Superskrull

Re: Tell me about your GLC

Well, the game I've most recently run still uses the 4th ed world for base stock, so that gives us the not overly-powerful Starguard who works with the Cyberknights. One of these days I'll consider working up a more Galactic-threat capable verison, but the need hasn't hit yet. I do like that she apparently commutes between Alpha Centauri and Atlanta, Georgia though.

The one who most fits the GLC mold is appropriately enough, a GL-clone with Captain Britain overtones and mission parameters. The Ebony Knight is my campaign's assigned defender from the nasties of space-time. Naturally, while powerful, he's going to need help, hence this particular EK at the rough level of the supergroup he's currently working with.

Oh, and just in case this guy sounds familiar to anyone who had gamed at New World Comics in Oklahoma, I have already asked his creator if I could adopt his concept for my own campaign since there should logically be more than one of him in the Multiverse. Bryan said it was fine with him.

If he sounds familiar to you for any other reasons, I'd imagine it's a case of parallel homage and leave it at that.

Re: So Viper, huh.

VIPER in my game is like an onion, it's a smelly thing that adds to the flavor of a scenario. Wait, no, that's not it. VIPER is like an onion because it's got all those layers. Well, regardless of possible smell, I tend to use VIPER in several ways, or did until my game went on hiatus this spring.

As a side note, this a campaign world rooted in 4th Ed for the world structure, though time travel antics have caused the insertion of elements of 5th ed due to interference at a few key points. Most notable would be the 'hiccup' that resulted from Viperia (4th ed) having the chance to remove Malachite from the timeline after she had been trapped along with the PCs in a series of uncontrolled time jumps. When she returned, she found a new Viperia (5th Ed) where she was supposed to be and another version of herself fighting crime as Ultragirl. Viperia is not happy at having fixed things only to find them still broken.

VIPER is an organization in transition in my game. Sure, you've got the whole VIPER leader & nests and cool weapons aspect, you've got the supervillain research projects and growing set of metahuman operatives, you've even had COIL reabsorbed into the power structure after a series of behind-the-scene conflicts and bargains but the big twist is that there doesn't seem to be any one guy in charge right now.

On the one side, you've got the whole green-armored blaster-toting legion of mooks currently under the overall control of King Cobra and his Round Table of the Reptile Kingdom while on the other, you have a corporate board of directors who are trying to figure out how to keep this scaly loon from bringing in the superheros like a bunch of flying bulldozers on a condemned building while trying to keep making a profit from the fruits of crime and illicit research.

Then there's the research branches. Those boys are building a whole series of catastrophes just waiting to blow up in VIPER's collective faces. After all, they think they've recently perfected a means of making scads of legal cash.

The real mess is in the views of the player characters and attached NPCs. From what they've seen, VIPER is going mobile. While there are still many "permanent" bases (whatever permanent means when living howitzers roam the earth wrapped in spandex) in various places across the globe, there now seems to be a sort of skeleton crew of VIPER at many of these bases who are then reinforced by temporary additions of robots, trained operatives and superhumans. Apparently, VIPER is trying to tailor their efforts to local specifications and capabilities. At the same time, VIPER has turned up at various defunct manufacturing facilities and reactivated them for short periods before leaving again. VIPER superhumans captured by PCs are still languishing in prisons rather than the customary revolving door policy that used to be procedure. Many of the VIPER operations disrupted by PRIMUS since '99 seem to be what has been termed 'McVIPER franchises' where some nutter and his band of minions has bought a 'VIPER Starter Kit' and started his own little crime syndicate.

There are a few other things for PCs to chew on:

-haven't been any widescale plans/projects by VIPER since '95

-RAVEN & the ReDirection Cartel have resurfaced as apparent independents again

-there is evidence that VIPER may have been cloning celebrities

-a rampaging superstrong variant of Captain Future (GAC) from 'a' future is supposedly here to destroy the plans of the 'Gamma Mutates' who had taken over his time. All evidence points to them being derived from the COIL gene and using VIPER technology.

