massey

Build Apollo from the Authority. Now I haven't read the issue of Stormwatch where he first appears, but in the Authority #2 he tears up a chunk of concrete that appears (using Apollo for scale and assuming he's about 6 1/2 feet tall) to measure about 45 feet by 60 feet by 12 feet. Going with an average density of concrete at 150 lbs per cubic foot, that means he's lifting (calculator) about 2400 tons. He doesn't really appear to be pushing, so that means he's gonna need about an 85 Strength. Don't forget incinerating evil clone guys with his heat vision. Don't forget to buy the Carrier (at 50 miles long and 35 miles wide, it will have 40 levels of size, and then it sits in another dimension and is easily defended, so it spends about 50 points for its location). Remember, it's not that Apollo is that powerful, he just didn't start publication back in the 30s.

Attacks with a lot of advantages can very quickly get out of hand. They'll either be totally worthless or game breakingly powerful. Anything that has more than a +2 advantage should be scrutinized very very closely. Once you start getting into +4 or +5 in advantages you should almost just say "no" automatically.

Grrk. Sorry but that description makes my brain malfunction. I would never ever understand that. I mean, clearly it works for your group, but I've heard of people doing it that way and I just can't wrap my head around it. I think of it the following way: If you roll an 11, you hit a DCV equal to your OCV. For every point you roll under 11, you hit one better DCV. For every point you roll higher than 11, you hit one worse DCV.

Well, the girl who plays her is a TV star. And while the actress probably can't, I could see Penny the character lifting 220. We aren't talking about bench-pressing it, we're talking about lifting the weight off the ground.

Given the subject matter of Call of Cthulhu, intimating that the game could transport you to Arkham in 1923 would probably be seen as an homage and not as defamatory. Of course it's still basically the plot to In The Mouth of Madness.

Penny has been noted (by Sheldon) to have "farmhand strength" (or some phrase to that effect). She's been shown to be much stronger than any of the guys in the show. Technically she could do that with a 10, but I think the rule of comedy tv should give her at least a 13, possibly a 15. And she beat the hell out of the guy who stole Sheldon's world of Warcraft character. I'd probably give her a 16 comeliness. She's pretty, but no more so than any other b movie actress. Arguably Sheldon has the persuasion skill. Not in the way anyone is used to seeing it, but it's just a different special effect.

Funny, I just tinkered with something like this yesterday. Radio Perception/Transmission, Usable Against Others, possibly Ranged. You plant a transmitter on them, basically.

I'd say the most difficult characters to build are those that don't have any obvious combat utility. Building Batman is not that hard. Building Mr. Miracle ("I'm an escape artist!") and having him be useful, that's the trick.

Of course, I think you have to be careful with that. The corporations should not control every aspect of their world -- they just want to. Building in a weakness is fine, that's in keeping with the genre. But the process shouldn't be perfect, there needs to be a way to defeat the corporate teams. It should be something accessible to the hero group. Remember that while Robocop had Directive 4, OCP's other product, ED-209, had all sorts of bugs and problems. Like going down stairs. I think the corps would generally try to "amp up" a lot of power sets. Yes, they could probably give you a 50 Str and 20/20 defense with no problems. But why do that when you can give someone an 80 Str and 35/35 defense with only the minor problems of chemical dependency, slight hallucinations, aaaand the subject's muscles spontaneously bursting into flame if they ever run out of Endurance and start using Stun. But, you know, that's not likely to ever happen. Right? We'll just tell him to take it easy... And most of the time, they're right. Captain Lightning can have a 10D6 Energy Blast, 10" of Flight, and a 10/10 Force Field, risk free. Or you can have him flying around at 25", with a 20/20 Force Field, throwing 6D6 RKAs. And all for the little risk that the third time he ever rolls an 18 to hit... his umm, electrical implants short out and fry his brain. But seriously, you'll probably get years of service out of him before anything like that happens. And he'll be much more effective in the corporate wars. And hey, plausible deniability. Being in the middle of a fight like that, nobody will figure out what happened. I mean accidents happen all the time. But it needs to be something the heroes use, something the corporation hoped nobody would find out about.

