Ura-Maru

Re: Liefeld's Titans It’s a homage to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics! You remember, with the body facing you, but the arms and head twisted 90’! Actually, it’s not so much he’s got an enormous rack, as that his head is growing out of his right shoulder. I think the INTENTION was to have him in a heroic, 3/4 view, and then he drew the head in the wrong place, was too lazy to fix it/didn’t notice, and just put the back in based on where the head is. Or, as likely, he was trying to light-table two different pictures together that didn’t quite fit. Speaking of Liefield and ‘homages,’ there was a great web page that had various ‘Homage, Rip Off, or Coincidence’ panels from different comics, with the original and the later one next to each other, and you could vote which you thought it was. Liefeld had more than his share, but they weren’t all his. Anyway, this sent me looking for it, but I lost the link. Anyone know where the page is? --- “If you take away cartoonists license to steal, where will they get their ideas?â€

Re: A D&D paladin in my Marvel Avengers campaign. But if we ARE going to get one, could we get one of the women from Jacqueline Carey’s ‘Kushiel’s’ books? I mean, if we’re going to get one anyway. Just askin’. --- What?!

Re: I know I have seen this lim before No, you haven’t. The vast majority of combat movement is half moves. For the same reason a hero doesn’t get –1 for an ‘Only works vs. villains’ attack power. Sure, there may be as many heroes as villains, but the vast majority of the time, he’s not going to be shooting at them. And I’m not buying that ‘no noncombat movement’ is worth –1/2, whatever it says, anywhere. I’ve gone entire campaigns where no one ever used noncombat movement. By itself, I’d give it –1/4, or -5 points, whichever came first. Combined with ‘half moves only’, it’s not worth anything at all. Both because it’s just not a significant enough limitation, and because I don’t think there’s such a thing as a half noncombat movement. Is buying +5†of running for the same number of points, and get more movement (at the cost of style) acceptable? --- “Moving . . . faster! . . . Talking . . .slower!â€

Re: I know I have seen this lim before I thought not allowing the character to make ‘two half moves’ was obvious. That really would be no limitation at all. That’s akin to taking “x2 damage from Fire†and then claiming you meant the British superheroine Fire. If you assume you’re players are pulling that kind of stuff, then no limitation is justified. I was assuming that we were talking about buying 6†of extra running, that could only be used to add 3†to a half move. So you could make a single 6†half move, then attack, or a 6†full move. With the special effect being “I can shoot while running around like a madman.†It’s not inappropriate for a jumpy MA or gun ballet type. Not being able to run away, catch fast purse snatchers, or do a 12†Move By or Move Through IS a disadvantage. Just a small one. Gojira’s phrasing was better, though. Or even “Only to make a half move before an attack,†if the player’s a real weasel. --- Actually, as it only saves two points, you could just buy an extra 5†of running, and still get the same 6†half move. But that wouldn’t be nearly as cool.

Re: The Coming of Deth Sturm! The transform really should be 'with x limbs' to 'with x-1 limbs, facial scars, or no genitals.' Otherwise how can you do the 'incredible shrinking badguy' bit where you blow something else off the bad guy every time he shows up? And to be true bad iron age, he needs some kind of poorly defined energy power. That's suspiciously similar to some long-running characters power set, but nobody ever mentions that. And he needs 15 Hunted: Super-Secret Mysterious Background, That's Constantly Hinted At But Never Explained, Because Coming Up With Specifics Is Hard (14-, Less Pow, NCI) And since he's drawn by Liefeld: Distintive Features: Scar Over Eye, wierd horizontal lines across forehead and elsewhere (con, noticed) Distintive Features: Shoulders three times the size of his head, Thighs thicker than his waist, Hands the size of small spatulas (Non-con, Major Reaction: Disgust) But on the good side, as his body can bend at any point EXCEPT the conventional joints, he's both immune to Joint Lock, AND can probably buy some limited form of streching! --- He should probably have some kind of: 'Can only appear in the exact same pose that some other artist has drawn a character in, and with similar effects, purely by coincedence, of course. I said it was a coincedence! Or a homage! That's it! A homage!' But I'm not sure what that would be. A hunted, maybe?

