Doc Tough

Re: Tennis Dad Doc sez... Deja Vu...but the guy is STILL sick... Doc Tough

Re: Pregnancy Doc sez... I'm glad that this discussion has come up...for a while I thought I was the only GM to actually have thought and written up rules about pregnancy and inheritance. I agree with a lot of what has been posted. I have to find my old rules for this situation and compare them to what has been discussed. Doc Tough

Re: How far have you gone? Doc sez... Well, having played the Champions since it first came out ages ago, AND being of the nature NOT to leave well enough alone I have tinkered regularly for decades. This is not to say that I do not like the Hero System...I love it, because it allows me to tinker and houserule to a great extent and still have the original rules work in the existing System. Over the years I created rules for computers, Pregnacy/Inheritance, Segmented Movement, Superskill systems, subrules for Stats, etc. I really do have folders and folders of new and variant rules boxed up somewhere. Coming from a very heavy background in the sciences, I tend to want to describe everything empirically. This drives my players nuts though. So I tend to add rules and rarely subtract any systems from the game. My campaigns have integrated ALL the rule and source books over the ages. Doc Tough

Re: Affects Solid World Doc sez... Damn, I had a much longer reply written out and then the site timed out. Anyway, an answer which might resolve this situation (allowing for the PC the pick up and use weapons while respecting Steve's ruling) would be to add another level to ARW for another +1/2 (or more) to account for the extra benefits. This lets everyone have the power structure be a bit better balanced by making it cost more. Doc Tough

Re: Golden Age speedster advice needed Doc sez... How about Victory? Actually the name should be Winged Victory, but that's an Astro City heroine I think. Victory an embodiment of the courage and determination of the British people and there efforts to having to stand nearly alone against the Nazis until the arrival of the Yanks into the War. She could be a ground-pounder or even a winged woman. Speed tricks could include high speed disarming of the Nazis, running across all terrains and water without difficulties. I'm also hedging about giving her TK...hmmm, perhaps a should save this characters for my own campaign;) . Doc Tough

Re: Top Down Bottom Up Doc sez... Again this seems to be aproblem with modeling the results. Everyone might have a VPP. This represents the amount of safe control an User has over things. The Masters have big VPPs while apprentices have smaller ones. Side Effect is mandatory equal to the pints in the VPP, perhaps even more if the GM perhaps a tweaking of the LIM to allow for x2, x3, or even x10 the AP of the VPP to be used in whatever effect the GM wants on a flubbed Control Roll or whatever. When Apprentices screw-up it can be bad, but not campaign ending...if a powerful Master botches...kiss your *** goodbye. Doc Tough

Re: help me! Doc sez... First off...welcome abroad to the Broads Doro5...I hope you find your time here enjoyable. Remember that the Hero System works effect the effects and results of the power. Whether the controled object is paper, water, or small fuzzy animals, its the result of power you want to identify. The hardened paper shield could be a Force Field or Wall that requires you have access to a mass of paper to be animated and act as a barrier against attacks. The paper attack could be a RKA (Ranged Killing Attack) or an EB (Energy Blast) with Armor-Piercing Advantage on it. Each result will have to be made as a separate power...its just the nature of the System. Again, it a matter of what you want X to do. If you wanted to be able to control plant life to...say...grab at targets...you could make it an Area Effect Entangle requiring sufficient viny plants to be around, or even Telekinese with Animate Plants (providing the GM allows it). Doc Tough

Re: THE ULTIMATE BRICK -- What Do *You* Want To See? Doc sez... Aagh...a bad rule now being drudge up from the depths of obscurity...thanks BD ( ). Let's hope that it returns back to the underworld of illogical pseudo-science from whence it came. Must rep Kristopher the next chacne I get for reminding us of its counter-logical mechanics. Doc Tough

Re: Tactics Skill Doc sez... The Tactics Skill is one of those mixed blessing facets of the game. I have always been one to let players think their way through combats and wouldn't really restrain creativity in play action, but also felt it was odd that the characters with no combat background being played by very tactically inclined players were not quite acting in character. Sigh. I wouldn't want to make players dumb down involuntarily, but had to compensate in other manners that they would grow to disapprove of. Sigh again. I do like the skill. Like other skills it allows the real life skill challenged to have a chance to play differently and in ways they would likely have no experience with. The GM steps in, lets them roll the skill, and then provides info and insights. Most of the suggestion made above are just fine. Perhaps the oddest way I tried to compensate was to make Tactics a Talent. I think it went something like being both a quasi-stat and an Int based roll. The quasi-Stat part rated how many skill levels you could change to compensate in a given time to deal with changing combat situation while the roll acted like a combat analysis feat. Of course, this was all thought up during the slow point in lecture hall. Doc Tough

