vitruvian23

Re: Adult Entertainment

We have a metamorph that can imatate things down to the genetic level, but "she" needs to fully scan a subject to do so, which can only be doen by touch (typical after a grapple)

 

This could make for a fine villian plot...

 

1) Take the form of a random villian (or hero)

2) Start a fight with some smoking hot super in order to get close and analyze their form

3) Make an escape

4) Pose nekid

5) Profit!!!

 

Some clever player might recognize a scandelous pattern of get in fight, end up on cover of adult magazine...

Would be even funnier if the metamorph needed a genetic sample of some sort... even if a cheek swab or hair sample or whatever would work, people would always wonder just how he/she acquired certain forms.

Re: Adult Entertainment

My world has an adult entertainment company (they make films featuring metas) called Epic Entertainment. They might have a publication arm

My world has at least one such company, with such 'stars' as Kid Titanic (former teenage sidekick to the growing hero Titanic Man), a projector called Electric Blue, a permanently invisible (unless covered by body paint or some equivalent) woman called The Figure, and so on.

Re: Guide to Street Supers

Rather than Crimefighters, you could always say Crimebusters, or for a retro feel, Mystery Men.

Or if you wanted to get in trouble over song lyrics rather than game licenses, there's always Streetwise Hercules.

Re: Create a Hero Theme Team!

Not so for this team. Each of the members is required to follow a personal vow and there are only 3 Rules for the KoR:

3. Follow the Law, no matter if you like it.

2. Follow your personal vow.

1. Break one of the above, and we will make certain you get to justice.

How far does this go? To the extent of turning Anne Frank in to the police?

Re: Campaign Damage Caps, Code vs. Killing & Pulling a Punch

Question - I'm about 2 editions behind, in addition to the Pulling a Punch option, can most characters not just choose to use fewer dice in their attacks? True, you'll do less STUN and it will take longer to subdue 'crunchy' or 'squishy' targets, but I always saw that as exactly the reason Spider-Man ever needed to punch a common thug more than once - he was using at most 4-6 DC of his potential damage.

Re: Dr Hank Pym (Marvel)

I know they said Hulkling was artificially aged (like Genis Vell)

Wouldn't that make Wiccan a pedophile still, though?

Re: Campaign Concept Source: "No Ordinary Family"

Gotta has someone with claws eventually. Does kinda fit with the gradual ramp up in seriousness of the show. Besides, I can deal with Balfour running around with claws if I get to keep Julie Benz AND Lucy Lawless on the same show. NOW, if only Benze was over on Spartacus. Then we'd be cookin with gas.

 

~Rex

Of course, with their past history, if Benz's character ends up having to kill Balfour's (maybe by using her speed aggressively for the first time and ramming him into something, or something into him), I wonder if he'll be able to resist the temptation to flub a few takes and say, "Crap, not again!"

Re: '70s TV Supers

Actually' date=' 300 might be perfect, especially if I could get players to stick to the KISS thoery of character creation.[/quote']

 

The one where you play the members of KISS as portrayed in KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, c.1978?

Re: '70s TV Supers

Strength probably caps off around 50 at most; everything the Hulk, Steve Austin or Wonder Woman lifted had to be movable on a 70s TV SFX budget. The exception would be live action giant characters from the period (Ultraman, Ambasador Magma, Inframan, etc; though while those shows were on air in the 60s-70s, many were set in an imagined version of the 1990s), if you choose to allow them at all. Personally, I love the idea of Steve Austin and Diana Prince in America while Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong have to deal with constant giant monster attacks.

Wonder Woman might be a bit stronger than that, though reluctant to use her STR to full effect on most foes; I recall her stopping a tank cold in one episode.

Re: 350 Point Project

Is overhead lift (ala cover of Action Comics #1) generally assumed to be the same as bench press and therefore 1/2 the listed STR capacity, or is it even less than that?

Re: Supers vs. Military

Originally in Champions, IIRC, a tank had 19 frontal DEF and 14-16 everywhere else, and it had a 5-6d6 RKA, possibly AP. Because haymakers originally gave you 1.5 x STR in damage, a 60 STR brick could destroy a tank with a few haymakers against the top or rear or side armor, and even get a point of body through on the front, with a pushed haymaker. With the current rules, Grond might be able to knock around an M1 Abrams, but even with a pushed haymaker and a very good roll, he's not putting even a body pip of damage through, even though he's throwing 24 DCs and can lift a heavy cruiser with his pushed STR. Even Valak, Ripper and Gargantua, working together and throwing 26d6 pushed haymakers, can't dent the frontal armor, and need several hits to the side in order to take one out. Those are characters who can, in theory, lift a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier over their heads(that's 2 gigajoules of potential energy, folks; the average anti-tank round has 5-10 megajoules of kinetic energy and at the high end is capable of penetrating M1 armor). OTOH, the Abrams' 8d6 KA (averaging 28 body and 56 stun per hit) is likely to take down a superbrick within 5-10 hits.