Re: I know I have seen this lim before I agree. (With Sean Waters) I’ve used it once or twice, and I don’t think it’s worth more than –1/4 for the whole thing, NCM included. A Speedster type might be able to argue me up to a –1/2, but that’d be pushing it. I could probably be talked into letting a character who already had this put a small limitation on any extra NCMs he bought with running. So, at very, very most, it’s a 2 point (-1/2 on a 5 point power) Disadvantage, not a limitation. Dark Champions (pg. 130) lists ‘Only to Make Half Moves in Combat’ as a –1 disadvantage. Which is way, way, too much. What the heck is a half move made outside of combat, anyway? --- “We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese!â€

Re: Compleatly stupid question Naked power advantages in a MULTIPOWER? Sheesh. A multipower of Hand Attacks doesn’t cost that much more, and is less likely to make your GM’s head explode. Assuming at least a 45 STR . . . 30 (45) Brick Tricks Multipower, all HA (-1/2) 5u (45) Knifehand,6d6 HA, (12d6 w’ Str) Armor Piercing 5u (45) I Got A Rock, 6d6 HA, (12d6 w’ Str) Ranged (+1/2) 5u (44) Shockwave, 5d6 HA, (10d6 w’ Str) Explosion, (+1/2) Personal Immunity (+1/4) 5u (44) Smack, 5d6 HA, (10d6 w’ Str) Double Knockback (+3/4) You can even add a ‘Rip his arms off!’ killing attack, if you take the HA limitation off of the multipower cost. And you can make the whole thing cost x2 or x3 end, which will encourage you to just use your basic punch most of the time. Of course, most bricks have more End than they know what to do with, so mostly it’s just saving you points . . . My preferred (though more expensive) way would be 43 (75) Brick Tricks, +3/4 Variable Advantage on up to 60 STR, limited set (+1 1/4), Full Phase (-1/2), Concentrate 1/2 DCV (-1/4) -Armor Piercing (+1/2) and Half End (-1/4) -Ranged (+1/2) and Half End (-1/4) -Explosion (+1/2) and Personal Immunity (+1/4) -Double Knockback (+3/4) Or the bargain basement, End heavy version 20 (45) Brick Tricks, +1/2 Variable Advantage on up to 60 STR, limited set (+3/4), Full Phase (-1/2), Concentrate 1/2 DCV (-1/4), x2 End (-1/2) -Armor Piercing (+1/2) -Ranged (+1/2) -Explosion (+1/2) -One And A Half Knockback (+1/2) The Explosion in the last one hurts the brick too, unless you can talk the GM into allowing you to do a cone-shaped explosion. But if you can’t take a measly 12d6 hit, you have no business calling yourself a brick in the first place. These blow active point costs completely out of the water, of course. Unless the Energy Projector can throw an 18d6 EB, he’s likely to object. But you can fix that by just making the HA smaller or buying the advantage on less than your max STR. (4d6 or 40 Str shouldn’t cause too many problems in a standard 12 DC game) --- "You will belive a man can lift a wall!!"