-most non-COIL VIPER superhumans have dropped out of sight since King Cobra moved in

Re: So Viper, huh.

Aw, c'mon. It's soooo obvious to me. Two years was just enough time to bump her from the 'Very Old' to 'Ancient' age bracket for whatever monochromatic wyrm she is.

Re: WWYCD? #80: Future Hope or Hellspawn?

Hmm, why not. I don't answer too many of these, but this looks like fun.

Gallant, my speed-brick with a truckload of exotic defenses and an evil twin brother:

Mutters to himself, "...and of course, nether of the two precogs on the team saw this coming..." Sighing, "All right. Which of you is actually Aaron's kid? This would be just like him."

Thunderbolt, unaging mystic and weather elemental:

"OK, now while I dig out my divining tools, tell me just one more thing. Am I still married to your mother in whichever timelines you're from or am I up to an even dozen failed marriages so far?"

Doremo, my ch'i adept martial artist:

"Fine, fine. You're my kids, the auras make that obvious enough. Now tell me

why I should believe Con-El hasn't curbstomped either of you in about two seconds flat?"

~a few seconds and a horrible thought later~

Doremo jabs a finger towards his 'daughter'. "Just tell me that you have never, I mean NEVER, even considered dating Jon-El!"

Kid Dynamo, superhuman android with the physical body of a 10-year old boy:

"B-but I'm still in grade school! Assuming I can even have kids, Dad doesn't even let me watch Cinemax. No way is he going to let me start dating!"

Atlas,descended from his namesake the Greek titan and strongest man in the world:

intial response-"Naoko Takeuchi, This is all your fault!"

after calming down and trying to think this out carefully, as the two teens demonstrate how much like Dad they are with a fistfight. "Um... Yeah... Well... I'm stumped. Maybe one of the smarter guys can sort this out. In the meantime, the next one of you two to throw a punch gets a suborbital time-out!"

The Fury

Just thought I'd toss out some info on the Fury here since he's been mentioned in comparison to Seth.

He was created by Alan Moore & Alan Davis during the old Captain Britain weeklies. Claremont is, unfortunately, in love with the Moore-Davis Captain Britain run and tends to dig up old and often dead plot points and repeat them in the X-men comics. They were good the first time around but pre-chewed food is not my favorite meal.

The Unofficial Handbook of The Marvel Universe site has some entries on the Fury and the world he originally appeared in. Here's his entry and the entry for his world. Also, it's got a great pic of the Fury about to fry some poor soul.

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/fury1.htm

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/earth238.htm

The main site is chock full of little bits of now-forgotten marvel stories and is certainly worth scanning through.

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/index.htm

Re: Ultimate vs The Authority

Don't forget combat Danger Sense, and possibly Precog, as well as fair amounts of Find Weakness.

 

He's also got physical stats all around in the low superhuman level, higher for Dex and Body.

Interesting thing to note is that when Midnighter fought the Regis on Earth-Sliding Albion, Regis beat him like a drum. From the presentation, it appears that Regis has some degree of telepathy/psionics in addition to being a brick. He comments that he can see inside Midnighter's head and read his 'little fight enhancements', rendering them useless and toying with Midnighter in HTH.

Though he's manifestly not the same character, it's likely that Last Call is also derived from Bendis' technology and the Colonel can perceive Last Call's own implants with his electrical abilities.

Likely, I'd want to build Midnighter with some limitations or at least special effects that would alow cyber- & telepaths to negate a substantial part of his fighting abilities. He'd still have superhuman physical abilities, however, as he's obviously running at 11s on the 1-10 scale of human attributes.

Don't forget as well, that he's a good candidate for building Analysis skills and Dex-aids based on style analysis. That would also account for some of the variable quality/speed of his fights.

Re: Reconciling Manga & Batman

Defently true. Which makes me think about fanfic.

