Flames

Re: Telekinesis with Weapons, +STR? I would subtract the TK STR needed to lift and throw the weapon that distance from the STR added, but in the case of something like a dagger, I doubt that would make much difference. Also, if the TK is being used to actually push the weapon at the target, that might make a difference versus just using the TK to hurl the weapon.

Re: Superhero Team Charters That reminds me of the Union Charter mentioned in the connected series of superhero short stories by J. R. Derego. Worth listening to for an interesting take on how superheroes might organize and fund their activities in a world full of envious and suspicious normals.

Re: Could someone post "Champions Old time Characters" I know a lot of the old characters can't be used in new publications due to being in copyright limbo, but I suppose if someone were to make updates without specifying who each character was (and leaving identifying items like Disads out of the writeup), there wouldn't be a problem.

Re: Steampunk Campaign Ideas Wasn't there some mention of that idea in the ST:TNG episode where Data loses his memory and is living on a primitive planet? The people in my steampunk world would argue over calling it Phlogiston, since the space-rock reacts with salt water by producing heat, rather than reacting to heat by losing mass. The characteristics of the rock would be hotly debated (no pun intended) by the thinkers of the day, whilst industrialists and military leaders brush scientific arguments aside in favor of exploiting the rocks for the good of the Empire. When it comes to steampunk as a genre, I'm more into the idea of an alternate history that relies on what we know of physics today, rather than, say, Space 1889, which goes along with radical and, by today's standards, ludicrous science of the 19th Century. I would like to run a steampunk campaign, but I shy away from it, since I would want to use HERO System, which I think is diminished by application to a genre where personal superpowers aren't going to happen, and also because the genre itself is so intensely visual and speculative in nature. To really get the feel of it would require a lot of florid description, along with players who don't mind being lectured to about shiny rivets and clacking clockwork. Would a steampunk campaign be diminished if PCs were superheroes or spellcasters of some ilk? How could I incorporate higher-powered PCs into the steampunk world I've envisioned?

Re: Steampunk Campaign Ideas My steampunk idea is similar to Deadlands, in that the course of human history is changed dramatically by the discovery of a material. In my version, a series of meteorites crash-land on Earth in the mid-19th Century, and these meteorites, what's left of them, anyway, contain a mysterious otherworldly rock-like material that responds to being submerged in salt water by heating up almost instantly to fantastically high temperatures, causing water around to it boil. The larger the chunk of this alien rock, the the larger the volume of water it can boil. The rock never seems to lose any of its own mass, and pieces of it are regularly being found all over the globe, where they are jealously guarded by locals who fail to realize, in their savage ignorance, how important it is that the material find its way into the responsible and capable hands of the British Empire. The material, the rock, or whatever it ends up being called ("Fultonite" would be a cute name for it, based on its ability to generate massive and limitless amounts of steam pressure), is the focus of the setting... finding it, buying it, trading for it, stealing it, and so on. Competent and brave adventurers can find limitless and shamefully lucrative employment seeking the material, securing it, and bringing it back to England or America. A piece the size of a pea can provide steam heat for a large building, and a piece the size of baseball can power a massive ocean-liner-size ship. The largest piece found is the size of a soccer ball, and it provides steam-electric power to most of Great Britain. As the campaign rolls along, larger and more incredible machines are built, and wars begin to be waged over excavation sites where the material has been found. The exact origin of the material is unknown, of course, and finding out the origin would probably shake up the campaign world quite a bit. Most people believe it to be a gift from their deity of choice, but it could turn out to be a fuel substance created by an alien species, and the fragments that fell to Earth could be pieces of one of their ships. Maybe they want it back, all of it.

Re: Adventuring in Heaven Podcaster Mur Lafferty did a serial novel called "Heaven" in which a young woman and her boyfriend are killed in a car wreck unexpectedly and both end up in Heaven, although not together at first. From there, the adventure begins for them, as they try to find each other and then discover they have a mission to complete in the afterlife. The installments begin on her podcast "Geek Fu Action Grip" during episode #62, and continue for several more episodes. It's free to download and listen to on a computer or MP3 player. http://www.geekfuactiongrip.com/2006/03/28/geek-fu-62-heaven-pt-1/ If you like the story's opening couple of chapters, it might be worthwhile for you to dig through her site and find all the rest of the episodes and listen. She has an interesting take on how Heaven might appear to people.

