Lord Mhoram

Re: Conan vs. Elric Both of them would get dropped by any half decent fantasy wizard (Gandalf, Wencit, Dumbledore, whoever). Sorry. Don't much care for S&S so I had to make a silly comment. On the question at hand. I think I would give it to Conan, but just by a hair.

Re: p.s.l. for hit location I run it thusly - You can buy as many PSL as you want, but the penalty to hit locations can never be more than halved.. So a head shot is still -4, but a chest shot is only -1. I also run it that the halving is only for full penalty, so if you have an archer with a surprise shot (where locations penalties are halved anyway) and he has 4 PSLs he can hit the head at full OCV. I played a character with 8 PSL as described and he unblanced things so much I decided to voluntarily reduce them. After that, I came up with the above rule for my games.

Re: Four Color, Silver Age, etc. Defined somewhere? I would support these numbers. If you look for "Events" in the publishing world to mark the changing of ages I go with - Gold/Silver was the Witchhunt. Silver/Bronze was the Death of Gwen Stacy or Speedy's drug problem, take your pick. Bronze/Iron The Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns. If we are in the "gilded age" now instead of Iron I would peg that at the publication of Astro City.

Re: Looking at the Iron/Silver Age threads (not a flame) I agree. I was mostly pointing to the extremes. Generally I prefer what someone else refered to as the "gilded" age - mostly realistic personality and some social stuff, but heroes being heroic. Goeff Johns and Kurt Busiek spring to mind there.

Quotes pasted without attribution, all from the two iron/silver age threads. On the Silver Age Side:

Re: What Would You Do?? #76 Yeah, You, Me (Ballistic) and Twilight hook up to be Techno knights.

Re: What Would You Do?? #76 Ballistic would immeditaly find the local mages. He has a 60 cosmic magic pool (in addition to his supersuit). He would either send himself home, or find someone who can. While waiting for that to get done, he would be an wanding knight (and at 750 points a dang good one). Blackcat would find monestaries, assuming her ch'i based EDM to home dimension doesn't work (she bought that because she kept finding herself in such situations). She has done a lot of interdimensional travelling for a local dimensional lord (Owen head of Byzantium) and as all roads lead to Byzantium, find the one that takes her there. She might take up teaching Martial Arts (80 pt martial art special strikes pool, and a bunch of levels). Terminal Velocity would be flummoxed, and try and fit in best he could while trying to find a way home; all the while thinking "A speedster in LOTR ... cool"

Re: What would your character do #~75 Blackcat would talk to her teammates and get proof. Then find a way to bring him down. Ballistic would use his magic to "break" the bargain, thus earning him his reward for after he achieved his ends (damnation, being eaten by the demon whatnot). Terminal Velocity would run for help. (Hey he's a 260 pt beginning super).

Re: [Meta] What would your character be? Blakcat retcon: Her revelations that got her to her superhuman martial prowess (after being a MA/EP for years) would include the realization that the ends do justify the means, and would be well known for killing hatred based villians (anti-mutants, pro-mutant human killers, nazis you name it). Probably turns somewhat in the mode of Niche for her philosphy. Ballistic retcon: he never stopped being a cop. Now he just had a supersuit instead of a gun. Same methods, same intensity, same degree of lethality. Terminal Velocity Is the son of a superhero and supervillianess (one night stand). Dad's wife got him killed when she found out about it and retired from superheroes. TV would be trying to find her to kill her for Dad's sake.

Re: Quick Question for the "Automatic CvK" crowd (no flaming, please!) 0 pt Reluctance. Required CVK at some level, and for which you get points.

Re: What would your character do #74 (or so):Gift of Power? Blackcat - Well when her ID became public, her head student started a "superhero gang" of martial artists called the White Tigers. She would likely give it to him. Ballistic would talk to the Sorc Supreme for advice. Terminal Velocity might just give it to his girlfriend.