Re: Champions Characters DEX Inflation Why? Can anyone think of a superhero who was shown as being slower than average? I can’t, but I haven’t been much into comics for a while. Barring total non-combat types, like Prof. X, I can’t think of one. Villains, sure. But the heroes are almost never slower than the villains, in their own combat niche, of course. Actually, that’s true in pretty much any genre. Now, unfortunately, the champs villains don’t play by that rule. In all of CKC and Champs, there are maybe 7 characters with an under 20 dex, and most of them are in Psi. The only one listed under 18 is Cybermind. (Fear his 15 dex! Or should that be ‘phear’?) That being said, there’s no real reason ‘starting’ Dex shouldn’t be around 15 . . . still quicker than agents, but within the realm of achievable humanity. For a bronze or iron age game, there should be enough ‘realism’ that everyone isn’t a Olympic athlete. And the back-line energy projector, mentalist, or mystic should probably be floating around 12. Most GMs start giving the hairy eyeball once you start topping 30, so that’ll give a nice, 15 point spread, with a few outliers around 8/12 and 33/35. I agree that the ‘one size fits all’ stats of the DC set is not a good thing. Cramming everyone’s stats between 8 and 20 doesn’t do anyone any favors. Hero has a big, complicated stat block. Once you get past the confusion factor, it’s one of the better features . . . unless you cap everything so stats have a minimal effect on the actual game. Or you can force everyone but one player to play a less efficient character in the name of ‘shtick.’ Which is very fair. Actually, I’ve been thinking about Heroic games recently, and am rapidly coming to the conclusion that every single rules mod used for them is wrong. --- Still, calling it ‘inflation’ isn’t accurate, as it’s always been that way. Though saying ‘Well, it can never change, now, ever’ is silly. Well, for most games it would be. Most games change more between edition 2 and 3 than champs has in five . . . Oh, and I hate the stat rating block in 5ER. Not really germane, but I just wanted that out there.

Re: Who is the greatest Marksman (or Woman) Don’t be silly. They don’t double your damage. They double your damage, AND bypass 98% of armor in non-supers games, or ~50% in super games. I agree, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Hit locations do funny things to the entire combat system. Extra OCV gets MUCH more valuable, which kind of blows the nice ‘diminishing returns’ effect you get from super-high combat-monsterage. The whole ‘aiming for a body part’ system doesn’t work as well as it should in most games. It usually ends up being either ‘everyone always aims at the head’, ala Cyberpunk or GURPS, or totally useless. The only ‘targeted shot’ system I’ve really liked was in Mekton Zeta. Basically, you took a moderate penalty, and if you got a critical, you chose what system you hit instead of rolling for it. As for the slow-motion dive for cover thing . . . because people can dive away from direct attacks, doen’t mean that the maneuver to do so should always work. -edited to remove unnecisary sarcasm. Sorry, had a long day at work. - Actually, Gun Ballet Hero and Anime Hero should probably have a ‘Ranged Block’ maneuver where you dive out of the way of a specific attack . . . --- Warpath has an 8 base and 5 skill levels. Not bad. Of course, Cougar has an 11 base and skill levels on top of that. But, he also has ‘double range penalties’ as a Phys Lim, so he’s not going to win any sniping contests.

Re: Disadvantage Totally agree on Dependence. Any game I’ve been in that required a dependence-like ability just used Phys Lims or Susceptibility instead. NCM is just . . . wrong. If you don’t buy high stats it’s not a disadvantage, and if you do it massively punishes you for your character concept. It doesn’t even stop you from buying powers. All it does is encourage GMs to harass martial artists, skill monsters and gadgeteers. Hunted is an ADVANTAGE, not a disadvantage. If you’re playing a RPG, you’re GOING to have enemies. All Hunted does, most of the time, is insure that you know who some of those enemies are beforehand, and that you personally will get a disproportionate amount of story-time dealing with them. Free camera-time is NOT a disadvantage. And if they’re too tough, the rest of the party can deal with them for you. Now, an utter bastard like myself will make you actually suffer for your hunteds, but that requires a looser playing style than a lot of GMs use. Odd how there’s been so many enhanced options for powers, and skills, but the 5th edition disad list is barely different from the 2nd. (and maybe the first, but I never saw that one) Most of my games used 100 or 125 points of disads, instead of 150. I’ve found that even experienced players tend to start reaching after the first hundred, and newbies even more so. --- Ura-Maru considers ‘You bastard!!’ to be the highest complement a GM can receive.

