Graviton

Re: OIHID or Multiform?

Re: The Super drugs I did something similar several years ago, in a Dark Champions street-level supers campaign. A hematologist was working with a high-level super who'd been put into a coma. He used samples of her blood to concoct a serum that gave him super powers. He then tweaked that formula to create a lower powered drug that he could mass produce. He called it Heat, it served to greatly speed up the metabolism of the subject, in addition to giving them increased combat abilities and strength. But it was highly addictive, and easy to OD on. I've also unleashed super weapons on the streets. Several street gangs got ahold of some high-powered laser rifles left behind in a high-level supers battle. I like to explore how the consequences of a superhero campaign affect things at the street level.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Must have global invites turned off...I'll rectify that shortly.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Yep...mine's @Armory1. Usually on Pinnacle, but I've got alts everywhere.

Re: XP....how much per session....? It depends on how quickly you and your players want their characters to improve. Seeing as how you're going to play rather frequently, I'd keep it low. I usually give 1 just for showing up, and then parcel out another 1-3 to reward good role-playing, interesting tactical moves, and overall contribution to the scenario.

Quite a bit. Romances (and failed romances) between PCs, and we roleplay a lot of DNPC romances too. Probably because half of our gaming group is female.

I set up one PC who always likes to shoot first and ask questions maybe, someday, if he gets around to it. He also likes to Reflect attacks back at the attacker. So I allowed a bunch of hi-tech rifles loose on the streets of Indianapolis. The PC came upon an armored car robbery. One of the thugs fired the rifle at him, so he reflected it right back. Poor normal thug took a 12d6 EB right in the head, and of course rolled massive BODY. So I ruled he died. The PC was then subject to a criminal investigation of his alleged use of excessive force, a civil suit by the family of the thug, and tons of bad press from the local and national media. Needless to say, he's much more careful now to find out what he's dealing with before diving in at full power. It's fun to be a GM...

Okay, buy an Aid to Clairsentience w/OAF Bulky and Extra Time.

Religion doesn't come up a whole lot in our games, but it does occasionally. One of my wife's PCs is a very devout Navajo, a mutant/shaman who has major-league healing abilities. I ran a small sub-plot involving the victim of a plane crash whom she healed. He equated her power to heal with that of Christ and formed a cult to worship her. Great roleplaying! It caused her to become extremely judicious in her use of that power. Which in turn caused the PC team leader to squawk because he could no longer just rush in with guns blazing and not worry about getting hurt. Hehehehe.... I also run a Dark Champions campaign deeply steeped in voodoo. The PC, Deathwatch, wears a mask created years ago in a dark ceremony that containes the souls of several hundred people. His primary nemesis is based in New Orleans and is constantly throwing zombies and other voodoo-themed threats his way. In other words, except for my cult sub-plot, we basically deal with "comic book" religion, rather than real-world religious issues.

I haven't purchased it for a couple of reasons: 1. We don't use the official Champions universe, although I did buy CKC (both the hard copy and the HD package) and I'm pilfering my brains out. 2. Cash flow. First on my list is USPD (still waiting for some extra $$$ so I can use the coupon I won at GenCon!), then probably Battlegrounds. I love that you guys are producing all this quality material, but I can't keep up! 3. I have no problems with PDFs. But I don't see the same need for artwork as there is in printed material for some reason, maybe I'm getting old. Maps are essential and sketches of new characters would be nice. Apart from that, I don't think any art is needed at all. Perhaps you could use whatever space is saved to include the stats for all the characters involved. And if that lowered the price a bit, then it would help to alleviate Reason 2.

I missed out on USPD at GenCon, so that's on the list, as well as Battlegrounds. I currently own FREd, Champions, TUMA, The Bestiary, CKC, and Star Hero. It depends on your campaign. We have our own universe, so Champions Universe and Millenium City aren't high on my list at all.

My wife and I both really enjoyed it, as did two non-gaming friends of ours. I thought the fight scenes could have been better directed (the camera as an observer rather than seeming to be a participant), but overall I thought it was very well done. Here's another one to ponder along with Sawyer's age: how the heck did Mina Harker keep wandering around during the day?

Let's not forget Normals who support their local supers: Citizens Rallying Around Paranormals...

Re: How is it a disadvantage... Who cares? They're villains! So you change the Disad to zero and make up the points with a Villain Bonus; what difference could it possibly make? As someone else pointed out, most of what you're talking about are Psych Lims, which perhaps define the character's personality more than they give players something to exploit in combat. If your game is just a bunch of dice-rolling and character sheet comparison, then I could see that this would be an issue. If there's actualy role-playing going on, others have already posted how these Pych Lims can be handled so they are disadvantageous to the villains. And of course, if you're concerned that the villains don't have enough exploitable weaknesses, you can always give 'em more.

This is part of the problem with hard limits, IMO. Everybody will want to have the maximum, no matter the character concept. You may as well run combat w/o a SPD chart (which would speed things up...) We have an unspoken range, 4-7, that we never verbally agreed upon but just happened. Two PCs out of a total of about 20 exceed 7, with most at 5 or 6. Perhaps I'm lucky to have players who are more concerned with character concept than maxing out their stats. In campaigns that do have hard limits, it would be up to the GM to make sure the players don't all have the maximum. He should also make sure all the villains aren't at max either, that will give the players one less reason to want their PCs maxed out.

