Superskrull

Aquaman: Threat or Menace!?!

Well, despite the suprising number of Aquaman boosters here, I notice that he is still not too respected by the majority of superhero fans. I actually like the guy, except for the whole hand/beard/jerk personality thing they grafted onto him. Er, wait, no, he was an evil manipulative jerk in JLDetroit too, and used evil mind powers to boss people around until J'onn glared at him and gave him the Stern Fingerwagging of Admonishment. anyway...

Aquaman has a very important quality, though. He has what I'd call Theoretical Cool. Despite his nature and origin making him a powerhouse, he's got these years and years and years and years of riding seahorses with a dippy kid sidekick who can't be bothered to remember to hose himself down once an hour, of wearing the ugliest orange chainmail/green hose & gloves outfit despite being given a decent costume in the 80's, of being saddled with knockoff sidekicks like Qisp the renegade cereal mascot masquerading as a water imp/5th dimensional being, being the 'king of the seven seas' and only having a single city full of mouthbreathing ungrateful aquatic herd-animal mentality weirdos who all wear spandex (even the old fat ones like Vulko), villains like the Fisherman, the Marine Marauder (both of 'em), the Invisible Un-Thing & the Scavenger and worst of all, being saddled with creative geniuses who decide mutilation, mood swings and staying underwater all the time equals increased sales.

Geez. Aquaman can overturn trawlers using his own strength and bitchslapped Deathstroke the Terminator AFTER Deathstroke beat Batman. Poor guy needs decent press and a haircut.

Originally posted by MisterVimes

Don't get me started (Vein throbbing in my eye). I mark it down to Super-Senility.

I hope so, 'cause otherwise Miller is a soulless husk who survives by devouring the dreams of others. Hmm. Well, I suppose he could be a soulless husk either way.

Originally posted by MisterVimes

You can argue Marvel vs Mar-Vell (Genis-El) all day, but I think that Billy (if I had parents they would dress me like this) Batson will find few defenders. Annoying little git.

Yep. Snotty too. Seems to be behaving himself in JSA these days, but I'm watching him, regardless. On the other hand, when was Genis adopted into the House of El? Did I miss some cool comic like "Secret Crossover" where Arachnoman teamed with NIght Avenger to combat Ultimateman's newforged alien empire created while he was influenced by Crimson Element X? Personally, I think publishing this one through Image is a cool and sneaky idea. Also, severe head colds make me think weird thoughts when I've been up and unable to sleep longer than 3 hours a day.

Originally posted by MisterVimes

Yep... Batman would whip his butt (see Dark Knight returns)

I'll see your Dark Knight Returns and raise you a DK2. That vomitous mass of amateurish tripe is justification enough to make me want to strangle Miller with his own intestines. 'Sides, I don't know who the poser in the cape was in DKR, but it sure wasn't Kal-El, that for sure. Honestly, how could he NOT know there was gonna be Kryptonite in the final throwdown. Like the Bat was gonna be able to do squat without magic or Green K and I notice that Bat-mite wasn't invited to the scrap.

Originally posted by MisterVimes

Ah... but Rick Jones would stomp a mud-hole in Billy and then kick the water out.

Little snot has it coming after how obnoxious he was in Power of Shazam, too. Beat him like a three year old at K-Mart, Rick!

Superman vs Aunt May

Captain America vs Nazi mooks

and as a mildly obscure Marvel character reference,

how about Harpoon vs the Walrus

It wouldn't be the same without magic. I love using the stuff but I tend to at least subconsciously divide it into various categories. So far, almost all of the PC magic has either been empowerment or artifacts but there are several NPC mages running around in my world as well. I've got a player who is just starting out now with a mage. however. Rather than have him just design some monstrosity I can say no to, he asked me how I wanted to make it fit in. Fortunately, I've got just the villain to play off his style of magic, so I fed him some history and structures and he's happy.

Originally posted by keithcurtis

Careful, Aquaman is the linchpin, the crux, the essence, the keystone, the wampeter of the Superfriends.

 

Keith "Just ask Darren" Curtis

Sure he is. This amounts to what exactly? In the Superfriends, Superman routinely forgot he could avoid pits by flying, Batman had his entire Batcave stashed in his belt, Wonder Woman only seemed to have superstrength using her lasso and Flash could fly. Most of these versions rode the short bus to school. Of course a guy who talks to fish is gonna look good in that gang.