Re: Book suggestions? Walter Jon Williams has a new series out, (called Dread Empires Fall, of all things) that I’m enjoying a lot. It’s a 50’s style space opera, but with a far more sophisticated take on politics, tech, the laws of physics, and, well, pretty much everything. Oh, and don’t read the blurb on the back cover. It makes it sound like the worst book ever written by a non-Shatner. The first one is called ‘The Praxis’ He’s got a few others you might want to check out. Angel Station was centered around small time independent interplanetary traders (say that five times) and a more-or-less peaceful first contact. The tech is pretty believable, only the jump-type drives push it. The main characters aren’t really that likeable, but they’re believable. It would actually make a pretty good gaming setting, except there’s insufficient violence. Voice of the Whirlwind* is another to look for. The main character is the clone of a warrior fanatic/special forces type whose memories are 15 years out of date. So he missed the war he was heading off to fight, the betrayal and eventual breakup of the corporate nation that trained him, first contact with the aliens who’s world they were fighting over, his betrayal of his wife and the breakup of their marriage, and his original getting killed while (presumably) carrying out an assassination or terrorist attack Written out like that, it sounds awful. It’s not, really. Actually, all his SF is really good. Ranging from the cyberpunk-with-no-hackers Hardwired to the absurdly-high-tech-but-surprisingly-still-interesting Aristoi Some of it’s getting hard to find these days, but it’s worth seeking out. *My favorite book ever. You’ve been warned. --- “Gravity is a harsh mistress.â€

Re: Super Prisons without Super Tech That is brilliant. Just @#$!!ing brilliant. Actually, that would work on a lot of other types as well. Bricks are probably resistant to pressure, but most energy projectors aren’t. Super martial artists, too. Or people who are known associates of teleporters. Figuring out what works on who (and just as important, what will kill who, instead of restraining them) is going to be a huge problem. And what do you do when people have radiation accidents while their imprisoned? --- “They’re breaking further into prison. That doesn’t seem wise.â€

Re: Multipower Augh! A Moonlighting-esqe post overlap! I get to be Bruce Willis! Wait. I don’t WANT to be Bruce Willis. By ‘points’ in the multipower, we mean ‘character points spent,’ not effect points like points of damage. In order to hover in place with flight, you need whatever the ‘minmum cost’ of flight is. 1†of flight costs 2 points, that’s technically the smallest amount you can put in it. So, officially, you could put 2 points into it, and the other 48 into flame tounge, which would give you 1†flight, enough to hover, and 48 points worth of EB, which would give you 9 1/2 d6 of EB. Or, since they're both meta slots, you could make the multipower 62 points instead of 60, and use the full EB with 1" of flight at the same time. ‘Active Points’ of a power refer to the cost of the power before disadvantages are applied. So, 12d6 EB has and active point cost of 60. 12d6 EB, bought as a an Obvious Accessible Focus (a –1 disadvantage) has an active point cost of 60, even though its real cost is only 30. Advantages DO apply, though. An 8d6 Explosion EB (40 points with a +1/2 advantage, for 60 points total) has an active point cost of 60 as well. --- It’s not as complicated as we’re making it sound. Really.