 

Also, there ARE ways Dick could thinnk up to nullifie Ranma's advantages.

Yeah, there are, but he may not be expecting that cocky Japanese kid to also be strong enough to punch a hole in concrete or bend steel and agile enough to fight balanced on ropes & wires or the back of a sword.

Ranma being hit by water during the fight is almost a given, though.

I'm sure, however, that Dick can cope with these things. The trick is that Ranma has some superhuman stats in addition to martial skills and funky ch'i tricks.

Best move is to fight defensively and try to use the environment a lot.

Re: Stats for the original Champions team

Gargoyle- Either Hawk or Constrictor with very modified Man bat wings

See if you can get ahold of one of the Furies from the DC line or Annihilus, both have different wings and the Furies may be fairly close to what the Gargoyle pics in the old Champions books had.

Re: X-Men fans, need Phoenix clone!!!

I like these two ideas here, better than alotting xp to the multiform. Let me know if you got more input!!!!

 

Please provide them to me, I would appreciate your input!!!

Well, offhand, all you need for the Dark Phoenix scenario & writeup is to corner the GM and make him write that sucker up. If he wants to have the scenario, PC/NPC switchover and all, he's going to need to tailor that thing so it doesn't fry your fellow PCs like a handful of bacon on the grill. As to the XP expense for you, I'd say that after the whole thing goes down, you should be either allowed to keep this character who has a hidden god-mode or suffer the classic radiation accident and rebuild using the points previously dedicated to your multiform.

Scenario-wise, I would think that, rather than the comic book story of the X-men appealing to Phoenix on an emotional level, your fellow PCs be somehow absorbed by the Phoenix effect or whatever and have to fight a battle in the mental plane to restore you to sanity and prior power levels. You know, like Onslaught should have played out, rather than being the vehicle for delivering Captain America into the depraved hands of Liefield. This would work especially well if the transformation was due to some sort of outside agent as your pals could dish the smack-down to 'Mastermind' while aided by your own repressed good side.

Re: X-Men fans, need Phoenix clone!!!

OK, so, in essence you want a superpowered Id that jumps out of your skull after some GM-determined level of stress occurs, right? Well, the way I see it, you want to model how Multiple Personality Disorder is supposed to function. Basically, once the mental stress hits a certain threshold the person's mind fragments and creates a new persona to take the heat off the main persona. Normally this is due to rather unpleasant traumas occuring during childhood like the Hulk personalities that Bruce Banner developed in response to his abusive father tormenting him and killing Bruce's mom in front of him. Trauma goes in box, box fills up, trauma-based personality is now at the wheel and ready to roll.

Mechanics-wise, I'd say you have a few other powers besides Multiform that you may want to include to help gauge when your internal pressure red-lines.

Absorption, 1d6, vs Mental effects, fade rate 5 pts/year, increased max pts 40 total, loses 5 pts/therapeutic mental event, only vs attacks that breech defenses, power total feeds into Multiform and at max can add 200 pts to the Multiform. This all represents the mental wear and tear that psi-combat can build up in a telepath's mind ala Mastermind's repeated psi-seductions of Jean Grey for the Hellfire Club

Aid, 1d6, to Multiform total, fade rate 5 pts/year, loses 5 pts/therapeutic mental event, max points increased to 40, No Conscious Control, Only when Ego Rolls are made for Psych Lims. This is to show how the stress of internal moral conflict can build up in a telepath's mind. Y'know, having to mind-control an innocent to forget things or feeling people die

OK, I admit it, these are pretty cheesy power concepts but I figure this could help you and your GM judge when the time would be good to hatch out the Phoenix, and this could also allow you to on occasion be turned into a lesser-powered Multiform should that plot point somehow come in handy as well. Note that there is a secondary pressure valve on these powers allowing you to bleed down your Multiform total should your character attempt to actually deal with this stress rather than the traditional Marvel manner of psychological therapy through fisticuffs.

