shaunclinton

Re: Ultimate Scrapper? I just re-read Spidey vs. Firelord this morning - go Spidey!!! It is probably about as cheesy as they come but it is an amusing story none the less. The fact is that Spidey can beat anyone in the Marvel Universe - he is the flagship character after all!

Re: Works Well in the Source Material, not so Well in the Game Time loops and time travel are two things that work well in the source material but usually go kablooey when PCs get involved. The Time Loop is immensly boring if you have to go through it more than a couple of times generally. One way of getting it to work is to have the PCs come in at the start of the 'last loop' and then to discover that they have been trapped in the loop for x number of repititions. Of course, this only works with loops that you don't remember so it doesn't work for the Korvac/Captain America style time loops. Time Travel works well when tightly controlled. But often in the source material the 'characters' choose ridiculous times to go back to when trying to fix a problem. Likely the PC won't make such interesting and dramatic mistakes and will just go to the most efficient possible point to fix everything.

Re: Top Five vs The Unknown Menace! My picks: 1) Superman - Raw power, inspiration, doesn't give up. 2) Martian Manhunter - Just a mote behind the man above; plus telepathy and shapechanging! 3) The Spectre - To deal with any magical/cosmic stuff that's going on. 4) Thor - Incredible raw power plus can lend a hand on the cosmic front. Now I'm torn here... I need a genius of sorts to round out this team and also someone to keep everyone on their toes. Tempted by Iron Man, Reed Richards or John Henry Irons... but in the end I'm going to plump for... 5) Batman - Lacks the raw scientific genius of the others but makes up for it in logic, deductive reasoning and all round tactical genius.

Re: Free Will Anyone who is anyone would oppose such a move with every fiber of their being. The one fundamental thing that virtually everyone dislikes is being told what to do. Imagine that multiplied up to the whole world? Sure some people will convert to a cause, but the vast majority don't like other people interfering with our free will. Take a real world pseudo-example - ID Cards. Why do a great number of citizens in countries (such as the UK) without ID cards oppose their introduction? They would not hinder law abiding people and could be useful for combating terrorism, fraud, illegal immigration and a wide variety of problems. Even if the government made them free a lot of people will still oppose it in spite of the fact that it should make them safer. The reasons they will give are many and varied but fundamentally they don't like being told what to do and having tabs kept on them. Mind control to render a population 'happy' or 'non-violent' is a violation a hundred times worse. So far the debate has been about these two states so I'll lump in all my points for both one after the other: So you're stuck in a crappy relationship, your job sucks and your parents die in a car crash - but you feel happy through it all? What happens to all that negative emotion? Even worse, if you don't feel it vast swathes of our society changes over night. Do people need to grieve? Do people break up? What if they do? No-one feels bad about it! If no-one feels negatively about their situation where does the desire to change it come from? Why do heroin addicts sit around disgusting flea-pits all day - because they can induce happiness there, do these new happy people care about their surroundings? Why work? I used to work to get the money to do the things that make me happy but now I'm happy all day so why bother! Non-violence - how far does this go? Can you kill animals for food? You fall in the Ocean and have to thrash violently to swim to shore - can you risk damaging a passing fish? What about the fight or flight response? What happens when the adrenaline rushes? Is it the end of passion in competitive sports? What happens to drive? You can kiss good-bye to millions of jobs as armies, police, etc. become surplus to requirements or jobs that a new non-violent population don't want. Can you kick your car if it breaks down? What if someone with this non-violence blanket over them commits a violent act such as causing a car crash? Does their mind snap? What about diseased people or mentally ill people, can they be violent - how does society deal with them? Both routes lead to the complete alteration of our society. Also, nothing is ever 100% effective - there would be people who could resist, or there would come to be people who could resist. What happens then? Nobody who sees this going on around them would sit back and accept it. I don't think there is a character in all HERO-dom worthy of the title 'hero' who would accept it. I liked the way Superman put it back in JLA #4 - after some chat about what level of superhuman interference in society is acceptable he's asked something along the lines of 'Why do [humans] need us at all?' "To catch them if they fall."