Re: [4color] Why do you dislike the Iron Age style? (No flames, ok?) If the current comics are in Iron age, then I don't mind them so much. If we are in the "gilded" age, then yeah.... My problems stem from the idea that to be gritty, dark, pushy or lethal is inherently better or more heroic, or even realistic. For me it is a matter of taste... I generally read my comics to read about heroic people doing heroic things normal people can't do- and doing them with a code of ethics that would be beyond most people as well. That last part is important, the superheroes I read should have a moral/ethical code as far above norm as thier powerlevel. It's okay for a cop to shoot a criminal, because he is authorized by the government to do so, and it could endanger his life. However, because of the tradition of nonkilling in comics, that is not the norm in superheroes, and I like that. Superman doesn't kill the criminals because he doesn't have to. If a character would be seen as a villian in a 70's Superman comic book then I think of him as a villian. Now the "realism" aspect about characters feeling real, and having problems, I don't mind that to an extent. The stuff Geoff Johns and Kurt Busiek write are very much Iron Age on that front, but thier character are still heroic in the classic superhero sense.... as opposed to the Punisher, Authority or such. I like in depth characterization, and deep emotional issues, but I want my superheroes to be super in powers, approach, and attitude. I take for granted in my superheroes (whether comics or gaming) that killing is wrong. Period. There may be extenuiting circumstances where the circumstance are more important than that line, but the do not happen often, and the character does not treat it easily. Casual Killers are right out. In general I prefer my comics to be PG/PG-13 - I don't even want much swearing in what I read there. Comics for me are escapism, going into a place that is less murky than the real world, somewhere I can know where I and the heroes stand, and I can respect that stance. So pretty much I dislike the Iron Age because it exemplifies the opposite of virtually everything I read comics for. Hope that answers your question, without turning things into flamebait.

Re: Are you Judge, Jury, and Executioner? In the games I run and play in, killing is basically something that is not done. Sometimes a "special adventure" will be run that is not unlike a graphic novel or miniseries from the source literature, where these rules are relaxed, but that is stated before hand. In actuality killing has only happened twice while I've been playing/GMing. First was a plot I concocted for Blackcat. Blackcat was a Darkforce enhanced martial artist, and I wanted her to become a regular MA, and lose her powers.I came up to the GM and said "Hey can we run a Cat dies, comes back from the dead possesed by her powers, goes evil, kills someone, goes to jail, gets redeemed, comes back plot" To which the GM said "Okay". It was worked in over a years, and was really great. The thing about it, the killing was while the sentience that was in control of her powers was in control, but she still felt it was her. The other was while I was GMing, and it was one of those graphic novel kind of things I mentioned earlier. Now in this game each player had 2 or 3 characters, so I could do the "everyone split up" kind of stories, or the kind you find in the legion, with lots of different plots going on with different subteams. . I decided to let the hero team actually completely stop a villian team.So I introduced PSI. As nasty or nastier than in Mind Game. I kept escalating thier atrocities. Certain characters were getting very irritated. So during the invasion of Chicago by demons they found out where PSI was and a group of the darkest PCS (one from each player) went down and took them out. Psimon was killed, as was Inquisitor, Mind Slayer and a couple others were vegatablized. One of the characters, a warbeast from another dimension who kept wanting to eat things (including downed villians - it became a running gag) was allowed to eat some of PSI. It was blamed on the demon invasion when found.

Re: What Would Your Character #72 (or so) Blackcat would chuckle. She was a member of one of the worlds foremost teams until it broke up, recently joined the Unity (think JLA) and has worked for an interdimensional lord as part of his squad and as a trainer, so getting invited would almost be par for the course. Her responce to the allegations (because she joined this team recently) would be a request for proof and leads, that she may make her decision. If refused she would tell them to take a hike, but look into what they said anyway. Ballistic is not a member of any team right now. Terminal Velocity could believe the allegations (his teamates include Deadboy the Goth hero and a fairly darkish streetpersonality (if not powers) teammate naked Jepeordy). They are a new team, and he doesn't know them yet. His responce would not be unlike Justice's (from the new Warriors) upon getting invited to the Avengers.