Re: Multipower 1) Correct. All the slots in the mulitpower must be purchased as any other power, though, you can’t add new ones on the fly. You buy a multipower base to begin with, 60 points in the example MitchellS gave, and all the powers you put in it must have an active cost of less than the base. (That is, with a 60 point multipower, they all have to cost less than 60 points) 2) Yes. And no. (Isn't Hero great!) The most common type of multipower uses ‘fixed slots,’ usually called ‘ultras’, which cost one tenth of the value of the active points of the slot. So if one of the slots in the 30 point example only cost 20 points, that slot would cost 2 points, not three. But if you want, you can buy ‘floating slots’ (usually called ‘metas’) instead. In that case, you pay one FIFTH the cost, instead of one tenth, (six points in the example) If you do that, then you can change the amount of the multipower points in each slot. See answer number 4 for more details. 3) Correct. And remember it’s ACTIVE points the multipower cares about, not real points. A 30 point power with –2 in disadvantages still uses 30 points of multipower space. (And a 20 point power with a +1/2 advantage ALSO uses 30 points of multipower space) 4) Sorta. You can use up to the total number of points in the multipower at once. So if it’s a 30 point multipower, you can use up to 30 points of powers in it. If all the powers are ultras that are worth 30 points, as in MitchellS example, then you can only use one at once. If they’re ultras that cost varing amounts, then you can use up to 30 points of them, weither that’s one, two, or more slots. For example, say you had this multipower. 50 Example Multipower 5 (45)u Example Blast! 9d6 EB 2 (20)u Example Flight! 10†3 (30)u Example Force Field! 15PD/15ED Force Field Then you could use either the Energy Blast, which uses 45 out of the 50 points, or the Flight and Force field at once (because, together, they use up no more than 50 points. When you’re using the Blast, though, you ‘extra’ 5 points for anything else. Now, if you bought flexible meta slots, then you can use less than the maximum of the slots. So you could use, say, 40 points of EB and 10 points of flight at the same time, letting you fly at 5†and shoot an 8d6 EB at the same time. You still can’t go over what you paid for each slot (so you couldn’t use 50 points of flight unless you used more character points to buy the flight slot up) 5) Yes. You can put many types of powers in the same multipower, as long as they fit the special effect you’re trying to build. And you can even use the same power more than once, so you could have one straight EB, and one EB with explosion or Armor Piercing. Because each slot is so cheap, it’s tempting to load a ton of powers into every one you make. Try to resist this temptation, though, as this makes every character feel similar. Try to avoid too many similar powers as well. Why buy straight flight, when you can get a multipower with flight, teleport, running, and swimming, all at once, for four more points? Because it’s building a character around points, not concept, and, again, it makes every character feel the same. Multipowers are very useful, but easily abused. Disadvantages react with multipowers a bit oddly. Let us know when you’ve got the basics down, and we’ll go on to that. --- The big green lizard guy: Does he have four arms? Then he’s Grond. The other, more dinosaur looking lizard guy is one of the aliens from Terran Empires, a ‘Kolajik Pack’ member, I think. He might have been the example lizard guy from Star Hero, but I think it was the other.

Re: Champions U help! A forgotten Doombot-style fake Destroyer, found and controlled by Cybermind? (Until he looses control and it blasts the @#$!! out of him, anyway) Brainchild, maybe? --- “Great. ANOTHER Doombot.â€

Re: YOUR Favourite/Funniest/Silliest Presence Attack Moment? Oh, wait. There were another couple from the same campaign. My character, Cougar, had an insanely high Dex and Speed, a moderately big KA (it was very big for the first half of the campaign, before we got Pools working right) and a hilarious tendency to roll max damage, or close to it, when shooting at targets with no resistant defenses. As he always went first, (Dex 40 back in the days when everyone was 250 points) he usually got a shot off right after the bad guys showed up and did their identifying quote. Two bad guys I remember particularly well. Bad Guy: “You cannot teach me anything, but awe of my own power!†Cougar’s Gun: -Bang!- 14 body Bad Guy: “Oh . . . God . . .†Falls over. I wish I’d thought of something clever to say at this point, but I think it was something like “How about a bullet!†And the second one: Bestial Bad Guy: “Ah! The thrill of the hunt! The joy of the kill! It is for this that I exist!†Cougar’s Gun: -Bang!- BBG: “Uhhhh . . .†Falls over. This was particularly funny, because we fought that villan team three more times. And each time, on phase twelve, Cougar shot the beast guy and dropped him. --- The real question is, who WERE the bad guys? They were published characters, probably late third edition or early fourth.