Re: Point Efficiency vs. Concept The problem the friend had is (I'm supposing from the thread title) that the powers could 'efficiently' all be lumped in with the suit for a cheeky OIF limitation on them all. This sort of thing has come up a lot when we play the hero system... the character who takes the mega-limiter on all of his powers (Only Works In City, OIF, Only At Night, etc.) outshines all the other PCs the majority of the time and then every so often becomes pretty rubbish for a bit. Hard one to workaround without disallowing half the limitations in the game. I wouldn't mind so much except one of my players blatantly refuses any character concept with a limitation on his powers!!!

Re: Countering the Speed Zone How about if you bought the Transdimensional advantage for your DCV. Maybe a guy like Slade who can't move in the Speed Zone himself but can react fast enough to still have some defence against someone in the zone. Of course you still couldn't see him coming - however I'd be inclined to allow a simple transdimensional on sight allow someone outwith the zone see in. Transdimensional damage shield also works. Being extremely tough works as well. My main thoughts about the Speed Zone involve aborting to it. If you abort to the Speed Zone when someone shoots at you is the bullet/blast/etc. suspended in the air on its way to you? What happens should you move aside or somesuch in the meantime? Some bizarre possibilities spring to mind!

Re: Power Defense Sure there is a comic 'bit' for Power Defence. What about every group of heroes who are weakened by an enemies mysterious power sapping rays - all save one who has someone resisted the effect or been too powerful for it to overcome? What about every time the Scarlet Witch/Dr. Fate/insert hero here has muttered the immortal lines "My Hex/Power of Nabu/Widget must have protected me from that effect which took out the rest of the heroes!"? What about Plastic Man and his ilk who just refuse to be affected by transforms, drains, etc? Turn me into a pig will you? Oink Oink - "I love a woman who can control my shape!" before changing back to his usual form? Even heroes like Iron Man/Steel/etc. tend to have power defence. It just covers a wide variety of special effects... "My neural inhibitors circuits protected me from that inebriation beam (DEX Drain)"; "Good job my suits power relays can re-route around the disruption that energy drain (suppress powersuit abilities) caused!"; "A trusty nano-air scrubbers saved me from that nasty Ebola Plus (Body Drain)!" Wide ranging Power Defence is fairly commonplace... Gods, Shapeshifters, Aliens, Power Armour and Magical heroes tend to be the ones I think of most often for it but most 'tough guy' heroes have it as well. Heroes I haven't mentioned who undoubtedly have some Power Defence... Captain America, Superman, Mr. Fantastic, The Hulk, The Thing, Silver Surfer, Captain Marvel... the list is endless!!! All of these guys have been hit by Drains, Suppresses, Transfers, Transforms, etc. and whilst most have suffered effects they rarely if ever suffer the way a mere mortal would. It is a good catch all category and if you want your heroes to have a limited version of it then fine; but that's an invitation to transform/drain/etc. abuse and not in keeping with the genre. In the source material being 'tough' or 'super' in some way tends to let you resist a whole range of things that normal people couldn't. That is exemplified in the use of power defence.

Re: Kryptonians, Asgardians and Spectres! Oh My! Some great ideas there with the mythical beasts. He could have petrification attacks, breath weapons, spiky bits , and a whole plethora of unusual abilities!!! The only problem would be knowing where to stop. I think I'll work with this and maybe a few ultra-large forms like dinosaurs, maybe a Kong like giant ape form would be nice as well. The Hel info is useful... there is actually an underlying thematic device about duality that it would be great to bring her into. To fulfill it I would have to make her half human and half machine but that's not entirely outside of the remit if one of them is rotting! Dual powers sounds fairly awesome... I guess it's more of a special effect than anything else but there's an incredible mental image there! I'd love to read the Swamp Thing story with the Darkness kicking the snot out of The Spectre. I've heard someone mention this before but have never seen it. What was the Darkness... I'm guessing it didn't have a soul/was a natural phenomena or somesuch and so The Spectre was powerless against it. The Spectre's plot device nature tends to lead to him not being involved until "a human hand is guiding this crisis" and the like. I'm not going to make him quite plot device man but somewhere close to that. Out of interest, what happened when The Spectre was stunned? Only similar thing I really remember was in Zero Hour when Parallax blasted him and he sort of faded out. But that was perhaps unconcious rather than stunned, mechanic wise of course. I'll get on the Wikipedia with the Norse Gods... plenty of research to do! Thanks for the help!