Re: What would you character do...

Re: What would your character do? #70 Blackcat - A phase of Healing (due to Ch'i) 8 dice should stabalize him, then off to trash the demon beastie. Ballistic - A phase od Healing (due to magic) 6 dice should stabalize him, then off to trash the demon beastie Terminal Velocity - pick him up and run with superspeed (4 Km/sec) to the nearest hospitcal. Then start scanning for the demon beastie, and calling in his teammates.

Re: A contriversial "Would your character...?" Cat would hem haw,play along (although not to the end) while her teammates found out how the bad guy could kill millions, stop it, and then she would drop him (literally or figuratevly). She would not for any reason go through with it. After the bad guy is down, she would have him sterilized. Ballistic, faced with such a dilemma would use his magic to find his actualy dimension, as this one is obviously not his home dimension. If it were, he would say somthing to the effect of "sorry, this isn't a dilema, - Mu - unask the question" And then fly into space for years (He's done that once before when he didn't like what was going on in the world.)

Re: Marvel Heroes Quotes You are right. I missed it completely when I scanned the thread. I was thinking to myself, the other board members are usually quicker than that...I can't believe they missed something so obvious. Good to see my initial impression was correct (even if I disprove it in regards to myself).

Re: Marvel Heroes Quotes Man no one else mentioned this, and you beat me to it by only a minute. *Sulks*

Re: Marvel Heroes Quotes Some have already been mentioned. Captain America: Avenger's Assemble, or from the Ultimates "Surrender? Surrender? Do you think this A "pointing to his head "stands for France?" Doctor Strange: As mentioned "By the Hoary hosts of Hoggarth" Thor: I say the nay, miscreant. Banshee: *uses powers* Beast: Oh my stars and garters. Rogue: Okay, Sugah. Wolverine: I'm the best at what I do ect ect ect.

Re: Would your character... Blackcat - absolutely not. She is of the opinion that such things are generally degrading (she wears close to a fullbody suit as a hero). Ballistic would comment about the incongruity of a powered armor character posing nude (given he has a public ID so no problems there) and then likely take off his helmet, cast his "blessing of aphrodite spell" (putting all 60 points of his magic pool into +120 comliness) flirt with the lady for a bit and then turn them down.

Re: What Would Your Character Do? #68 Blak Cat would instantly figure that he set up the beasty in the first place to make himself look good. Then she would either set up an info barrage showing that or challenge him to a one on one fight for leadership of the earth making that claim. (She beat the death dragon in her game, so she isn't much worried about this guy). When she won, she would abdicate. Ballistic would have been one of the heroes hurt in the first place, but if he wasn't he'd use his magic to broadcast the guys thoughts through the radio (telepathy linked with images/HRRHT) and let everyone know what he would do. Wouldn't be long before public opinion turned against him, and then Ballistic would drop him and send him to superprison (possibly off dimension). And as an aside - Wow this is my 1500th post. I didn't I had gone that far past the millenium mark.

Re: All the superhero PCs I've ever played I always figured a timehole opened and a copy of V&V fell into a comic writers hands and that is how Jon J'onzz the Martian Manhunter came about. He rolled Telepathy, Superstrength, Heatvision, Shapeshift, Invisibility and weakness to heat- and thought for days and days to come up with a cohesive idea, then finally threw his hands up in the air and cried "Ah to heck with it, he's a Martian".