Originally posted by Champsguy

Hey, I never built any of my characters with "Not vs blah blah blah" on their defenses. Well, it's true that GL only had 20 PD (10 resistant) vs yellow attacks, and no damage reduction against them, but I didn't expect to get hit with a 42D6 yellow energy blast!

 

 

 

Yes, but what could Doremo accomplish at this point? Your psychotic friend can't show up. Like Puff the Magic Dragon, your martial artist must simply wait in his cave.

 

The minions of Shadowloo may breathe a sigh of relief.

"Nobody wants me.

Everybody hates me.

I'm goin' down the back to eat worms."

Doremo needs not the psychotic Kid Fist. Doremo shall go on a quest to better himself, by seeking perfection in combat or some such. Either that or he can go find Seeker and pimpslap him a few times just to watch him cry.

Ah, that's it! I'm going looking for trouble!

Hmm...

Well, I've played a few different characters, so out of my favorites...

Gallant- keeps him busy while trying to let Decoy ( a teammate) NND him ala Vision.

Thunderbolt- freeze him in a ball of ice and take a trip as far from civilization as possible, considering his flight speed, that shouldn't take more than seconds. If we both go boom, the power will choose someone else.

Ultra- his (cheesy but fun) Kryptonian powers would make disarming that puppy a snap

Doremo- one decent Fist of the Adder NND & it's all over for nutboy, after that, paralysis him with Snake Fist style Spd drains.

Red Enigma- will probably do something disturbing like squeezing the halflife out of the radioactive materials in the bomb then literally smack some sense into the bad guy.

Originally posted by Champsguy

Amen. I didn't give a crap about Robin. I wanted to see Batman! Seeing Marvin and Wendy only drove home the fact that I couldn't be Superman.

 

"Gee, if I was on the Superfriends, I'd be as big a loser as those two...

 

Nooooooo!!!!!"

 

That's an interesting idea to play a former sidekick. I might have to try that at some point.

Well, at least you wouldn't be as bad as Aquaman.

Re: Re: The Outsiders? Whoa.. nostalgia

Originally posted by Agent Escafarc

Just a hunch but I believe Halo is now in JLA using the the name Faith. But I could be wrong.

Hmm. That almost seems to work. It would explain her familiarity with Batman's parental feelings about Nightwing and his paternal pride. She doens't seem to be running the same power set, though. She used to be a, what was it, an aurakle or some such energy being living in a corpse. Had that incredibly visible Roy G Biv multipower and stuff. Faith hasn't got any visible powers other than feel good vibes and such, so far. I personally was hoping for Moon Maiden from that 80 pg JLA issue a few years ago. It was a fairly clever retcon storyline that had been clipped back out of continuity ansd was creeping in again. Not a single mutter of "Hypertime" in the whole thing either.

Originally posted by Champsguy

Yes, my munchkin-fu has been honed by years of dealing with the most back-stabbing, power hungry group of social misfits to ever roll the dice.

 

It's really sad when gamemasters let Con-El into their game without even batting an eye. "Well, at least you didn't get too cheesy..."

Hey! I never said that! I just snickered and set fire to the Martian while machinegunning the Daxxamite with lead bullets.

If you bozos wanna cheese out and leave gaping defensive holes where my favorite attack types are, then let the bodies fall where they may. However, I did kill your GL clone out of pettiness and a misplaced sense of drama.

You still owe me the opportunity to smack down some snot-nosed World Warrior types with Doremo.

Originally posted by JmOz

Okay, a detect Life, that's a good idea, any other ideas? I will probably revisit this one later, after I get the rest of the team done, so please more suggestions

 

And yes this is the NeNe of the team... (so guess that makes Shinobi Sylvia and Fugi Pris...)

Well, Pris is the knuckledragger of the Sabers.

As to additional things, how about Tactics for Sentry to go with the analytical abilities?

Re: Lamest Of The Lame

Originally posted by wcw43921

Someday, I'll be able to forget about the--uggh--Wedding Destroyer. But not today.

Darn. I missed seeing that episode. Does she take the cake or what? She is Delta Burke after all. She looks like she could snarf a wedding cake in a single gulp.

