Karmakaze

Does this mean I should try to run something Champions related at DexCon?  (too late to prep for Dreamation and I have another con the weekend before)

Re: Alternate Sexualities in Champions and Supers settings

The only quible that I really have with the idea is the vibe that I get from a few posts in this thread that suggest that being homosexual should be worth actual points over being hetrosexual in a setting that quite frankly' date=' whatever stigma that might exist in the real world happens off screen if at all.[/quote']

 

Depending on the game settings, I'd allow it as a Social Complication.

Re: overwhelmed

The rulebook's in two volumes, so it's worth getting volume II as well. You won't need more than that, though. There's also the Basic rulebook, which you can use on its own. (Basic does not have all of the examples and is missing some of the optional rules).

Re: The Nightmare of Megascale Teleport

First Phase - close in and Grab the target (could fail to hit; target gets casual STR to break free; target may get a later phase to break free; all penalties for Grabbing apply)

 

Second Phase - Megascale T Port (0 OCV, 1/2 DCV, takes full phase - IIRC, Teleport takes an extra phase to use for non-combat movement; I'm assuming that is correct; target can keep trying to escape)

 

Third Phase - POOF - Teleport away - still 0 OCV, 1/2 DCV, but on the asteroid

 

Fourth phase - prepare to 'port back - still 0 OCV, 1/2 DCV, but on the asteroid

 

Fifth phase - 'port back - still 0 OCV, 1/2 DCV, now back in the fray.

Since the villain hasn't had his action in all of this, then, assuming he isn't much slower than the hero, doesn't he have a couple of shots (around 3rd and 4th phase) at the hero, maybe even time to Haymaker? If this happens often, I'd expect the hero to get hit at least sometimes (especially at half DCV), and if he gets Stunned, he's got a problem. After all, he's removed the villain from the fight, but he's also taken himself out of range of assistance from his allies.

That should give the villain a fighting chance against a tactic like this, without unduly penalizing the hero. Presumably a villain won't kill his only way back home, so it's not life-threatening, but it's a risk the teleporting character will have to consider.

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

I don't see a lot of players with only Shrinking for the same reason why you don't see characters with only one of any other Power.

I did play a character who's primary abilities were Shrinking and Teleport. I did a lot of infiltration and sneak attacks.

One of my convention pregens is a shapeshifter, but also has Shrinking and Flight Only When Shrunk.

Re: Eccentric but plausible ways a character could be rich?

Massive financial settlement from the company responsible for the industrial accident that caused the character's superpowers.

Re: Alternate Sexualities in Champions and Supers settings

In my mind it would be like having no superheroes of color' date=' or just a dozen or so scattered throughout other supplement books. I'd say if you are creating superhero writeups, about 1 in 12 of them should be lesbian or gay -- otherwise it's just not "realistic." Doesn't even have to be that many, really.[/quote']

 

It has been pointed out that, for a team set in the reconstruction of Detroit, the Champions are an awfully white team...

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

The players are having some ninja problems.

Johnny Cornfed: Well, we know this is a town with metahumans, so, based on population, I'd say there should be about three ninjas enrolled in this school...

He then decides to call them out, and goes to the editor of the school newspaper and asks her to publish an article where he says that "ninjas are stupid, and I'm not scared of them."

The headline: New Kid Attempts To Set Up Painfully Obvious Trap

Re: TV show concept

And yet, Smallville has been very successful...

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

In a supervillains game, one of the PCs expresses concern that someone we plan to rob might hire assassins to come after us. The rest of the PC's scoff.

Eris: In the words of a great philosopher, "consequences, schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich!"

Re: Fading Stars...when and why should superheroes retire?

At first it was just going to be maternity leave, you know? Stretch kevlar's not all that forgiving, and it's kind of irresponsible to be fighting crime when you're four months pregnant. Not to mention the time-consuming search for an obsetrician who could work around my unique metabolic needs. And then Louise came along, and took after me maybe a bit too much. We got it all sorted out - good thing Dr. Franklin has nerves of steel - but it was a while before I could think about anything else, and then Frank, Jr. was coming along, and I guess I realized I was never going back to full-time heroics. A couple of teams still have my number for the big emergenices, but it's been more of a once-a-year thing.

Lou's going to be eighteen next year. When she found my stuff I made her promise to hold off until her 18th birthday, and in return I'd get her trained up and geared up. I guess now I've got to let her do it. Frank's laughing at me - he says its karma for all the sleepless nights I gave him back in the day. I'm going to have to brush up my skills, maybe even check up on who's active out there these days. My baby's going to need backup...

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life.

I gotta ask - in what context would someone ask "How's your brackets?"

I got to greet somone "How's your spleen?" this morning...

Re: Fading Stars...when and why should superheroes retire?

--You quit because of a life-threatening injury you received saving thousands or millions of people. This gives that hero one last hurrah saving the PC's if it's necessary.

For that matter, if you're going for realism, at the edge of 50, you just don't have the reflexes you had as a younger hero, not to mention the accumulated injuries of several decades (look at the sort of things you see in boxers or football players at the end of their careers.) That also allows for the last hurrah.

If you're looking at female heroes, there's always pregnancy and the demands of childcare. You could even have a heroine mentoring her own kid.

Re: Counter-stereotyping

One of my personal favorites: "What animal instincts?"