Re: All the superhero PCs I've ever played I had this same idea, but I had a paragraph of two about each character, and what I was doing at the time - sort of an addendum to by biography on my web page. I never got around to posting it, but I kept the file, because I plan to some day..... (All characters were playing in Champions) The first game in Oregon: Microchip was a standard Marvel-esque telepath/telekenetic. Mutant, whose powers were activated during a computer explosion that imbedded a microchip in her forehead. The character was built by someone else. Played a little bit, but got tired of her real quickly. She was the character I learned about PRE attacks with, albeit without intent; a character blasted me three times with his most powerful attack, and in each case my TK FF stopped almost all of it so I looked at him and said, in a very condescending voice “Is that the best you can do?â€. The GM “That’s a Prescence attackâ€. Me “okay....what’s thatâ€. Shellhead a big bruising brick with lots of enrages and berserks. Turned out a lot like the hulk. First character I built. Didn’t understand the rules, so I went with a whole bunch of points and basic character design (althought I wouldn’t have phrased it that way then). Got board of him quickly- was enraged too much. Gemstone she was a sport Model brick. Flight, some martial arts (and this was under third edition, so that was rare for a brick - she had focused/hero id str, and bought the MA on her normal STR), and other stuff. Cheaper than Shellhead, I had discovered the wonder of Focusi. The character ended up in prison because she stopped a zombie summoning by the Zombie Master who had a permit for his fire, and his zombies. I pretty much got hosed by the GM. Meeb was interesting he was a brick with stretching and other stuff. (I started with bricks a lot, figured out later that I got bored with them too easily). Meeb came about because I asked the GM what SFX could justify 75% damage reduction, and he answered an amoeba. Next session I had meeb. Meeb was an alien, with a 40 ro 50 STR (do not recall which) stretching, clinging, form only shapeshift reduction and armor. At one point we were all falling and I hit first, and reached out with my stretching and caught everyone. The GM said “If you want to do that again you need to buy area affect on your strengthâ€. I had a lot of saved XP so I bought Explosion on my STR. Another player (who was not there for the previous bit) later looking at my sheet asked about that, and hatched a plan. So we conconcted the “Organic Grenadeâ€. He (the team brick) would toss me into the mass of villians and I would explode out with lots of little psuedopods and smack everyone, and cling to them all. The next Game: Utah (Lesslie’s or how I met my wife) When I started my next champions game I brought over rebuilt version of Chip, Gemstone and Meeb. Chip was the only one I really played much- I was starting with my disaffection for standard bricks. I joined this campaign just as it moved into a post apocalyptic future. Dave was a supersuit, and a rebuild of a character that my best friend in Oregon had (I asked permission). Dave had a sidekick, his helmet. Dave had a speed 5, the helmet had a 3. The helmet was named HARV (hueristic articulate responsive visor - sheesh). Harv had a funky lim on his MP (harv was an EP, Dave was brick with a huge amount of Enhanced senses with usable by other for harv). Sort of an activation roll, but on a 17 he blasted a teammate, and on an 18 he blasted Dave. He was uppity. I named the hero what I did so Harv could say, when getting uppity and Dave trying to turn him off “Dave.... don’t do that Dave.†My first supersuit. That archetype will appear many times. My first Martial artists (another archtype that will appear over and over again) was Warrior. Warren Hirihito Romanovich. He grew up in the gangs of the destroyed NY, and had Ch’i, but not as normal people had it, he could access multiple lifetimes worth of training, and could do just about anything. He was also my first character with Code vs Killing. I gave him a full CaK, because I decided that if I was going to play a character with this limitation, I would go full bore. Warrior became one of my most successful character. Played for almost a decade before his story was told and I retired him (he ascended to the next vibrational plane of existance). His philisophy was a mishmash of Buddism, Jonathon livingston seagull, starwars and Christianity. He had a student as an NPC that became a GMPC, then later full bore PC in a reincarnated version. Warrior’s order kept getting reincarnated, and they would remember bits of thier past lives, and that is how they had thier “superchiâ€. With Warrior I didn’t build a new PC for months if not more - something very unusual for me. Propane ne’e Enigma. My first basic Energy projector. I wanted something different from Warrior, and she was it. I was bored within 