Ah! The Nene of the group, no doubt. Not to be confused, I suppose, with the group No Doubt. They have no Nene.

Anyway, those sensors are too darned useful, so I recommend you get more of them. You should be able to analyze anything from an alien deathray to a ballpark frank with them. However, I understand the desire to make a character who isn't just a walking tricorder, so that goons don't smack them around with no resistance.

Originally posted by Mavnn

The only real reason for his 'Italian-ness' is the character Rose from Street Fighter Alpha 2 and 3, a gypsy who is trying to track down Bison and seal away his Psycho Power for ever (dun dun dah!!). Errmm... and then she tries and fails, dieing in the process (depending on the end story you get). This seemed the closest thing to background that Bison had so far, so I went with it. She's italian in the game, and wields a couple of funky ablities both in game and via her story bits (precognition, reflecting chi attacks, duplicating herself - and a scarf she powers up with psychic energy).

 

Glad you like the write up, and now that I've worked out how (I was being slow yesterday), I'll be adding the Hero Designer file to this thread on the HD Forum.

 

Out of interest, it sounds like you've considered using him in a Supers game. Have you ever got round to it, and how did it go?

 

Michael

Well, that's as solid a lead on his backstory as I've heard. I personaly got lost mapping their timelines when the Zero/Alpha releases muddled things .

As to using him, well, I did run a Streetfighter/Fatal Fury game for a few sessions and was working up to him but that fell apart when my players took off out of state. As it was, I hadn't statted him out yet. I'll happily swipe this one, though to save me some trouble. Thanks for the loan, I'll treat him like family.

Nice stuff. Only question is why you decided he's Italian. I always was under the impression he'd work best in a superhero universe as being the creation of Soviet psionic research into creating a supersoldier. 'Sides, that costume just says Eastern Bloc military to me. Other than that, he's a tough little monkey but not unbeatable, which is as it should be.

Somehow this topic reminds me of a scenario Champsguy ran for me and a few others. We were playing supervillains in a combined Marvel/DC world. I was having a blast playing Superskrull for once. Our stated goal was killing the major superheroes off. For some reason, they wanted to start with Aquaman. Anyway, one of us was playing the grandson of Baron Blitzkrieg and he'd been this complete idiot and jerk in game so we talked him into a "surefire way to put you up there on Superman's power level" by dosing him up with a coctail of Miraclo & Velocity 9. The way we explained it to the poorly educated neoNazi superthug was that it would enable him to use all his energy on ALL his powers at once for like an hour a day. We, of course, had made sure that he was gonna go up like a drummer for Spinal Tap after like 5 minutes of running in overdrive. We figured he might even take a hero or two with him. That accursed Richards tracked us down however and we had to cut our losses and leave the little bastard to the heroes without juicing him up first.

Anyway, Velocity 9 is a wonderful plot device.

Looks like a nice back-up brick, without overshadowing someone who justs wants to play the strongman. That is, I'm assuming these are meant as NPCs or some such.

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly

As has already been pointed out, the first one on this list is actually Stone Boy. Later on he (gradually) developed greater control of his power, and learned to (1) selectively turn just certain parts of his body to stone -- like, say, his fist (just before he punched you) and (2) move even while turned to stone (sort of a sleepwalking state, but he WAS able to fight).

Ah yes, the Biernbaum era. I loved some of their stuff, hated some of it and was indifferent to much. I liked that they made the Subs as effective as they could have been. Even if they had to fudge a power or two. Much as I liked seeing Stone Boy kickin' ass, surely the power of movement while stone would have been mentioned before,somewhere.

Polar Boy didn't exactly have 'typical' cold-based powers. Rather like Killer Frost (from Firestorm's hit list) his powers worked by *absorbing* heat. He was, in effect, immune to just about any heat effect, including the temperatures at the core of the Earth. Most people would expect "Hey, a cold-based guy! Let's see how he like a little fire-blast!" In the case of Polar Boy, those making this assumption were in for an upleasant surprise.

Yeah, remember why he didn't make the cut before? Thjey were afraid his powers might get out of control and damage things. Something you apparently wouldn't have happen with people like Element Lad, Sun Boy or Lightning Lad, of course.