Lemme know if this is of any use.

Re: Magnus: Robot Fighter

Hmm ... shouldn't Magnus also have his own style of martial arts?

Why? As Shrike wrote him up, he's got a Dex of 25, Spd of 5, +2 DCV, +4 HTH, Analyze:Robots, Defense Maneuver 4, Rapid Attack & Two-Weapon Fighting (HTH). This in addition to his 6d6 HKA x2 AP & around 17d HA, x2 Penetrating (w/Str) gives him some pretty nice combat options. 'Sides, he's not much for the fancy legsweeps, nerve strikes & joint locks. He doesn't need them, since he's capable of driving his fist through most bots in one shot.

He never seemed to be too martial-arts based in his Valiant run anyway, just a one-man wrecking crew. Rai, his Japanese counterpart was more of a martial artist, fighting style-wise.

Re: New Writeup Game! Fix the "Weaklings"

OK, let's talk Falcon.

 

A third rate superhero, so one-dimensional I couldn't even flesh out his disads.

 

He's a mutant with a limited ability to communicate with birds, a falcon friend, flight on a focus, and martial arts training from Steve Rogers (which is what elevates him from fifth rate to third rate).

I like the write-up and all, and despite liking the character himself I agree he's basically a scrub. The only thing that confuses me is that pesky lie about him being a mutant. Sure he was attacked by a Sentinel in his limited series who claimed he was a mutant ,but that sucker was so badly damaged it got taken down by his freakin' bird flying inside it and tearing out wires. Falcon got his empathic/telepathic link with Redwing when the Red Skull used the Cosmic Cube on 'Snap' Wilson and rebuilt his personality from street punk to do-gooder while grafting a psi-link to Redwing in and leaving him as a booby-trapped potential sidekick that Captain America promptly took under his figurative wing. Clearly, he's an altered human in MSH terms, though his specific metability is only slightly above the spot-on-wall category.

Re: Weakest Supers in books you've read?

Oh heck' date=' how about Hyatt from Excel Saga? Her main power is to drop dead.[/quote']

 

No it's not. Anyone can drop dead. Hyatt simply has the ability to do it more than once.

Re: Weakest Supers in books you've read?

My vote goes to Ant-boy. In the Captain Confederacy comics, he was one of the back-up humor strips. Raised by ants, he grew to be their masked defender, since his possessing the actual strength of a human teenager allowed him to trash such mighty foes of the ant colony as lawnmowers, small birds & sprinklers. He also could talk to ants, float on the surface tension of water and dig tunnels at moderate speeds. On the down-side, since he'd been raised by ants, he was about as bright as a sack of cheese.

Re: Character Challange: Superman Clones

I might have mentioned this somewhere on my thread already' date=' but I read acomic book (don't remember the name) where Kal-El's ship crashes into a batcave in up state new york. A young wealthy couple find him and adopt him and name him Bruce. It recreates the Batman story (his parents dying, etc.), only if Bruce had Superman's powers. It was really, really cool. And it was about a dark, almost evil superman.[/quote']

 

That was the Elseworlds story, Speeding Bullets. Another fun one from around the same time was 'In Darkest Night' where Abin Sur selected Bruce Wayne as Green Lantern.

Re: The White Rabbit

Well on the one hand, I keep wanting to make Rabbitechnology jokes about the 'Carrots of Life', but on the other hand I'm usually fascinated by any references to Wonderland or Oz.

Did you have any other terms for types of beings in this campaign?