Well, in real life you're very unlikely to be knocked out by being hit by a vase, even in the back of the head. Likely it will hurt a lot and break the vase. But let's try to stat it up a bit. Housewife hits Invisible Woman with a vase. Housewife has 10 Str (as an average, normal human, not reflective of actual housewife strength). Housewife picks up a vase, in this case a 2D6 hand attack, OAF fragile. Housewife rears back and swings vase as hard as she can -- haymaker maneuver. This gives us a total of 8D6. Invisible Woman has, for sake of argument, 8 PD. She has a level or two of combat luck as well, and then some pretty pimpin' force fields. The force fields aren't up, because she's surprised. The combat luck doesn't apply, because she's surprised and the GM rules she's not paying a bit of attention. Since she's not in combat, she also takes x2 Stun. So 8D6, or 28 Stun on average, multiplied by 2 for surprise, gives us 56 Stun. Invisible Woman has 8 PD all the time, meaning she takes 48 Stun past defenses. Likely that's more than she has. For certain genres, a blow to the back of the head like that pretty much equals instant KO for anybody. It's not a statement on the power level of any given individual, it's the way the rules of the story work.

A combination of them, I think. As long as you know in your head how it works, it isn't necessary to put it on the character sheet. I guess technically it could just be a Vulnerability after XYZ circumstances have taken place, but I like limitations as well. You know, maybe the corporation actually cuts a lot of corners. Their supersoldiers are victims of shoddy workmanship. They could be built with a bunch of weird limitations on them, stuff you wouldn't let players get away with. "Not in intense magnetic fields" should probably come up a lot. Boostable charges are great to raise someone's power level temporarily, as is increased end. They'll look really awesome for a few minutes, until everything starts breaking down, and then they fall apart. Of course, nobody knows that (except maybe a few people in the Resistance), because corporate supers tend to not stick around. They fly in, level the place, blast someone they waaay overmatch, and then leave.

Have your neanderthals look different than the PC. Describe them initially as big, brutish men. And honestly, when you said your PC woke up in the body of an ape-like creature, I imagined him to be all hairy. Just describe the two as looking quite different from one another.

I've been writing up a lot of Marvel and DC characters lately. Instead of using any specific conversion mechanic, I've been trying to judge their power scale on my own, and then try to fit them into the existing 5th edition setting as far as the style of the build. In other words, the old conversion system for the DC Heroes game usually gave most characters a 20+ Int and Ego, even if they were just a normal hero. I'm trying to avoid stat inflation with these writeups, especially on things that can't really be gauged except against one another (what does a 26 Ego look like vs a 30?). Certain aspects of some characters are still well beyond standard Champions power norms. Thor and Superman would lay waste to anyone not named Dr Destroyer or Takofanes (and honestly Supes could take Dr. D and Thor could take the archlich). But those come from fairly well established power levels for those two characters. But I tried to use existing Champions characters as a basis, especially when those characters are a very obvious homage to a comic character. As a result, Cyclops looks a whole lot like Oculon. Jean Grey looks a whole lot like Mentalla, and Magneto takes his cues from Gravitar. I did not skimp on points -- if a character has clearly demonstrated European Literature from the 1830s on a 15 or less, then he has it and it goes on his character sheet. I avoided charging heroes for contacts with other supers unless they were well outside of their normal campaign (Cyclops, as an X-Man, does not pay for any contacts within the Marvel mutant subsetting -- he would have to pay to know Dr Strange or the Silver Surfer however). I didn't try to cram things into power frameworks just to save costs, if it looks like a multipower, it was built as a multipower. If he just has a bunch of weird powers that he can use in different combinations, then that's how he was bought. Generally, these are the point levels I needed to build the characters "right": Early New Mutants: 250 points (except for Magik and Danielle Moonstar, who both needed 350 to get their powers to work right). These characters still have pretty obvious holes and are very underskilled. The X-Men tend to start at about 450 and go up from there. Cyclops is the cheapest of the big names at 490 points, Jean (non-Phoenix Force) is the most expensive at 700. Haven't finished the Xavier writeup yet. Avengers are typically in the same range, but the heavy hitters are more expensive. Iron Man is 991 points (and the writeup is very comprehensive -- he can do everything Iron Man can do). Thor is over 1300. The JLA normally don't come in less than 500 points. The average for that team is the highest, with a lot of characters being 600 or 700 points, and the heavy hitters going up from there. Batman is 1100, as is Wonder Woman. Martian Manhunter clocks in at 1375, and Superman is 1975 points. Silver Surfer and Doctor Strange are the highest point characters so far, at 2000 and 2050 points, respectively.