The last one you mentioned is actually Color Kid, and was a tad bit more effective than you'd think. Among other things, his exploits included saving Superboy & Supergirl (turning a cloud of green kryptonite particles surrounding the Earth to blue, which didn't affect them) and blinding opponents by turning the color of the air to black. He also helped put paid to a number of Khund warships during the Earthwar, by swapping the colors of the sky & ground. The confused pilots believed their eyes instead of their instruments and...crunch.

Considering his power to control coloration, there's a whole host of things he could do to mess with people. Naturally, my favorite scene with him is from the old DC Presents with Superman and Ambush Bug. The Bug is trying to pull off Antennae Lad's ears 'cause he thinks they're fake and Color Kid shoots this rainbow of harmless light at him. Ambush Bug responds with "Oh no! Technicolor!" or something to that effect.

Originally posted by Armitage

To be fair, the items glowed because they contained radium paint, like old glow-in-the-dark watch faces.

Workers painting the watches kept developing cancer because nobody told them not to wet the brushes in their mouths while working...

Wow. To swipe a quote from Supreme ( the poster, not the superhero), "Raging Roentgen!"

Originally posted by Evil Steve

Aw Hell, I forgot all about Dazzler's early carrer. Real shame 'cause I own most of that series. I bought it for one issue, when Rogue tries to kill her.

 

Anyone wanna guess which issue I don't have?

The one with the bounty hunter and his dog? No, wait, the Secret Wars II crossover? The one where she fights Dr Doom?

The one where she beats Terrax the Tamer? The one where, distraught over the flagging popularity of Disco, she is cryogenically preserved to be restored in the late 90's to ride a nostalgia train straight to the top of the charts with her stunning post-ice debut single "Disco Duck" with guest vocals by Howard the Duck?

Y'know, I never could figure out who booked a disco singer in a punk club when she first appeared back in Uncanny X-men along with Kitty Pryde.

Of course, I've heard that no one at Marvel then or now will take responsibility for the creation of Dazzler.

Originally posted by Law Dog

He became a buddy and a D.A. only after reforming. Gotta love that.

Well, that figures.

Are you ready for some football!

There are sports-related injuries and sports-related heroes.

Marvel had a few characters that felt like both combined.

First, though most definitely not foremost, there was Kickers Inc. they were a bunch of football players who went adventuring. Admittedly, the quarterback had superstrength and speed, but his wife and teammates sure didn't. Although, one of them was drawn looking like he was 7 ft tall and 4 feet wide and made of solid muscle.

Then, 'cause some people never learn, we got a zero for the nineties, NFL Superpro. He was a former football player turned sports reporter. During his career of investigative sports reporting, he had an accident involving chemicals and took to wearing 'an advanced football uniform' as the thankfully now forgotten NFL Superpro. He had enhanced athletic abilties , superstrength and fought for Truth, Justice and the American Football Way.

Why do I have to remember these things?

Originally posted by lemming

You forgot Porcupine Pete and Infectious Lass!

 

I need to find that Ambush Bug where he goes to the future. Good memories!

I also forgot Double Header, Antenae Lad and Spaceopoly Lad, to name a few.

Didn't Pete get his quills by being cursed by a 5th dimensional imp?

Originally posted by Supreme

Ah, good point about the Find Weakness. I'd probably use it with the Fast Strike since the OCV so high. The character is still in his "rough draft" state. I'm going to "iron" him out some more over the weekend (I don't pun much, so enjoy when it happens ) and finish up the promised sketch.

 

I had another thought/question having to do with martial arts. If I wanted to have Iron Cricket whip out the old martial arts weapons, aside from buying the appropriate familiarities, would I also have to buy maneuvers to use them, or could I use the weapons with my previously purchased maneuvers?

Well, if you bought the weapons yourself, no. Currently, you are able to use your powers with your martial arts without penalty. So, if Iron Cricket pulls out his collapsible staff (4D HA, IAF) and starts crackin' skulls, it's all good.

Assuming you whack a mook and pick up his nunchaku 'cause it'd be a cool and stylish thing to use for the remainder of the fight, then yeah, weapon elements & familiarities are needed. You have WF: Club for free.

Disturbingly, the implications of the Weapon Familiarity chart is that you need to spend a point to pick up a WF in Unarmed Combat, but that's crazy talk.