Re: YOUR Favourite/Funniest/Silliest Presence Attack Moment? Heh. The worst presence attack ever, followed by the worst assist ever. From the first ‘real’ champs game I was a player in, circa 91, or maybe a little earlier. Exact words I’m not sure of, but something very close to this: Desolid Ghost Man: “Surrender, evildoer! -mumble mumble- The SPIRIT WORLD Will be angry . . . ah . . . otherwise?†Whole Table: “What?†Me: “No! say ‘I am the ghosts of all the men you have wrongly killed!’†DGM: “Oh, to hell with it. ‘I am the ghosts of all the men you have wrongly killed! And, ah . . .’†Evil Agent: “Actually, I’ve never killed anybody.†DGM: “Ah, I am the spirits you WILL kill! . . . ah, I think.†This actually went on for about 10 minutes. That’s also the game where the team brick through a military helicopter into the lobby of a bank. During peak business hours. And then acted surprised when there were casualties. “I am the ghosts of all the men . . .†is still tossed around today. And mention of the bank, of course. Along with my own contribution to gaming culture, “I’m best against weak foes!†My non CAK vigilante, by the way, had the lowest body count on the team, and the one punk he did kill was an accident. (12 body on an 8d6 attack! You can’t hold me responsible for that!) --- From the same game: “I’m supposed to be the dark avenger! Why aren’t they scared of me?!â€

Re: Silence - character for critique Hawksmoor sez: Well, buying everything ‘no end’ cost 26 points. The End buyback saved her 20, and that’s over and above the 350 base. So it’s not a bad trade off at all, if the GM allows it. I was actually going to say it’s probably too GOOD, but in this case it’s acceptable. Martial artists never run out of end anyway, unless they have other powers on top, so it’s mostly a special effect. Though it does mean all her sword attacks are ~84 active points, with martial arts on top of that, which might be above the campaign limits. Wait. You already played her. So I guess it’s ok. I’d make the Soulfire attack Does No Stun, so you have more than one ‘safe’ option if you need it. I’d drop the Harvester Blades, or make it a non-autofire AOE attack. A bit weak vs energy projectors. While I applaud not giving in to the temptation to drop Missile Deflection into the multipower, you might want to swap Offensive Strike with Martial Dodge, or better yet just pick up a Defensive Skill level. Escape would be a good investment, as well. In fact, you could probably drop or swap out Martial Strike as well. Death doesn’t need to start the fight, she ends it. And I’d spend that XP on buying Use Art Barehanded. Even if you only ever use the Block, like a good swordswoman, it’ll be worth it. As a GM, I’d be spectacularly harsh on a 25 pt code vs killing. But it seems you expect that, so that’s ok. And I’d start saving immediately for Mind Link. Though, if I was the GM, you’d probably have to buy down the ‘mute’ disad once you got it. So you might want to squeeze in an extra 5 point disad somewhere for when it switches to ‘Infrequently, Fully.’ Even with the amnesia, a few more skills wouldn’t hurt. KS: Sword styles, KS: Dark Magic, KS: Undead and Demons, or Analyze Style at least. But then, I always take too many skills. Just out of curiosity, why are the extra PD and ED in the powers section, instead of the stats block? (I’m assuming she has 10 PD/ED and the armor on top of that, otherwise I’m reading something wrong) --- “Riding with Death through San Bernardino!â€

Re: Making Hero more deadly The problem with just lowering defenses across the board or upping attack DCs is that it results in a LOT of one-shot knockouts. I’ve thought about halving defenses’ effectiveness vs. normal Body. So a 16 PD stops 16 stun and 8 body. Which would mean people could actually injure targets on their own power scale without killing attacks. Haven’t done enough of the math to decide how it would work into the rest of the system, though. It would add another ‘layer’ to defense, which I’m not sure is a good idea. --- “So, do I survive? I have +1 armor!â€

Re: Anime Champions? Cause if there's one thing no Slayers series would ever do, it's have Lina's sidekick make a stupid pun. Never. Well, hardly ever. --- Only at plot points!

Re: Ideas and advice for a Captain America Homage Bucky?