Re: Martian Manhunter Question and other oddities Back just after the crisis Superman couldn't breathe in space and took a few minutes to reach the moon. Before long all that changed and by the time he came back from the dead he could super-oxygenate his lungs for extended space action and could whizz between here and the moon in no time. Fast forward to Our Worlds At War and breathing didn't even seem to be a consideration (saying that, even the Flash was hand-waved to freely breathe (and RUN!!!!!!) in space at that point it seemed) and he could cover pretty much any distance within the solar system in virtually no time. Cue Infinite Crisis and again they rammed his speed to ridiculous levels. Whether or not he was with pre-crisis Supes he still was attaining that ludicrous Earth to Krypton in 3 panels or so velocity!

Re: Martian Manhunter Question and other oddities I always liked Adam Strange... I think the first story he featured in that I ever read was one involving Kanjar Ro and his Gamma Gong. His plan was to visit Rann with its triple sun system that would make him 3 times more powerful than Superman, 3 times more willfull than GL, 3 times bustier than Wonder Woman, etc. That's when you knew it was the Silver Age... when crazy sh*t like that worked and then Adam Strange thwarted him with a bit of metal from his home planet. Superb. As I recall he got a lift from GL in that one. Some tomfoolery about the Zeta beam wearing off to help him escape the effects of the Gamma Gong and then getting GL to whip him off to Rann. Infinite Crisis had some infinitely ridiculous moments! I was pleased to see that they didn't cheesily have Conner beat up Superboy Prime though - that would have been a bridge too far. Not that whipping through the gulf of Krypton, its Red Sun and then crashing on GL planet wasn't cheesy enough though. Despite all the silliness it didn't have the tongue in cheek (and excellent) tone of DC 1,000,000 though.

Re: Martian Manhunter Question and other oddities I always thought Rann was supposed to be too far away for Supes to easily reach. However Green Lantern is a different story seeing as Oa is away at the centre of the Universe. Still, you don't want to be reliant on your mates all the time, eh? Spaceflight travel times are one of the most bizarre things about comics and in general characters speeds vary tremendously based on the needs of the story. I recall one in particular were Superman and GL were off doing a tour of the solar system on their lunch-break or something similar which is just bizarre given that Supes can't travel at those superluminal velocities (or so he'd have us believe!!!) Anyway, back on topic. I have to admit I'm a huge fan on J'onn and all his crazy powers. The one thing that's ever stopped me from doing a homage is trying to come up with any sort of justification for all of his abilities without just saying he's a martian! He isn't really to blame for all the retconning and strange decision making that has blighted his career. I think in recent years good things have been done in terms of unifying conflicting elements of his backstory (the pyrophobia vs. physical weakness for instance) and the Ostrander title of a few years back was a lot of fun whilst it lasted.