 

Steve Long rarely gets writeups wrong, but when he does, they are spectacularly wrong.

It's been a while and at least an edition or two since I've played Hero/Champions, honestly, but I thought I remembered that tank armor and weaponry didn't used to be so overwhelming. Maybe it's been pushed *too* high in recent years, and should be scaled so it's always possible for a brick to get through at least the side armor of something the brick can lift with a pushed Haymaker or the like?

Re: Supers vs. Military

Fair enough, but given the stats presented by the OP for a single Abrams, even taking out a moderate sized unit with some tanks and fighter jets and such is going to require more powerful attacks and defenses than usually given to these sorts of characters in writeups.

Re: Supers vs. Military

The contractors who build the carrier and the congresscritters who got the appropriations for building it in their state would probably not agree. ;-) Sometimes the weapons that get built have very little to do with what will be most useful.

Re: Supers vs. Military

Dr. Strange did something similar during his first decade' date=' except it involved memory-wiping [b']the entire planet.[/b] Actually, it might be kinda fun to play around with that conceit, where you have a campaign setting with a long back story, and there were a number of instances where reality was altered/Dr. Destroyer temporarily mind-controlled the whole planet for, oh, weeks(this one is actually "canon" in the CU, at least the 5th ed. version)/etc. What sort of odd side-effects might all that mind-frackery lead to?

Oh, you can have a whole campaign where the PCs start off thinking they're the first superheroes ever, but eventually find out there's a rich superhero history going back decades or even centuries, until somebody accomplished a nice big mindwipe however long ago.

Re: Supers vs. Military

Also' date=' even in the comics, there are only so many people who command that level of power. For every Superman or Thor, there are dozens of Green Arrows and Spider-Men. I admit that DC is a little over the top. Everyone of any consequence has access to 60+ points of STR on top of whatever else they can do, but still most of them would not be able to deal with a light infantry platoon single handedly, much less a mechanized formation. [/quote']

 

Actually, don't discount Green Arrow. He used to carry around a nuclear warhead arrow, after all.

Re: Supers vs. Military

Almost all Champions campaigns are modeled more towards the 1960's Marvel Heroes. They had to fight and defeat their foes; but which of them could really defeat an army?

The Hulk, routinely. Thor, easily. The Fantastic Four, with a little more difficulty and coordination. Iron Man, with about the same ease that he takes out tanks in the current movies. Spider-Man, not so much.

Re: Special Report: The End of Superheroes!

So, one imagines a governmental coup is planned, otherwise there'd be no chance of getting the Liberty Party congresscritters in line behind the bill with 75% public opposition; they'd all be too scared of getting voted out in short order.

Re: Special Report: The End of Superheroes!

How does Congress feel about it?

Re: The Greatest American Hero

I'd restrict it to those whose shows aired by 1983, then have them team up for the first time to fight the aliens from the original V miniseries. So the team would be:

Ralph, the Greatest American Hero

Manimal

Automan

Wonder Woman

Bionic Man and Woman

Incredible Hulk

Man from Atlantis

Isis

(I'd skip Captain Marvel so as not to steal Ralph's thunder - maybe Billy Batson is already in a food pod and requires rescue?)

Michael Knight and KITT

Electra Woman and Dynagirl (I'd probably say that Batman and Robin, having already been active for some time in 1966, had retired in the 1970s)

Not sure if the Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man somehow in possession of the Marveler/Leopardon would fit in well with the team or not...

Re: Character: Daredevil (rough draft)

While DD may not display swinging based on his billy club in this particular story arc, he may still need some level of acrobatic-based Flight to simulate the incredible speed with which he gets around on the rooftops of New York. Maybe only slightly limited Flight (-1/4 or so?), in order to include rooftop running, fast scaling of buildings, etc.

For the rest, I think it's a very good job of statting up this particular version, although I might keep the STR at 15 and compensate with a Damage Class in the Martial Arts package. He can still push to 25 if he needs to do something more impressive than usual.

Re: why the UNITED NATIONS? (for global super-agency)

The UN as it exists in RL is not a body you would want to see with a well-funded covert/special operations agency independent of national governments, as opposed to perhaps consisting of personnel 'seconded' from certain national agencies. However, the UN as it exists in many Champions campaigns is not necessarily much like the RL UN, down to the charter and history of effectiveness (or lack thereof).