Re: help with art refrences I bet a quick keyword search in http://www.deviantart.com would bring up some samples. Try searching for "science fiction woman" and page through until something catches your eye.

Re: Favorite Anti-Brick tricks? Darkness ought to make it tough for a brick to find his target. Is there such a thing as EGO-based TK?

Re: After DEMON wins... ghost-angel's right, the Kings of Edom would crush Black, and he knows it, that's why he wants to become one of them rather than just help them get through. It's kind of like Mayor Jenkins in 3rd-Season Buffy. Black himself does desire to rule the world using the power of the Kings of Edom, but he is loathe to actually let them through, lest they kill him and everyone else on Earth.

Re: After DEMON wins... Black and his cohort have been using the existing mechanisms of government to administrate their world-wide rule, residing, as it were, in a hideously transformed White House, now known as the Black House, a surreal and pestilent monstrosity that looks like what an executive mansion might resemble had someone only partially succeeding at magically metamorphing it into a massive slimy insect. Military and civilian leaders the world over have pledged obedience and fealty to Black out of desperate fear, and have ordered their armies to subdue the Earth's populace, eradicate its heroes, and round up civilians who meet certain criteria for use in the most unimaginable rituals and experiments. Nearly all resistance has been utterly crushed. Previously renowned supers, heroes and villains alike, have been slaughtered and left staked out like bugs in plain view of the cowed citizens of the largest cities in the world, their mutilated bodies and tattered costumes allowed to decay to just the right point of hideousness before being covered in preserving shellac as an eternal warning to all. Humanity's numbers dwindled for a short time, as large-scale death and destruction took its toll, but Black, in his desire to have subjects over which to continue to rule, has been, well, doing things to increase humanity's numbers once again. Too horrible for me to speak of, let it be merely hinted at. Human existence has become the ultimate nightmare, and the Earth its charnel house. Possible additional plot hook: Black desires a queen to sire an heir to his throne. Perhaps a female PC or a male PC's female DNPC fits the bill.

Re: TV: Kid Nation I wonder what happens if one of them breaks a leg or gets stung by a scorpion. Do they have medical supplies, provisions? http://www.cbs.com/primetime/kid_nation/

Re: Doubling Damage Question The rules differ slightly depending on the genre and the power level of the campaign. GMs have some wiggle-room to allow for more powerful additions to damage if it suits the campaign. What I like to do is figure out all the damage ahead-of-time, clear it with the GM (who really needs to be the one to be up on the rules) and then have it written down on the character sheet, maybe broken down as what is adding to what, and then have a final damage roll at the end of the equation.

Re: Gestalt of the Week As a special bonus for people who buy the book, he could make these weekly Gestalts available as HD3 Prefabs for easy use in character creation.

Re: Another Damage Question You can buy 1/2 d6s at gaming stores... the die has the numbers 1-3 on it twice. However, for HERO System use, I like to take a Sharpie marker and put a little dot on one of the two "3"s to signify that, if used for rolling Normal Damage, that "3" does 1 BODY damage. For Killing Damage, the dot makes no difference. I have a bunch of 1/2 d6s, and, recently they came in handy when my character hit a bad guy with three separate 2-1/2d6 killing attacks in one maneuver (autofire). I just scooped up three 1/2d6s, six regular d6s, and went ROLL ROLL ROLL and gave the GM three damage figures immediately. That's one thing I like a lot about HERO System... rolling lots of dice. I hate systems where I roll one die for damage, especially since I'm just as likely to roll "1" as I am to roll "4," "5," or "8."

Re: PA HERO: The World Without Us Even the site alone could be fodder for a crazy, ultra-powerful world-destroying Champions supervillain to give a lecture to the PCs about exactly why he desires the complete destruction of the human species.

Re: Combat Manoeuvres Illustrations A fellow I grew up with started a martial-arts website, and this page on his site has photographs of a variety of maneuvers being executed by live participants: http://www.alliancemartialarts.com/techniques.html

Re: resist being stunned by EGO attack with EGO not CON? Perhaps a generous GM can rule that a character with mental powers or Mental Awareness can choose to use EGO to resist being stunned by an EGO Attack. After all, in our group, we have a saying... "It sucks to be the mentalist."