I could see you retaining the Oz names as subcategories such as:

Wizards- altered humans with now alien insights due to their warped minds

Witches- subset of the Alice that retains some level of psionics

Tin Men- Rabbitechnological cyborgs

Tik-Toks- Rabbitechnological robots, AI & otherwise

Re: Design query 1-Birdy the Mighty

Have each form buy a sentient AI defined as the spirit of the other person. That AI should have INT' date=' EGO, and DEX of the correct form, and all appropriate skills and psych lims. If you want those skills to be useable by the current body, buy the "Usable by others" advantage for them.[/quote']

 

Yeah, that sounds like the best bet to me as well. It would let you simulate some of the effects I saw in the anime as well. After all, when both have Ego stats, you can simulate the occasional fight for control of the body via Ego rolls. Then there's the fun of slapping a limitation or disadvantage on showing that when one mind is unconscious the other can take over like when Birdy ran Tsutomu's body around Tokyo while Tsutomu's mind was still asleep.

 

'Sides, since the base story involved psionics as well, you can never say when one or the other might find their mind removed from their shared form temporarily leaving, say Tsutomu's unskilled reflexes trying to control Birdy's superhuman powers. After all, power complications can be lots of fun and amusement for all.

Re: The Last Hurrah (adventure for your use)

Hmm. Sorry, I can't use this. My problem is a combination of it being too dark for the tastes of most of my gaming group and simply establishing elements in a campaign world I'd find too difficult to take seriously. It's too big a rock with too many ripples to integrate.

Re: A Modern League of Extroardinary Gentlemen

At least one representative from the Police Academy movies is required to be on this list.

Ooh! How about Hightower? They need a guy with superstrength. Y'know, for the 'pick the back end of the bad guy's car up' scenes.

Re: Looking for NEW words of transformation: (SHAZAM, Thunder! Thunder!...)

Multiform' date=' 1000 forms, -1 NCC (Can activate, has no choice of what form, form may only be used once)[/quote']

 

Didn't that vary based on which dial you used? I know that Chris & Vickie had no control over their new form and it only lasted an hour but the primary Dial that Robby Reed and Hero Cruz used had no such limits. Heck, Reed even changed into the same character more than once. Then there was Nick, Chris & Vickie's ongoing annoying NPC, who seemed to have the power to pick and design his own multiforms and had been unconsciously designing theirs. 'Course, you could sim that if you want by having the other players come up with suitably annoying/one note forms.

 

I don't like the new Dial comic though, lacks that element of good-natured goofiness.

Re: Looking for NEW words of transformation: (SHAZAM, Thunder! Thunder!...)

Teenie Weenie Magic Beanie,

Pointed towards the sky,

give me muscle, vigor and strength,

make me a mighty guy!

I believe that was Jughead's transform phrase to switch to Captain Hero

Re: Green Lantern

Don't recall any Green Lantern useing the ring to create darkness or turning themselves invisable (invisability, obvious focus, um, how does that work?), not saying it didn't happen, just don't recall it happening.

 

So yes, given that wide variety of powers, I would say a VPP would be the way to go.

I can't actually recall any uses of Darkness but Hal Jordan and Alan Scott routinely turned both their rings and power batteries invisible. Stands to reason that a skilled GL could do the same for his whole body.

Don't forget the ever-obnoxious power of extradimensional movement both between different dimensional barriers and even time-travel. Man, time travel with a ring whose charge lasts 24 hours makes my brain itch just thinking of relative chronal positioning.

Oh, and for some reason my favorite trick was the instachange to GL suit when you put on or activated the ring. So very very handy.

Re: Calling all Mages...

Wow! Thanks a lot! I just may take you up on that offer...

No sweat. I have most of the Champs 4th & such within about 2 feet of the computer and it was mostly doublechecking for some of the lesser mages. I'm stunned \, however that I noticed quite so many 75+ pt VPP sorcerers in the batch. Most mages are fairly low-powered in the books but there's like a half dozen with awesome power.

Re: Calling all Mages...

