massey

Re: Public vs. Secret Identity In traditional comics, secret ID carries with it certain problems. Villains will try to track you down to find out who you really are. Villains will also show up while you are in your normal ID, and it will be tough to use your powers without giving away your secret. Public ID has different problems. When you blow up half a city block during your battle with Omega Man, you get sued. If you break the law (possibly even a minor one), cops come out and arrest you. Those who take neither ID just don't have those sorts of problems crop up. No one really seems to care who the X-Men are. They never expend any energy trying to keep their identities secret from anybody, but it never affects them.

Re: Comparing STR for HtH vs. DCs Does not affect figured characteristics -1/2

Re: Victor Krum For super-smart characters (which is basically what this guy is), you can always give them an array of powers to represent long-term plans coming to fruition, or their genius at work. For your guy, you may want to give him a ton of Contacts. It's not that he knows those people or has an actual "contact" with them, but he can have a game-terms Contact with them because he'll arrange things so that the specific person finds themselves in a position where they will do what he wants. While the police chief doesn't know the guy, he'll end up functioning as a Contact because your guy makes an anonymous phone call that leads random detective to find a few clues, which in its normal course of investigation will eventually result in police chief doing whatever it is that your guy wanted him to do. Similarly, your guy can have Wealth because he gets money whenever he needs it. If your guy keeps causing people to get superpowers (and from your description it sounds intentional), then he probably needs a Transform to use on people to make them into supers. Maybe it's Time Delay, Indirect, and Variable SFX. Build him as you would a normal master villain. He's got bases and followers (because he's just that good that people do what he wants), Danger Sense, some Precognition, skill levels, possibly Missile Reflection (he planted a smoke bomb that went off a few moments ago, and that obscured the attacker's sight, so when they thought they shot at you, they actually shot at that guy over there). You can buy Armor based on objects miraculously being in the way (blast strikes falling debris, passing car, tree, etc). It depends how much of his power should be combat-related.

Re: The Twelve (If you can think of a better name go forit) You might do something generic like The Masters of Crime or The Brotherhood of Revenge. Any name themed around 12 (like the Zodiac) might be difficult unless they all fit the naming scheme. If these are just a bunch of B-listers who aren't going to change their own names and/or costumes then something generic may be the best. Maybe The Doom Jury or something. Large groups of villains gain a lot of durability because heroes can't press the attack as easily. If you get Stunned, it's easy for someone else to move in and attack the hero so you can waste a few phases recovering. As long as they've got attacks that can affect the heroes they should be effective. They can be brutal if some of your guys are one-shot wonders ("I have 15D6 Mental Illusions... and nothing else") and the others act to support them. Powers that can help the entire team are also useful (see Bora from Classic Enemies who acted as team transport for Eurostar).

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill I liked the Watchmen storyline. It's interesting that now, almost 30 years later, we're still discussing it. It's a world where the traditional genre rules of comics don't apply. I took it as "this is what would really happen if there were supers". The characters' being superheroes separated them and isolated them from the humanity they tried to protect. If you think about it, Batman's super power is the ability to not rip the Joker's throat out. That's the least believable aspect of the character. I'd have done it years ago, and I don't spend my nights beating up criminals in the streets. The characters in the Watchmen lack those 4 color comic codes of conduct. A true Superman would find himself out of touch with humanity pretty quickly. Who are these people who die so easily, who can't see the formation of molecules, who don't see the future like I do? And you think you have a hard time talking to your grandparents, or to teenagers, because of the music and TV shows that they watch. None of your cultural references are the same. Well for Dr. Manhattan, he says "so I was watching atoms divide the other day..." I thought his portrayal in the movie was excellent, by the way. Very sad, but peaceful. Veidt was likewise someone who was so smart that he was effectively no longer human. While he was trying to save the world, a handful of deaths meant nothing to him. The Comedian and Rorshach had seen the darkness of humanity for so long that they became brutal killers. Rorshach in trying to punish crime and prevent injustice, the Comedian because he believed everything was pointless and fake anyway. There was no good in the world so why pretend any different? Dan and Laurie are the only two relatively normal people, and so they are the lens through which we view the story. Great story, intensely dark. Not something I would want to read about every month. It's kind of like the show MadMen. Excellent writing, great production values, and I hate every character in the show.

Re: Silver Age Superman Well, the biggest problem there is that a VPP is limited by the active points of powers, not just the real cost. A 20 pt VPP can't have a 40 or 50 point power in it, no matter how many limitations you slap on it. If you're bound and determined to do Silver Age Supes on 250 (which is kind of like trying to have foie gras and kobe beef for the price of an extra value meal), then you've got two choices. First, he needs that -2 limitation "loses powers permanently when exposed to gold kryptonite", or second, you're gonna have to get freaky with abusing Aid. Likewise you could put an END Reserve on Charges or other similar abusive abilities. I prefer not to do things like that which I wouldn't want a player to do. Edit: Again, if you are really trying to do him any sort of justice, I'd suggest going with simpler enhanced senses, such as "Detect Plot Element" or "Detect Person in Danger". Similarly I think a giant transform could handle a lot of his powers, possibly some megascaled change environment and extradimensional movement. Of course 75% damage reduction and absorbtion to Stun could help as well. You're going to have to get really creative and define your world around him in order for it to work right.