Re: No Chart SPD? Doc sez... Its an interesting concept and certainly would make the players pay attention to the turn play ( a major problem in the System), but does little to either simplify the game mechanic for new players (who find themselves glazing during combat anyway) or balance the feel of the action. It also seems to give the high SPD characters a distinct advantage by actually letting them get in more attacks before lower SPD characters can. This can lead to uneven fights very quickly. V&V suffered from this problem a lot. NTBADH, but the way I found to deal with many of the problems of the Turn System is convert it into a Segmented System. Everyone has a chance to do some kind of action every turn although it is likely only to note the moving of their character as movement becomes clearly Segmented too. In brings many of the options of play and combat into play to break the stagnant feel of the straight Turn System. Doc Tough

Re: weather control in space? Doc sez... The answer would have to be no. Weather powers deal with meteorological phenomena which involves atmospherics. Space having no atmosphere cannot have real meteorological phenomena. Solar winds and magnetic storms are misnomers. Both have to do with charged particle interactions and nothing with atmospherics. As for creating a "hydrosphere" in space...that would be dangerous. Besides the fact that the water would instantly freeze, it would also tend to disperse at the least provocation. Space having no atmosphere means no force (pressure) pushing on the 'H-sphere" to hold a shape. If the "H-sphere" had any air in it it might also disperse violently. Not to put a damper on a PC, but space is a bad place for weather and water power based PCs. Doc Tough

Re: Villian Relocation Doc sez... It really should be simple to relocate them. Since Champions tends to be very US centered who's to say that you can't tweak the origins of the villains you want to be Eurocentric with the US as the area that has fewer supers. It would be interesting to see something like this take place in a campaign. Doc Tough

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Doc Sez... Playboy Mommy by Tori Amos Doc Tough

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Doc sez... "Prime Mover" (Rush) Doc Tough

Re: Who's the most evil villain in CU? Doc sez... Jonestown, Guyana was the location of a cult led by the mad Jim Jones who in 1978 led his followers to drink valium and cyanide grape kool-aid. 913 adults, including 276 children died in the mass suicide. Jones died too by a self-inflicted gunshot (May he suffer in the Afterlife). Also killed during the incident were Leo Ryan, a Congressman from California, three reporters covering his visit, a some cultists who were fleeing the Cult. A terrible event. Doc Tough

Re: Who's the most evil villain in CU? Doc sez... The quilities that Trencher points out are important factor, but I'd have to say the the "quality" of evil would be relevant. The person who murders during the course of raping and robbing is awful, but would we say that they are equal in the evil performed by that of the Nazis or Jonestown or terrorists or serial killers? Of course not. While evil is evil its the extent to which acts performed lend to the rating of which is the greater evil. Blowtorch could very well be the most evil villain depending on his limits. While he might not feel adverse to torching a room of children would he torch a whole city in order to appease an alien entity for power or sheer amusement? The stated question is difficult. And it may only be divined by placing the top contenders in the same situation or plot and asking what would they do. If someone is willing to exceed the limits of another villain they move up the rankings. I'd throw in as another quality of "Most evil" as whether or not the villain could or would stop their evil act as easily as they'd do it. Takofanes might not be able to resist the urge to spread death around, but Dr. Destroyer could have come up with another way to cover his escape rather than blasting Detroit. Doc Tough

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Cry Little Sister by Gerard McMann (also from the Lost Boys soundtrack)

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Doc sez... After a twelve hour stint at work...every Rush album in my van.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: Name two things you must bring on a blind date with a former East German athlete. A:The 2006 Winter Olympics.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Doc sez... Prime Mover by RUSH from Hold Your Fire.