 

The bestial character, whether were-creature or non-changing anthropomorphic, who does not demonstrate any behaviors stereotypical of their appearance.

I enjoyed the one-liner from one of the JL cartoons when Vixen was asked about jungles and she just gives a blank look. "What makes you think I know anything about the jungle? I live in a loft in Chelsea."

Re: Counter-stereotyping

Subtle Bricks are harder to do. I can think of one that didn't start a fight by slamming someone with a car. Maybe a brick combined with something else like speed like spiderman for example could be an example.

I've done a pacifist brick. Which falls into the "gentle giant" brick stereotype but also bypasses the unsubtle property damage stereotype.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Although you do have to wonder at the mad genius of whoever bred the original Gelatinous Cube' date=' presumably to clean up rubbish and corpses from 10-by-10 corridors. Then of course, you have mad geniuses like Ian, in the hands of whom a Cube is a deathtrap for even well equipped parties if they aren't clinically paranoid.[/quote']

 

Given the number of 10x10 corridors, presumably he'd also developed a Tunneling Cube of some sort, and those have all been killed off.

Re: Google Doc's Templates! Hero System templates: Character Sheets, Combat Record, E

Is that for 5e or 6e?

It should be 6e - assuming I uploaded the right spreadsheet.

Re: Google Doc's Templates! Hero System templates: Character Sheets, Combat Record, E

The last time (before this very last time) I tried importing a complex Excel sheet into Google Docs, I didn't have much luck. They must have improved the import because all I lost this time was some formatting. I realize that not everyone would want to use the sort of columnar arrangement I did (I originally did it that way so I could easily balance the pre-gens against one another by looking at them side-by-side.) If you do get a prettier format out of it, please post a link.

Re: Google Doc's Templates! Hero System templates: Character Sheets, Combat Record, E

Ok, I tried importing my old excel sheet into google docs. It lost my merged cells, and I only put them back for the first column (Butterfly). A quick look-over shows most of the formulae still working. The link I put in should make this a public spreadsheet, so feel free to test it or use bits for your own attempts at a character sheet.

Re: D&D 4E Powers as Fantasy Hero Powers

Packages are probably your best bet.

Though it depends a bit on whether you want to just recreate existing characters, or also recreate the leveling up path. If the character already exist with WoW stats, but are going to use HERO experience thereafter, it might be easier to do a one-off conversion and work from there.

Re: Google Doc's Templates! Hero System templates: Character Sheets, Combat Record, E

Mostly HD is useless for me, because I don't have a multi hundred to thousand dollar machine to run it on, yet, I've gotten by fairly well, with a 4 dollar notebook and a 2 dollar pencil.

 

....

 

A Google Doc template though would be something I could run into anyplace with wifi, and snag it, and or run over to any old Internet cafe or business center and snag it, has a lot of potential and certainly, would intrest a lot of folks especially considering the document sharing set up and a few other handy Google aids....*shrug*

What kind of machine do you have that can access Google Docs via wifi but can't run a Java application?

I mean, I get the idea of not paying for something that you can do for free, but I'm baffled by the implication that Hero Designer requires a high end machine to run. We're not talking about Photoshop or Champions online here. I can run HD off a thumb drive on a low-end netbook running the Ubuntu netbook remix, and you can't get much lower powered than that.

I actually did some of my early 5th to 6th ed conversions in Excel because I didn't want it all done for me - the only way for me to properly internalize the rules is to do it by hand. I wouldn't mind using something like Google Docs because it would allow me to keep character sheets online so both I and my players can reference the same sheet at the same time.

I'm going to see if I can attach the rudimentary excel sheet I used: [ATTACH]37978[/ATTACH] I'm pretty sure I have a more recent one around somewhere, but this should do.

Need starship schematics? Here's a good place to look.

Starship Schematics Database

Welcome to the Starship Schematics Database. It's dedicated to the sole purpose of archiving every single starship design ever conceived in the Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, and Space Battleship Yamato (A.K.A. Star Blazers in the USA) Universes, both official and unofficial, interesting and mediocre.

International Catalogue of Superheroes

From the site

Welcome to the International Catalogue of Superheroes. The purpose of this site is to build up a database of information about various superhero characters from around the world. For decades American comics, and especially those from two prolific publishing houses, have dominated if not the market, then certainly the public's perception of it. There are few people in the world who would not recognise Superman, Batman, Spider-Man or the X-Men, and there are hundreds of websites devoted to those characters. That is not the focus of this site. One day, perhaps, I will start to index those famous characters, but that day, if it comes about, is some way off.

 

Instead this site is intended to cover less well known, but no less worthy, creations. In particular it aims to showcase some of the international diversity that exists in the superhero world. There are large sections devoted to heroes from Britain, France, Canada, Australia, Japan and many other countries, which continue to expand as I learn more about the heroes of each of those countries. From the U.S.A. I've tried to give coverage to characters who appeared in many Independent comics (e.g. non-Marvel or D.C.), as well as film and television.

You can browse alphabetically or by country.

Re: Tropes Revisited: Beautiful Female Martial Artist. Ideas sought

Is that a pragmatic version of Psylocke?

Yes, that's Psylocke. Project Rooftop is a blog that basically commissions/collects redesigns of existing superheroes. There's a lot of good stuff there.

Re: Tropes Revisited: Beautiful Female Martial Artist. Ideas sought

I ran across this in my rss feed the other day and thought it was a good option.

From Project Rooftop