6 session. I don’t like basic energy projetors. So I suffered a bit, and then dumped her points into a cosmic pool (a 50 pointer) and played her that way for a while before retiring her. Moonstone - A basic speedster with a really nasty combo attack. There weren’t really DC limits, so he had a lot of running, a decent ST and an EB (this was before HA or that is what it would have been) that added to his punching damage. One time he pushed all three. KOed the bad guy and himself as well. Always wanted to play him more. New Knight - Tanith. A Jedi. Played her for a few months (mostly solo) and retired her. She had a short life, but was one of my favorite characters. She had a short career - but her story got told, so I retired her. She ended up in camalot, and ended up the mother of Galahad, and had twins later (she was a Jedi after all). She ended up the guardian of the Holy Grail. Balrog - a brick / other. He was a high strength demon. He didn’t want to be one, but was transformed into one. After the supermage cleaned up the messes, everyone else who had been changed was normal, but him. So he could do a “hulk†and change into Balrog. He ended up in a new mutants kind of school trying to understand his powers. Played for a decent amount of time. When he went on the shelf I didn’t mind. Penumbra was built after I saw the first batman movie, and had to play a clone. He had very minor light manipulation ability and a nifty gadget belt, detective abilities, martial abilities and a cool motorcycle. Peregirne was a teen super. Archer (Rainbow archer was her aunt, and she picked up her equipment from some that were spilled when RA was beat in a fight). She got some armor and a hoverboard and was off. She was fun, and started dimension hopping. She made yuppie a curse in a middle ages setting. When I first read snowcrash, I thought that Stephenson stole my character due to his telepathy... Peregrine was very much YT. Superstar - a teen brick with some energy powers - HS football star. My wife built his sister a cheerleader and EP. They could join hands and do a really nasty area effect attack. Played only for a few sessions. Surge. A martial artist with a small cosmic pool. Played for a while in my wife’s campaign, but not enough. Then this campaign ended- It had been running almost 13 years. The Rocky Mountain Avengers: A game that was run by a friend of ours, Brian, that was a player in Lesslie’s campaign. My first character was Black Cat a darkforce enhanced martial artists. I never got solid campaign numbers from the GM, so I kept layering her defenses. She ended up with more than the Brick in the game. She played for a while, but I wasn’t getting the kind of play in with her that I wanted. She did end up with a scale from Godzilla due to an AVLD that she had that actually did him damage, and made a shield out of it, and got her training from Captain America. Dragonstar Red Used a visual traced from Rocket Red in the JLI. He was a supersuit. The GM and I were looking over one of the enemies books (international I think) that had a character with an EB with an RKA linked to it. He said that this was ugly as you could spread the EB and get the OCV bonus with the RKA. And DR was born. He had a breakable unbreakable focus. Mechanically it was unbreakable, but the suit granted +30 bod, no figured characteristics. So I had a lot of his powered systems either downpower or shut off completely depending on how much body he took. Played him for a great while. Really like him. A good deal of his style and power ended up in a later character - ballistic. Afterburner my last character from this campaign. He was another attempt at a strait MP. He had desolid physical only (he turned into full flame), and rather large pool only for advantages on his EB. (this predated variable advantage). He could also get extra dice with the pool. He was johnny storm’s sun with a quickened aging metabolism. Kismit was a luck based semimaritalartist. I’ve thought about ressurecting her with a new build. She only played a few times. Salt Lake Goofyness Now Brian and I would drive to Salt lake for another Champions game. The GM there was inconsistant and stingy with XP but we wanted to both play so... I played Afterburner again. Same powers and personality different background. Now this GM would sometimes noshow with no warning so Brian took on GMing when the other guy didn’t show up. It was a semi-comic campaign. I played Powerhouse a brick that was a trucker. When he transformed into super ID, his cap spun backwards, his Tshirt became bright white, his jeans became clean and he got a little PH symbol on his shirt. He had a dog Splotch (to ugly to call spot). He was goofy and fun. My game About this time I started my campaign (which ran nearly 11 years). I built some characters to be GMPCs that Lesslie would run solo for me. Dragonfire was a martial artist with fire generation, but it took a lot of energy, so he