak under Supernatural Being, Sorcerer and Mastermind. YMMV.)
 
Oubliette, btw, was one of the more difficult choices for me. Corundum's entry clearly calls "her" a golem. But Oubliette, though called out as an artificial being, seems more like a spirit in many ways. Conversely, suppose Takofanes calls up a few damned souls, shreds them and melts the tatters into a new demon that will follow all the rules for demons from then on, including the potential to be Summoned? Built, in a sense, but in that case I think I'd file the character as a Supernatural Being. <shrug> Edge cases, man. Though one can sometimes generate interesting characters specifically by seeking edge cases.
 
Incidentally, cyborgs -- whether one insists on pure tech or not -- are another case where the CV books seem oddly deficient. I remember Marvel having entire teams of bionic villains; and there were quite a few pre-5th ed Champions villains to draw upon, IIRC.
 
Dean Shomshak
 
PS: Thanks for the kind wishes, my eyes feel much better now, thanks to antibiotics.

Oops, bad timing. Eyes burning; think it's pinkeye; will try to get to Urgent Care to see if there's anything I can do that I'm not doing already. I'll be out at least a day, so tangent away until theDean Shomshak

I think CLOWN was a fundamentally bad idea. One prankster villain, okay, it's a classic type. A whole team? With enough points lavished on them to make them quite likely to win confrontations, at least in the old 250-character point days? No, I don't think so.
 
My old Seattle Sentinels had a few prankster villains, but I used them sparingly. (They also picked on other villains, which allowed the players a little schadenfreude.)  The Fellowship of Fear was a whole team designed as comic relief, but part of the joke was that they took themselves utterly seriously and did not realize how ridiculous and inept they were. UNICoRN, a fill-in campaign of low-power heroes, was often farcical with villains such as Commander Coleoptera (and his Arthrozoid Army) in the adventure, "They Cloned Quisling's Brain!" but everybody knew that going in. And the Keystone Konjurors campaigns were meant to be serious; the slapstick was the fault of the players making characters with Activation Rolls and big Side Effects.
 
Anyway, when people are done with other discussions I'll move on to the next stage of the analysis. But don't feel pressured; I'm enjoying this, too.
 
Dean Shomshak

I think CLOWN was a fundamentally bad idea. One prankster villain, okay, it's a classic type. A whole team? With enough points lavished on them to make them quite likely to win confrontations, at least in the old 250-character point days? No, I don't think so.
 
My old Seattle Sentinels had a few prankster villains, but I used them sparingly. (They also picked on other villains, which allowed the players a little schadenfreude.)  The Fellowship of Fear was a whole team designed as comic relief, but part of the joke was that they took themselves utterly seriously and did not realize how ridiculous and inept they were. UNICoRN, a fill-in campaign of low-power heroes, was often farcical with villains such as Commander Coleoptera (and his Arthrozoid Army) in the adventure, "They Cloned Quisling's Brain!" but everybody knew that going in. And the Keystone Konjurors campaigns were meant to be serious; the slapstick was the fault of the players making characters with Activation Rolls and big Side Effects.
 
Anyway, when people are done with other discussions I'll move on to the next stage of the analysis. But don't feel pressured; I'm enjoying this, too.
 
Dean Shomshak

1) Sure, I have other books, going all the way back to Enemies I, II and III. But I figured the CV trilogy best represented the core of the CU. Or at least what Steve Long thought the core of the CU should be.
 
2) Who am I to stop you?
 
3) Foxbat is an excellent case study. Yeah, he's physically competent, but not superhumanly so (apart from SPD 5). Knows martial arts, but not enough to compete on that alone (maximum 8d6 attack? Not hardly.) Some skills, but not amazing, either. So what category does he get? Weapon. A gun scaled for a Low Power Superbeing (50 active pts) and a few minor gimmick-gadgets. And that's it. He's had the Ping-Pong Gun since his first appearance, and there's no indication he'll ever change it much or develop other tech.
 
4) Batguy would fit into Training (he's supposed to be among the world's best HTH fighters and detectives -- though I remember a friend reading an assessment that he is not #1 in either), and he might count as an Inventor if he develops new gadgets fairly often. I will grant that being a billionaire lets him be an Inventor by proxy. If you want to say the resources of Wayne Enterprises make him a Mastermind I won't argue too hard, though that seems to be more a justification for him being able to have a Batmobile, Batplane, and Bat-I-Don't-Know-What All, rather than a source of institutional power or Followers.
 
I was never an enormous Bat-fan, so I'll defer to anyone who says they know the character well.
 
4) By "gadget user," do you mean Weapon? Because a weapon can be taken away. If it requires major surgery to take away the source of a character's powers, thry're probably a cyborg.
 
And thank you for being interested!
 
Dean Shomshak

On reflection, the shortage of robots and androids does not surprise me as much as I first thought. Thinking back on the much more populous Marvel Universe, how many robot villains were there as of, say, 1995? (About the time I stopped paying attention.) Using OHOTMU as the standard for who's important, I can recall Ultron, Machinesmith, the Super-Adaptoid, the Mad Thinker's Awesome Android, Dragon-Man (an alchemical construct IIRC), Master Mold (representing the Sentinels), Nimrod, Quasimodo, and... um... It, the Living Colossus? Plus the Kree Sentry robot and the big HYDRA robot whose name escapes me at the moment. But AFAIK only Ultron and the Sentinels are that significant. And Doombots, but they're agents. So I son't think robots are under-represented in the CU. But OTOH -- which gets to one of the reasons for this exercise -- it also means that if a GM wants to expand their version of the CU in a direction that hasn't been done to death already, robots, androids and other constructs are one way to go.
 
Dean Shomshak