Perhaps superhumans designed by gene-graft (or whatever process they use) are inherently fragile. I'm thinking about the Bizarro clone that Lex Luthor created in the Man of Steel series (it also appeared in the awesome Elseworld's story "The Nail"). Normally they're quite powerful, but if certain things happen (get stunned twice in the same fight, take body, get hit with a penetrating attack, etc), their defenses begin to drop like a rock. So every additional attack suddenly becomes more and more effective, causing the deterioration to accelerate. This is all kept a secret from those empowered, of course. Example: Atomic Sarge (use Gigaton's writeup) has 60 Str, 40 Con, 25 PD and 30 ED (20/20r), 20 Body and 70 Stun. He fights for several years in standard Champions combats, generally not taking longer than a turn or so, and he has no problems. But today one of the heroes catches him with a haymaker punch and rolls great. 16D6 and the player rolls 68 Stun. Atomic Sarge is stunned and gets knocked back through a wall and out of the fight. A phase 12 haymaker lands on segment 1, and Atomic Sarge spends his phase 3 recovering from being stunned. Down 43 Stun (27 remaining), he decides to spend phases 5 and 8 taking recoveries (his teammates can handle things for now -- no point in rushing right back in, right?). So he re-enters the fight on phase 10 with 67 Stun, appearing through the hole in the wall and striking with his Atomic Blast (14D6 explosion). He's feeling pretty good until Wraith Lad phases a piece of rebar into him and leaves it behind (4D6 NND Does Body, requires object of opportunity). He takes 4 Body and 14 Stun (down to 16 Body and 53 Stun), a significant shock to his system that he's never experienced before, and this begins the deterioration. His defenses drop by, let's say 1/3. So now he's got 17 PD and 20 ED (14/14 resistant). Visually his face starts to crack and bleed, becomes sort of craggy looking, and tiny flakes of skin start to fall off like he's got super-dandruff all over. He's obviously messed up from that attack. Then on segment 12, after he's cooked the currently-solid Wraith Lad, two heroes perform a coordinated attack, two 12D6 energy attacks doing 42 stun each (each 22 past, combining for 44 stun). He's now been stunned for the second time this fight, causing his defenses to drop again. Now it's more rapid, and his defenses drop by half, leaving him with 9 PD and 10 ED (7/7 r). He's also got 9 Stun remaining, so normally he'd get knocked out quickly and further attacks wouldn't be necessary. But now he gets his post 12 recovery, bringing him up to 29 Stun, so he's still gonna take a bit of a beating. As this turn begins, the physical effects of the deterioration are more prominent. His face is taking on the angular, clearly artificial appearance of a Bizarro. His skin has gone from healthy flesh color to a dull gray. Pieces of what appear to be dried plaster are falling to the ground as his skin flakes away. Now he definitely knows something is wrong, but not what exactly. If he high-tails it back to the corporation, they may be able (with months of significant and costly treatments -- he's not going to be healing Body on his own at this point) to save him. But he's starting to become irrational as his brain is affected. He continues the fight, until the Vietnam Vigilante opens fire with his 3D6 autofire RKA. He hits 3 times and does 10 Body per hit (easily penetrating the now-reduced 7/7 resistant, but crapping out on the stun multiple, getting only a x1). That's 3 Body, 3 times each. He's now taken a total of 13 Body, leaving him with 7 Body remaining and 20 Stun. He's also taken 3 more "deterioration-causing" hits. At this point, his defenses are basically gone. He's got zero PD and ED, and probably has a vulnerability to all forms of attack. His body almost looks like it's made of ashes, and even non-powered Ebon Justice can kick him for 8D6 and stick his foot directly through him, causing him to explode in a shower of dust. -- Now clearly I had to play with the scenario a bit to keep the guy conscious long enough to get shattered by a fairly weak attack. But I think the concept has merit. In 99% of the super fights out there, ones where people have fairly standard powers (no NND Does Body RKAs), these guys look and feel like the real deal. They're tough, they're powerful. But extended combat without a lot of rest will start the process of their bodies rejecting the super graft. This gives the heroes a fighting chance -- even the toughest opponent will eventually crumble if you keep him in combat long enough.