didn’t use it much. He ended up getting depowered and became the team trainer when I got tired of him. Pheonix was a energy projecting sidekick to Lesslie’s patriotic The Marshall. White Tiger was a supersuit martial aritsts (eveyone had supersuit bricks and EPs why not MAs). She had samurai and ninja training and a little magic. Her suit was techmagic. She was also filthy rich and ran a chain of department stores. Really cool character, and I never got to play her enough. She was one I intended to bring back, but in a lot of ways she and Cat (see Tempest ahead) were similar, and I was already playing Cat, so I just kept her on the shelf. Tempest: A new player in our game was getting ready to start his own game (and we played them concurrently) For my first character I played a variation of Surge. Trouble was with his pool, he overwhelmed the GMs plots, and I voluntarily retired him. My primary character for the decade long campaign was Black Cat. She ended up getting depowered after a while (150+ XP) and became a strait martial artist. I played a possessed by her powers go evil, get depowered, go to jail, get marital insight, get pardoned plot with her. While Cat was in prison I played Moonwalker. An alien bounty hunter with a huge selection of gadgets. He was a blast to play - my favorite of his dodads was a gelsack that hit and caused a funky alien energy discharge and the target was hit with a 2d6 end drain each phase for 2 turns. He was efficient and intense. Now the team was getting pretty powerful, so the GM decided to add some newer lower powered characters. I brought in a chain smoking annoying little twerp that was a cyber telepath and machine manipulator. He had a bunch of stolen Foci that he used, and later shaped into a cybersuit. I was never satified with playing him (partially I think because he was so annoying). He went by Alter Ego. Then he got married and moved to Salt lake and we stopped his campaign. Wahhh. Now back in my game, I brought Surge back, when Lesslie brought back Psyche (the two were a love story originally so when she brought back the one, I had to get the other). Third time was a charm, and as he was a GM PC his pool never got in the way of my plots. Eric was the love interested of Warrior’s student Jennifer (so he was originally an NPC for an NPC/GMPC). When my wife decided to play Jenny as a PC, I decided to play Eric as one as well. Ballistic was my most successful supersuit (the way Cat and Warrior were my Martial artists). He was an excop who flew the suit, but didn’t design it. As he played he started learning how to build it (and later had sort of a funky expand his brain kinda psi accident that gave him a lot of that right away). But after 75 or 100 XP I was getting sorta bored, and I had recently read the Ultimate Supermage, so I replaced his particlebeam mutlipower with a mage multipower, and he was almost a sacrifice for an alien sorceror, and it brought up his magical potential. Short games, games that died or never really took off. A game where we were the first with superpowers, I played a character with a bunch of little psi powers. Some telepathy, mind control, prescience, telekenesis, and a little energy control. However these powers hit a kid who was 17 and a total star wars nut, and so he thought he turned into a Jedi (his energy control was a “lightsaber†energy out of his hand). He called himself Padawan. He was a blast to play. He was the irritant of that group. He kept quoting Star wars. Another character “I’ll tryâ€. Padawan “There is no try, only do. Or do not.†Another lower powered game where the characters were just learning thier powers I built Tempo. He was a muscian (drummer) who got speedster powers. This game died within a month but I loved the character, and, dang it, I still hadn’t played a speedster the way I wanted. I was intillectually trying to come up with a two character fusion character (a la firestorm) and built Sift a mage with the skills that both her secret IDs had. I played her in a short play be Email game, and then resurected her for my most recent just starting game as a GM PC in the mystic squad. The New Game. I am in the process of starting new champions world, with multiple teams that I can bounce around with. I’m using bits of the long running campaings I was in as part of the background, so it is a sequel campaign, and this allows the players to play some of thier older, more powerful characters. Sift is on the mystic squad. Ballastic and Black Cat are in the legacy team (think JLA or Avengers) Currently playing in a team that ended up being the “teen Champions†is Terminal Velocity. Another teen speedster.His mother was Shrike from European Enemeis, and his father was a superhero. Dad’s wife found out about his stumble from matrimony and set him up to be killed by Eurostar. She left the team they were on, and thier son hunts me.

Re: I made the GM cry.... Only when she gives me extra XP.