Re: Alien Stereotypes There's the race that seizes upon one epoch in another race's history and painstakingly recreates it for one reason or another (Star Trek... Spectre of the Gun, A Piece of the Action, and so on). You're looking for SF cliches? Check out this site: http://www.strangehorizons.com/guidelines/fiction-common.shtml It's the list of plotlines that Strange Horizons says they've "seen too often."

Re: Weird request Fonzie has some superskills, like his ability to kick or thump a piece of machinery and have it spring to life. I'm not sure how I'd define, that, though. Maybe several dice of Luck? He also has a very high CON for dance marathons, a high PRE to scare off rivals and resist their threats, a high EGO to counter the effects of the freeze attack of Mork from Ork, and, of course, that COM that makes the ladies line up for his attentions. He has all the PRE-based skills, Streetwise, Persuasion, Seduction, Oratory, the works. He has a high-enough Mechanics roll that he can rebuild his motorcycle even though suffering a massive penalty for temporary blindness (offset by taking him time to do it, of course). He might have a few dice of Unluck, since once in a while he embarrasses himself, like when he excused himself from a relationship with a deaf woman, saying to her, "And you want to be with this bozo because he's deaf?" "I'm not deaf," the man interjects. Disads include his aversion to liver, his weakness for women, Hunted by various rivals seeking to unseat him as the coolest guy in Milwaukee, his overwhelming devotion to principles of fairness and decency, and being protective of his friends. He has various DNPCs, as well, people in his life for whom he regularly must come to the rescue.

Re: A name looking for an archtype It sounds like a good name for a world-conquering battlesuit villain, or at least a villain who aspires to same, well-suited for an 80s-style afterschool tv-show type game, or a Teen Champions game. The name has been used before, though: http://www.geocities.com/mkbip/webpages/Eskeletron.htm

Re: help with building powers I think one thing that's important with new players is that they understand what their powers will and will not do in game mechanical terms. A newbie player who has a fire-based elemental control framework is likely to assume that his energy blast enables him to do force walls of flame that damage anyone that touches them, even though he didn't buy force wall. If he's seen a similar character in comics or movies do a power stunt, he'll assume his character is capable of the same trick. I would encourage each new player to buy a high level of Power skill for his or her power set, and then use the optional rules from The Ultimate Skill that cover mimicking powers by special effect. Another idea would be to hold back 50 points from each PC at the start of the campaign, and then, as they come up with new uses for their powers in the first few sessions, dole those points out on an as-needed basis to have them add those new powers right into their power sets, perhaps with mandatory levels of Limitations piled on that they can subsequently use their XP to buy off. For instance, the aforementioned fire-based character might figure out that he can put up a damage shield force wall around his enemies, but it uses a lot of END. The GM gives him a few points from his reserve to buy that actual power and add it to his elemental control framework, and then with XP the player buys off the Extra END limitation. I can say that from personal experience that it's fairly satisfying to have a character buy of Limitations and get better at using powers from one session to the next.

Re: how to: homing sense Maybe a Megascale Teleport with various memorized locations, with advantages related to being able to bring ships along with her (megascale area of effect and usable by others) and then the limitations piled on that the teleportation movement occurs only under the power and at the speed of whatever vehicle she's in.

Re: COPS, CREWS, AND CABALS -- What Do *You* Want To See? I would like to see an explanation of hierarchical structures in the various kinds of groups, and what one typically has to do to rise up through the ranks, apart from just buying up the Rank Perk. I would like to see rules for creating an organization using character points, if that's not already out there somewhere. Was that originally in Champions II? I'd like to see explanations of ways to adapt the organizations for use in other genres, like Fantasy HERO and Dark Champions.

Re: Help: Folk Heroes. Wikipedia link FTW! But for powered armor, could you have the historical figure of Robert Fulton? Steam-powered armor, maybe.

Re: Help: Folk Heroes. Just a few off the top of my head: Paul Bunyan, giant woodsman Mike Fink, riverboat brawler and legendary marksman Pecos Bill, super-cowboy