Doc asks... First let me come clean with my feelings about the Real UN...its become irrelevant at best, a danger to world security and peace at worst. I find its leadership to be hypocritical and its agenda to be clouded. The organization that was touted as the hope of the world is scandal wracked and ineffective. Now with this being stated I have always found it difficult to portray the UN and UNTIL in the best, idealized light that the supplements to Champions indicates it should be presented. Before I had to take a break from GMing, I was about to restart a campaign that lasted for over a decade and have the UN and UNTIL act in a less than shining light. The UN would be truly ineffective, becoming bogged down by trying to constant assuage every dicator's demands, bureaucracy ties up any decision making and actions on important, and the Security Council is filled with many minor powers as the US, UK, and China have abandoned the UN leaving Russia and France to lead replacements into the future. UNTIL has become bullies and the only way the Secretary General to enforce anything. The US and UK simply do not allow them in their territories and have stated they will be arrested if discovered. In all its the anti-UN and UNTIL. One of the goals of the campaign was for the "Free" nations to begin to from a new international organization to deal with the corrupt UN and for the heroes to become involved in the eventual overthrow of the bad UNTIL with the aid of the restructured INTERPOL forces. I have wondered if anyone else has taken the UN and UNTIL in dramatically divergeant direction while still working in the structure of the CU or even in original campaign settings. Doc Tough

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Doc sez... The Pass by Rush next up... Timothy by the Bouys

Re: Need Help with Scenario ASAP! Doc sez... If the villain has thought of cloaking the location of the sonic device so that the heroes are unable to pinpoint's location by following the noise to its center, perhaps he failed to think about covering the energy trail needed to power sucha device. If the Villain jacked into the local power grid, then they'd be able to note sudden increases in a particular grid's draw and slowly pinpoint the location down to the block (and possibly the building/site depending on how generous you'll be). If the villain went energy independent, say an isolated generator, then that generator would also generate a noticable heat signature (or radiation sig or electromagnetic sig). Perhaps you could even go the complaining civilian route. This involves a number of average joes complaining to doctors (or police or utility companies or the media) that their pets are going crazy or they are having constant headaches/joint aches/toothaches etc. The heroes might note the statistical abnormality and have a neighborhood to investigate. There is also the "Villain's Needs" option in which the daily needs of the villain at his secret HQ betray its location. If the villain calls for food delivery, word of a delivery guys leaving food at a remote location only to find the payment waiting there could reach the PCs' ears. (As a former pizza guy, I well know that we love to talk about odd deliveries, IE like ones I made to visiting celebrities, or the time I brought pizzas' to a midnight skinny-dipping pool party, the New Year's Eve couple celebrating the night in diapers only...)(God I miss those days ). Also, how is the villain communicating his demands? Perhaps they can trace the method back to the area of the villain's lair. Hope this helps.... Doc Tough

Re: Original Supervillain Groups -- Get Creative! Doc sez... After a night of thinking about about other teams in my past campaign (while staying up with my newborn daughter:D ) I remembered that Pounder of MAMA was preceded by a Jason or Friday the 13th clonenamed Jason. Another group was led by a culture poser named Dandy Lion. He (and his devoted followers) thought he was the king of fashion and culture...they were wrong. The players grew to despise the character since his primary attack was an powerful PRE Drain follwed by a powerful PRE Attack. Too many macho types were made to flee in abject terror from him. It got to be that the offended heroes would seek out Dandy Lion just to beat him up. A few of the "highlights" of his career were the Nudity Bomb (with apologizes to Get Smart and anyone who saw that film), His attempt to become the Emperor of Fashion by kidnapping the heads of the Couture Houses of France and Italy (but not Germany or Britain since everyone knows they have no sense of fashion), remotely controlled clothing that made people do as he demanded, and a failed attempt to become the costume designer to the superhero world (during a breif stint of being reformed). Doc Tough

Re: Original Supervillain Groups -- Get Creative! Doc sez... Another team from that era were the Rooks, a pair of supersiblings gifted with the power of ultimate invulnerability. Besides that they were obnoxiouls bratty and bored rich kids with a family that seemed to spend an enormous amonut of time pulling the twins butts out of jail. They were about as hard to hurt as I could make them. Being immune to most any antic they could think over, they spent a lot of time pissing off the PCs with one stunt after another. They were not truly evil or bad, they just were looking for anything that could make them experience sensation. They were eventually brought over to the side of Good during an alien invasion called the Tellan Invasion. They eventually got a taste of pain during the event, decided they didn't like it and reformed themselves into helpful folk. Doc Tough