Here's what I dug up and from where

Lord Thorne, sorcerer, holds power stolen from Xortec of the Forgotten Gods, a founder of DEMON (Demons Rule)

The Wizard (Morgalis) demonic sorcerer, works for Thorne now (Demons Rule)

Demonicus Rex & his Demon Lords (they had a system of demonic magic spells people could learn (Invasions:Target Earth)

Naga (Ninamar), daughter of Merlin & the Lady of the Lake, works for COIL (Champions Presents #2)

The Revered Elder, Archmage of Earth, health is failing fast (Mystic Masters)

Vincent Dimitrios, former disciple of the Revered Elder (Mystic Masters

Jarth,Vincent's evil alien former apprenticeand betrayer (Mystic Masters)

The Undying Tulku, former Archmage & now quite mad & senile (Mystic Masters)

Master Jomo, master magician now obsessed with the mystic secrets behind the game of Go (Mystic Masters)

Saladin the Great (Golden Age Champions)

Magnificent Dragon/Shinyu, aJapanese sorceress with a dragon form (Golden Age Champions)

The Doberman, immortal fruitcake with the mystic power of Anubis (Golden Age Champions)

The Master, founder of the Circle (the Circle & METE)

Megan Pierce, elemental witch & member of the Circle (the Circle & METE)

Ebonfire, street vigilante & magician in training with the Circle (the Circle & METE)

The Heirophant, scummy WWII opportunistic mage (Champions Presents)

The Masque, heroic WWII era sorcerer with enhancing magic mask (Champions Presents)

Madame Zalla, Russian witch trained by Baba Yaga, lives with the Subterrans (Invaders From Below)

Solitaire, well-known sorceress superhero and member of the Champions (Champions 4th Ed, Champions Universe, The Ultimate Mentalist)

The Vril Society, the trainers & hunters of Solitaire (The Ultimate Mentalist, the Ultimate Supermage)

Morjok, potent sorcere exiled here from the Twilight Realms (Challenges for Champions)

Kabbalah, Israeli sorcerer & supervillain complete with own golem (Enemies:the International File)

Zuvembie, Haitian zombie and practitioner of voodoo (Enemies:the International File)

Morbanes of DEMON, both inner and outer circles are mages of some form or other (Classic Organizations, Target Hero)

The Dragon Queen, dragon in human form with storm magic, works with VIPER (VIPER, 4th Ed)

Madame Blue, sorceress trained in the Ethereal Courts, member of Viper Force 2 (VIPER, 4th Ed)

Hecate, Goddess of Magic (Olympians)

Circe, daughter of Hecate,I've heard she's fond of turning men into animals (Olympians)

Oni no Miza, Japanese sorcerous supervillain, water specialist, leads Yooso/the Elements (Ninja Hero)

Tel'sren, High Priestess of the Church of the Elements in Atlantis (Atlantis)

Other priests of the Temple also have some magical training (Atlantis)

Koriel, vengeance driven ex-Priestess of the Church, water magic spells (Atlantis)

Azor, ancient mutant with spells of warding, defense & imprisonment (The Blood & Dr McQuark)

The Bloodletter, powerful Blood sorcerer in the body of a human, hunts the various Blood on Earth (The Blood & Dr McQuark)

Warlock, latest in line of sorcerous defenders against an ancient menace not due for another few centuries, he fills the time by playing supervillain with the Furies (Enemies Assemble)

Extreme Prejudice,mystic assassin for the Brotherhood of the Crimson Shadow (Enemies For Hire)

Blackfire II sorcerous supervillain trained by the Brotherhood of the Crimson Shadow (Enemies For Hire)

The Duke , reformed evil sorcerer from WWII, leads team of ex-villains-the Redeemers (Allies)

I'd just nudge the Revered Elder/Dimitrios stuff back a hundred years and have Dimitrios having vanished before the training and subsequent death of the Archmage in the Tungusta Explosion in the early 20th century. The Tulku & Master Jomo work just fine as is since they're both immortal & both are crazy as outhouse rats, to indulge in a colloquialism.

I can give you more info on any of these guys like actual level of power if you'd like.

Originally posted by Ghost who Walks

An I thought what I had done to the King was bad. I just had him get kidnapped by a time-travelling sorceress...

Sweet! Sounds like a fun story.