Not really the way it plays out in the movie. It's Missile Reflection, with enemies shooting at her friends across the room, which she then reflects so that it shoots a different enemy in the back. Very cool power, explicitly prohibited in Hero.

Well, from watching X-Men: Days of Future Past, Blink has one of the big no-no powers. Missile Reflection vs any target, Usable at Range, which you can't buy in Hero.

There just aren't that many heroes to go around. Previously, superheroics have been confined to NYC, Chicago, and maybe L.A. Since Mighty Man appeared back in the late 30s, superpowered individuals have flocked to those cities for one reason or another. Given that there's only about 30 known superheroes, organized into 6 different teams, it's not surprising that Raleigh, NC doesn't have one. Well, they're stepping into the bigtime today, folks!

You're missing the forest for the trees. At 250 points, Superman is ending up with a 6D6 energy blast for his heat vision. That's basically a campfire, except not killing damage. 4th ed Oculon is a scrub. He has an average damage attack for a 250 character and below average defenses. 250 points simply does not allow the full range of abilities that experienced comic book heroes have. It's just not enough, and it results in watered down builds.

Do you make players pay for pants as well?

Yeah, pretty sure. So let's not do a brick. Let's do an energy blaster. Let's have him fight Cyclo Oculon from 4th edition If we ditch his Missile Deflection and his Telescopic Vision, he's 251 points, so we'll make him ugly too. Now he's 250. Dex 20, Oculon goes first. He fires with a 12 OCV. He only misses on an 18. Average damage is 42 Stun, which goes past 250 Supes' 15 ED and also exceeds his 25 Con. Superman is stunned and loses his phase 12. On phase 3, Oculon goes first again. After his post-12 recovery, Superman has 40 Stun remaining. Oculon shoots him again, doing 27 Stun past defenses and causing Superman to lose his phase 3. On phase 5, Oculon goes again, and puts Supes down for the count. Now perhaps, just perhaps Oculon rolls that 18 to hit and he misses. Now Superman gets to go. He runs forward and attacks Cyclo Oculon. Let's say he uses his heat vision. 6D6 Energy Blast, rolls an average of 21 Stun. Oculon takes 1 Stun, he's in trouble now. Or maybe Superman will punch him in the face. He does 10D6, and if he rolls average he does 35 Stun. Oculon takes 20 Stun and is not stunned. Oh wait, Superman needs to roll a 9 or less to hit Oculon. -- I'm not trying to pick on Cassandra here, she is right that you can scale your characters as you see fit. But the problem is that, contrary to all sense, a character who is by concept more experienced and with a greater variety of powers, always ends up less effective than the guy who only does one thing. If they're built on the same number of points.