Howdy all and sundry, I'm about to run a short mini-campaign which is set some years in the future from an old campaign that I ran a few years back. Basically it is going to be a bit of a free for all with the Norse Gods turned nasty pulling a kind of supplant the heroes in the public eye and then eliminate them and rule the world kind of stunt. It'll feature a few battles with various enemies and a variety of investigation and natural disasters. As some background the four PC characters are described in broad strokes below: i) Superman - essentially the turn of the century Supes with incredible power levels and vulnerabilities to kryptonite, magic and red solar energy. ii) Starheart - a kind of blue flame version of Sentinel with elements of Dr. Fate thrown in for good measure. iii) Jack Hudson - a Hudson city based Jack Hawksmoor with an emphasis on dirty infighting and really brutal martial arts. iv) Savage - beast god with animal based powers; size changing, strength, durability, movement powers, etc. kinda somewhere between Beast Boy and Vixen. Anyway... with a view to upgrading/developing these characters for the mini-campaign I was thinking of bringing Superman into line with the Kingdom Come mythology and lessening his Kryptonite weakness. Jack Hudson is going to move toward a kind of Captain America/Midnighter type ultimate mo-fo fighting machine with some teleportation and speedster style abilities. Savage will gain more of his god-like powers and Starheart is going in a kind of Spectre like direction. Jeeze - all these comic character reference points! It didn't seem this plaguarised when we were playing it before!!! Anyway... My 'problems' I would like Herodom assembleds help with. 1) Spectre - Everyone knows what sort of powers he has... but what sort of character sheet does he have??? Does the Spectre have STUN? What are his defences like? His STR obviously varies tremendously but he isn't really a hand to hand combatant. I'm reluctant to just give him a big VPP as that was pretty much Starhearts original concept. Way I figure it he has good defences (above campaign average, not quite limit), size/form alteration abilities, some esoteric senses, extra dimensional movement, probably have to have a VPP for his magical style abilities. Does anyone have suggestions for Characteristics for the Spectre? What about movement abilities and the like. Teleport seems like the most obvious choice. Basically I need huge amounts of assistance with this guy so anything you can think of would be appreciated. 2) Savage - Beast God. Animal powers can only go so far in a world with cosmic level beings and the like... but I don't want to just tack on God powers too and give him a big VPP or some old testament god style powers. I'm looking for something original and cool... but mainly something fun to play. He had a hefty multipower originally with about 20 or so ultras that he could mix and match... I think he could run 5 or 6 at a time but ran through his END reserve pretty quickly. I'll probably sink points into lowering his END costs and upping the number of ultras active at a time. 3) Asgardians - I'm planning Thor pretty much as per the Marvel version except nasty. The other Asgardians I plan to use are Odin, Hel and Loki. Odin has the omnipotence and Odinpower, plus he's a natty fighter. Loki has all the illusions, shape shifting, size control and a bunch of other shifty tricks. Hel is someone I'm struggling to fit much of a concept to beyond some tricks that seem more reminiscent of satan. Help with fleshing out the Asgardians and their relative spheres of influence would be greatly appreciated. I've attached the original character sheets I'm working from to this post to use as a launching point for suggestions and the like. Sadly there are no points totals as the HDC files these came from got wiped from my old hard disc and it was only luck that all of the players still had these copies. We kept the points off of the sheets to avoid confusion during play. All cool idea and suggestions are greatly appreciated!!! Thanks, Shaun

Re: All Scots don't have 17 str! Well I have no problem wandering around the streets of Glasgow with a Claymore in each hand. But then I'm a STR 20 Scot and proud of it - even my wee sister is STR 18.

Re: Group experience, tricks, powers, etc. Sounds an awful lot like a the Karma Pool mechanic from Shadowrun. Having just converted a bunch of Shadowrun characters into Hero, along with their team karma pools I bought it exactly like Rapier describes for each characters own pool. However for the group pool I had each character buy the skill levels usable by others and then handwaved the range/LOS requirements in exchange for the disadvantages of your karma being under group control.

Kudos on TUS, a great read from start to finish. I have a few questions about the speed zone section though. 1) We use the optional velocity damage rules presented in the HERO System were damage is based on your velocity/turn. How would you suggest reconciling this with characters performing move by/through, etc. in the Speed Zone? If I'm moving in the zone at the Attospeed level and perform a 20" Move-By then my velocity is several times the speed of light! 2) The effect of attacks made in the Speed Zone don't occur till I drop out of the zone (or occur so slowly it seems this way.) So if I perform a move through I presume that I take full damage (as to me the character seems to take no knockback) and as I am in the Speed Zone would I take the damage immediately? 3) Whilst a character in the zone moves at Speed Zone velocities; presumably uncontrolled movement still takes place at regular speeds. So if I was to drop off of a tall building or take some knockback would I be effectively frozen in place until normal time resumed? Thanks for taking the time to answer my queries! They are a tad pedantic but they've been occupying my mind for a few days and it'd be nice to have some 'official' answers. Shaun