At the same time, even in RL the UN, or at least the UN Security Council, would be the logical body for a global or would-be global superteam to go to for political backing and approval if they wanted to be able to operate pretty freely in all member nations. This would avoid the issues DC is currently having all 'American' superheroes face when crossing over the borders of lots of other countries.

When it gets to the point that even Green Lantern, who technically gets any authority he can rightly claim from the Guardians and whose jurisdiction covers the entire region of space we're in, gets shot at when crossing into Russian airspace, you can see the appeal in getting a resolution from both the General Assembly and the Security Council that you can go after supervillains anywhere you want.

Actually, I kind of wonder, how do they know Green Lantern's secret identity isn't Russian?

And, of course, once a truly world-class superteam goes to the UN for approval and gets it, that immediately gives the UN itself more legitimacy and potentially a much easier path to intervention. For example, if there was a Justice League-level team that got permission to operate in all member countries and promised to at least listen to UN requests for action, it would have been very tempting to resolve that they should be the ones to inspect for and if necessary remove any weapons of mass destruction from certain countries. They would ipso facto be giving the UN the means to enforce its own resolutions, providing those resolutions were tailored to seem reasonable to the team membership.

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

Of course, the relatively brief separation in time between the two leads to some potential problems. It's possible for characters from "the past" to still be alive in "the future". This particularly applies to Superboy/man himself. This could be minimised by making "the future" the other end of the 21st Century, but this takes away from the conceit of making the present day into "the future".

Well, you could make it unlikely for there to be *too* many survivals simply by making it a hard 100 year separation, much like the later Legion stories were usually considered to be set an even 1000 years ahead. So, not much chance of Clark and friends still being around, unless this version of Superboy/Superman has enhanced longevity *and* doesn't mysteriously vanish saving Metropolis/Earth one day...

You could even go with a Byrne 'Generations' theme on this, having Superboy's adventures be in the late 20s and early 30s, the move to Metropolis and change of name to Superman in 1938, further changes in the succeeding decades, with the 'classic Legion' era being still in the future, roughly 2030-2038. Of course, in order to have all the mutated human descendants from other planets, it needs to either be:

1) a truly alternate future, with extensive space colonization starting in the 50s or so,

2) set after some event that has human mutants resettled (whether willingly or forcefully) in space, or

3) in a setting where humans or at least hominids have *already* been spread around the universe by some precursor race, whether the Guardians, the Ancients and Go'auld from Stargate, or any combination thereof you like. The latter has a certain appeal, explaining why Kryptonians can breed with humans and offering the opportunity to go back to the 'more evolved human' origin for Kryptonian superpowers.

If combining with the MU to any extent, you've got the option of making Kryptonians essentially Eternal equivalents (up to you if there are still Earth-bound Eternals in the setting), Saturn Girl can be a Titanian Eternal whose power development has focused on telepathy (possibly a daughter or granddaughter of Captain Mar-vell - or maybe she just grew up on Titan, but is the offspring of Mar-vell and Moondragon), and so on.

Okay, so it's not quite the present day, per se, but it wouldn't really be *our* present day even if the date for the Legion was 2006, would it? Of course, if you have the Legion coming back to 2006, it would only be one generation back and they would potentially encounter their parents, teachers, mentors, and possibly infant selves if they don't hold too fast to the teenager rule...

Re: Would Stargate SG-1 work in a Marvel Universe?

Well, it's a major change to the Marvel Universe, since part of the point of Stargate is that contact with other worlds and visits by alien lifeforms is a big honking secret. So, no Skrulls, Kree, , Shi'ar, etc., unless their contact with Earth's costumed hero set is a lot more covert than in the comics, and even then you need to address how they interact with the races from Stargate.

And the NID is totally behind the Weapon X program and all manner of experimentation on anyone with powers, especially but not only mutants.

Re: CU - Wold Newton

If going by the principles that characters have their adventures before they appear in print, and that their background is usually the same as when they first appear, you should probably push back the birth dates for both Reed Richards and Benjamin Grimm, given that it was an established part of their background in the 60s that both had served in WWII.

Re: Law & Order: Spandex Vigilante Unit

Simply leaving a purse snatcher for the Police would allow only for a charge of Possession of Stolen Property (which is a Misdemeanor in some states) since no NGA reported a more serious crime (such as assault or grand theft).

Of course, the victim could certainly still testify against the purse snatcher...