But the problem is when you want to play Superman, and I want to play Stomp Man. Stomp Man (250 pts) Str 80 Dex 18 Con 28 Body 14 Int 10 Ego 10 Pre 20 Com 8 PD 30 ED 30 Spd 5 Rec 22 End 56 Stun 68 (16" leaping from Str) +3 levels with punch, grab, haymaker 20/20 Damage Resistance 7" KB Resistance -- Total: 250 pts -- Stomp Man will beat both of the above Supermen at the same time. But Stomp Man shouldn't be able to do that, because he's a one-note character. He's the kind of guy Superman should slap around the block. And that is the problem of putting everyone on the same number of points.

Over the years I've written up a lot of Marvel and DC characters in Champions. I've gone back and forth with a lot of different design philosophies. Currently, my Batman has 250 points of just skills. You've got languages (remember, he's a world traveller who trained in Tibet and Japan, and a businessman who regularly deals with overseas corporations). He's a scientist. He has lots of random knowledge skills (how else can he decipher the Riddler's puzzles so easily). I went over the writeup several times, trying to find things to trim, and every skill I had listed, I could think of numerous examples of when I'd seen him use it. He's got 230 points worth of perks (Batmobile, Batcave, Batboat, Batplane, money, various contacts, Robin as a follower). All told he's 1100 points. But he can do virtually everything Batman can do. Now, if you want a Batman-style character without worrying about being fluent in Mandarin Chinese, or having a 14 or less in literature, I have a 350 point character called the Huntsman who can fake being Batman okay. He's just lacking a sidekick, and a cave (well, he can have a cave, there just won't be anything in it; same with his car, he has a black sports car that he bought with money, not points, so it doesn't do anything that a normal car doesn't do), and all the other Batman stuff. I took a lot of shortcuts with how he is built, but it is pretty obvious who he is supposed to be. I played him in a Champions game and he was fairly effective, despite spending a lot of points on looking the part. Not every character should be built on the same amount of points. The difference between the Hulk and Night Thrasher is not just one of how they chose to allocate their points.

I would generally base them off of the Greek gods. The gods are inattentive, and are busy with their own stuff. While ideally they are watching over the mortals, guiding them and protecting them, in reality they are like irresponsible parents. They are watching television and they only pay attention to their kids when something gets broken. Priesthoods have done the proper rituals needed to gain the god's favor, and the god looks down on his servants and grants them power. Then his attention turns to something else and he wanders off. The normal praying for spells thing has the priest imploring for power, and the god stares at the TV, not paying attention. Priest: "Oh lord, please grant me the power to engulf the world in eternal darkness..." Deity hears "mumble mumble mumble please whine mumble mumble" Deity says: "Yeah okay whatever just fill up the gas tank when you're done," giving exactly zero thought or attention to what was asked. Of course when the world is on fire a week later, that will not stop the god from being pissed and blaming the priest.

I disagree with some of the above statements. A lot of point totals are subjective. They are campaign-specific and depend a lot on the dynamics of the group and the attitudes of the GM. For example, let's say we want to build the Lou Ferrigno version of the Hulk, from the TV series in the late 70s, early 80s. At the low end, the Hulk could be as little as a 100 point character. Str 30 Dex 10 Con 20 Body 15 Int 5 Ego 5 Pre 20 Com 8 PD 20 ED 20 Spd 3 Rec 10 End 40 Stun 40 5/5 DR Rapid Healing That's 94 points. You can do that if you want, but your Incredible Hulk is going to have to fight villains who are, at most, 25 point normals. Master ninjas end up with a 12 Dex and a 3 Spd, because everyone suffered from a low special effects budget back then. If you are looking for that type of stat compression, that's fine, but it's going to make a lot of normals look exactly the same. The lower the points you go (and admittedly this is an extreme example), the more compromises you have to have.

I'd say the illusion is still mostly doing what the caster wants. It's not like the illusion is suddenly going to change into a big fluffy bunny, or a dozen Kate Uptons rolling around in oil. It's still basically a scary monster thing that will try to kill the target. Not sure that's worth a limitation.