This leaves it up to the SFX of the maneuver and the individual combatants, which is exactly where it should be. Just to throw some numbers out here: Say Lightning Bolt (40 STR) attempts to Block Brickman (80 STR). He makes his roll, but still takes 1/2 damage because of the differential in STR. So Brickman still throws 8d6 at LB, which on average will deal out 28 STUN. LB has a PD of 25 (which I'll point out is relatively low in our campaign), so he'll take a whopping 3 STUN. Understanding that sometimes Brickman will roll lots o' sixes which would have an affect, most of the time even with a 40-point STR differential, it's going to be a 'ping'. There are not a lot of 80-STR characters running around out there, LB has one villain over 80, and I have none (this also opens up the HA can o' worms; would HA damage add to the STR differential for the purposes of determining Block damage? My head hurts...) IMO, it's not worth wasting precious combat time to figure it out UNLESS it's fairly obvious that the guy Blocking would suffer some damage. Which, again IMO, means it's only applicable to Normals, or at least characters with "normal" defenses. Lord, thanks for making that point about training. I attempted to do that in an email to Lightning Bolt yesterday, but you did a much better job of it. Our resolution appears to be that LB will use the 1/2 damage rule when he's GMing, and when I'm GMing I won't unless the circumstances and SFX of the manuever dictate. I do appreciate everyone's weighing in on this subject.

Amen brother! Reading all these posts about the dozens of different systems some people play, I can't fathom it. My co-GM and I have played exclusively HERO for 20 years. In fact, except for one-shots of Car Wars, the old TSR boxed space game (don't recall the name), and the 1st Edition of MSH, we went straight from D&D to Champions to HERO and never looked back. Playing those other games was like learning to play chess and then trying tiddly-winks. I have never felt the need to try different systems because we were able to do anything we wanted with it. This has a lot to do with our main interest being superheroes (and our fondness for hugely intricate plotlines which leave no time to play anything else), but when we finally did do a Fantasy Hero campaign under 4th ed. it allowed us to create our own universe, magical system, etc. which no other game allowed you to do, as far as we knew. We just never needed anything else. I guess I'm one of those rabid Hero types spoken of in other RPG forums...

Re: Secret old fart club Unfortunately I don't have them scanned, and since my wife got her new computer we have yet to upgrade her scanner software. They're on the top of the list of stuff to get digitized tho.

Re: Re: Re: Just 400 Points to be a God Yeah. Thought so. It's a Psych Lim, whattyagonnado?

Re: Just 400 Points to be a God Personally, I'd build him with an 80-90 STR, and then use a MP slot to buy +300 STR, Only For Lifting. While he is a god, I don't believe the literature supports any of the secondary stats he'd get from a 390 STR. Or I am I taking this too seriously?!?

Also a very cool idea, and one that makes sense; who's to say everybody who has powers would become a hero or villain?? Look at Spider-Man, at first he just wanted to make some quick and easy dough. Even when he went to join the FF he asked what the starting salary was. I did run a Pay-Per-View event last year where two of our hero teams duked it out for charity. One thing the PCs love/hate about my team is that their wealthy benefactor requires them to make public appearances quite often. This was watched 'round the world, and crashed (natch) by supervillains. Vegas bookmakers were laying odds on the teams, and individuals. It was a hoot.

Re: Geezers unite!!! Absolutely! We still use them almost exclusively. I made TONS of copies of each of them long long ago, and they're still around. There were 4 males and 4 females, IIRC. One of the female poses has been lost to time, but I still have folders full of blanks for the rest of 'em. BTW, I do qualify for the OF club via #s 1 and 3. Is there a card or something we get so I can get discounts at Denny's??

Re: Home How awesome is that !?! I've thought about running a "day-off" scenario with one of our teams where they play baseball using their powers. Haven't worked it out yet, but I'm totally in love with the idea.

The Champions (our Champions, not Hero Games' Champions) operate out of NYC. The Guardians are based in Indianapolis. The FBI's Field Intelligence, Reconnaisance, and Enforcement (FIRE) Team is based in D.C. And our renegade heroes, Reaction Force, have a secret base tucked away in the Colorado Rockies, augmented by an alien ship in geosynchronous orbit. The Guardians did set up shop in the top 5 floors of the Banc One Tower in downtown Indy, until numerous supervillain attacks convinced the city and the building's other tenants to basically throw them out (yeah I swiped the idea from the FF, but it made sense.) They've taken over an underground complex that was part of Ft. Benjamin Harrison, which the Army closed several years ago, on the NE side of Indy.

That's the first thing I did. I see that as my strongest argument: as complex and yet flexible as these rules are, if STR were in any way involved, there'd be something official SOMEWHERE. There's not. The question isn't on the FAQ and AFAIK has never even come up on the boards, fer Pete's sake. The problem is not that he's unaware of the rules, the problem is he doesn't like the fact that there are no rules about it. And that's because he has pinned one SFX to the Manuever and he can't get his mind around anything else. So it has moved beyond just proving that the rules allow for any SFX, it's basically an opinion thing. He wants a house rule to basically give high-STR characters an advantage, I do not. Since we co-GM the same universe, and have for 20 years, I can't just summarily rule. Well, I guess I could when I'm GMing, but that's crazy to use different house rules in the same game world. So we need to find something with which we're both comfortable. I'm going to give my side one more shot, by directing him to this thread. I posted it while he was here last weekend and I'm anxious for him to read all these responses and then discuss it with him. I'll let you guys know what happens. Thanks again!