Re: Thoughts on using 1d20 instead of 3d6? ‘Taking 10’ and ‘taking 20’ aren’t dependant on which die you’re using. “You don’t have to roll for doing an everyday task†was a pretty common house rule in a lot of games using various systems I’ve been involved in over the years. An interesting alternate ‘curve’ model is the one used in Dream Pod Nine’s Silhouette games. Roll a number of d6s equal to the skill level (these get expensive real fast) Take the highest number of all the dice For every extra six, add +1 If ALL the dice come up 1, you fumble. So, fumbles come up pretty commonly if you’re just a beginner (+1), rarely if you’re competent (+2), and almost never if you’re better than that. Extraordinary successes become more and more possible as you get better, but are still never assured. -- Vaguely similar to those ‘dice pool’ games that I hate, but don’t let that fool you.

Re: Ideas and advice for a Captain America Homage An indestructable robot Eagle! It scouts! (Clarsentience!) It attacks! (Indirect EB!) It super attacks! (Big, non Indrect EB!) It attacks multiple people! (EB AOE, Selective!) It helps you attack! (Offensive Skill levels, Extra DC!) It blocks! (Defensive Skill Levels, Missle Deflection, and Supress AOE attacks!) It protects people! (Above, UBO!) It has booster jets! (Gliding, only to avoid falling damage!) It catches people! (Above, UBO!) It picks up things! (Telekenisis, fine work!) It's indestructible! (Not a focus, follower or duplicate! Restrainable -1/4!) It perches dramatically on your arm when you enter! (Special effect!) It lets other characters prove their worth when you're incapacitated, by helping them! (Usable By Others, with a -0 limitation!) (Normally you'd have to activate the UBO yourself, but you could give it to Psycho Claw Boy if you needed to. I'd call this one even) It's a huge@$$ Multipower! I may have to use this one myself, now. --- "Blacksmith Tony sure did a @#$!!& job . . ."

Re: Favortie NINJA HERO NPC? Loved: The crossdressing ninja. I’ve had a weak spot for crossdressing ninja girls ever since Yotenden. She’d have fit right into LWaC. Jack Murry (I think I went to high school with him, actually) Toji Shin Jiu Zing Tai-Sheng Zeng Alberto Montari Dr. Pain Didn’t like: Cat people. Don’t like cat people anyway. Even if they’re space pirates. Unless they’re the leopard twins from Escaflowne. Robo-Ninja. Robotic ninja should have open-frame construction. I’m SURE that’s in the rules somewhere. But I hated Mortal Kombat, so I may be biased. Everyone else was pretty good. Midnight Maid would probably have made the loved list, except for the already-mentioned art problems. --- No making fun of Geese! Geese is cool!

Re: Anime Champions? The great thing is, everything Hero does wrong when it’s trying to be realistic is actually right for anime. Especially from the mid to late 80’s. Swords slicing down trees in one stroke: Check. Priss getting whaled on for 15 minutes by boomers without serious injury: Check. Athletes jumping three times their height: Check. A martial arts kick knocking the target back 10’ and imbedding him in a wall: Check. Target getting back up with only light bruising: Check. Laws of physics working differently depending on who’s doing what: Check. Annoying DNPCs showing up 90% of the time and getting in trouble: Check. Fighting unimpaired for 10 rounds even with bullet holes in most of your vital organs, only to collapse once all the bad guys are taken out: Check. Never changing your equipment load, even when hideously inappropriate, because that would require redrawing all your cels: Check. It’s surprisingly hard to kill people. Almost impossible without an edged weapon: Check. Changing your equipment and armor halfway through the series, after a ‘radiation accident’ (and to market the new action figures): Check. Soliloquy-Improved Presence attacks: Check. Dive for Cover: Check. The more @#$!!ed up you are, and the more personal problems you have, the better you are at everything: Check. All genres working eerily the same: Check. Just remember. All genres are superheroic. No matter how few points you’re built on, EVERYONE has to pay for their equipment. And Ablative is your friend. --- “There’s one rule above all for men’s battles: The big, macho gorilla guy can never win when fighting the slender and incredibly handsome main character! This battle was over the moment you showed up with your ugly face!!â€