Re: Silver Age Superman The pseudo-Pre Crisis Superman I posted on another thread was over 3000 points. People reacted in horror to that. How silly do you want to get when you describe his powers? There were a lot of times when Silver Age Supes would be affected by a simple plot device. Once he fell on some power lines and the electrical jolt erased his memory for a short time (basically til the end of the issue). This is despite the fact that the way he fell, he wouldn't actually have been grounded or felt any electricity at all. So... Accidental Change, 8-, triggered whenever? And magic transforms and other things seemed to affect him, but magical attacks didn't blast through him like he was paper. DC heroes seemed remarkably vulnerable to Mind Control, and sometimes a 2 bit stage hypnotist could enslave him and send him out to rob museums. Other times he'd shrug off a mental attack no problem. So his mental defense is hit or miss. Then of course, are all the times that Superman would lose his powers, or pretend to lose his powers, or some other thing. For as many times Silver Age Supes would drag a string of planets to another galaxy using a piece of kryptonian thread, he's just as likely to fall in a hole or forget to use his x-ray vision or get kicked by a horse and lose his memory. I have an old Earth 1 & 2 crossover where Batman throws "a bag of powdered lead" at a villain and it bursts into flame, as it always does when exposed to oxygen. Batman apparently slept through science class. But stuff like that was common in the 60s. Perhaps all Silver Age characters should have both 10D6 of Luck and 10D6 of Unluck. Roll before every adventure to see what weird thing is going to happen today.

Re: Thor and Falcon on the same team: Balancing power levels without all being the sa A lot of the above discussion seems to focus on how to have unbalanced characters that aren't really unbalanced. Sure, you can give the Hulk a 6 OCV and Spidey a 14 DCV, but that doesn't really address the situation.

Re: Things That Exist in a Superhero Universe Monster Islands Hidden Cultures Something that makes Earth worth invading by aliens

Re: Are Thanos and Darkseid the Same Person? It's amazing they have the same sized hand. Of course, so do Adam Warlock and Nebula, I guess.

Re: Are Thanos and Darkseid the Same Person? Sigh. You misunderstand. I'm not talking about the Infinity Gems. I'm talking about Thanos' yellow glove. Look at the last panel in the picture. Darkseid's rocky skin is showing on his hand. Why would Darkseid take off his own blue glove, just to put on Thanos' yellow glove, when it's the gems, completely removable from the yellow glove, that are the important things?

Re: Are Thanos and Darkseid the Same Person? I'm just wondering why everyone is wearing Thanos' clothes when they don't have to.

Re: Are Thanos and Darkseid the Same Person?

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill They dealt with that issue in Kingdom Come (obviously on the side of "it's not good to kill"). There have been comic characters who did exactly that. It's just not the most popular characters.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill And that's a genre issue. The Punisher and similar characters exist in genres where killing villains is okay. You can gun down Bank Robber #46 and next week he's going to appear again as Bank Robber #47, wearing a leather coat and ski mask this time instead of a blue jean jacket and hood. Rapists, murderers, gangbangers, drug dealers, all appear as targets for the gun-toting vigilante. They aren't supposed to live until the next session. These types of player characters traditionally lack true super powers. It's "okay" for them to kill because 1) they're killing bad people who traditionally commit violent crimes, and 2) they can be killed by the villain relatively easily. While the actual character sheet might have 4 levels of combat luck and a bulletproof vest, story-wise he's still fairly vulnerable to a punk with a Saturday Night Special. If he doesn't shoot them, they'll shoot him. Even then, the characters are anti-heroes. You go to a completely different style of game if you've got Captain Powerhouse ripping the arms off of a 15 year old gangbanger.

Re: Are Thanos and Darkseid the Same Person? Really the gauntlet itself does nothing. It's just Thanos' glove. If Thanos was from Texas it would be the Infinity Belt Buckle (in the shape of Texas, of course). Darkseid should put those gems on his own glove.

Re: Would you allow this? In the end that's still just 18 Stun or so per shot. Not too bad. He'll never Stun anybody, and he's in trouble if he runs into someone with the NND defense or a simple automaton that doesn't take Stun at all. He'll have a hard time getting out of Entangles as well. 12 Speed is fast, but I don't think the character as a whole sounds too bad. The only thing about 12 Speed is it's boring for the rest of the group, especially if the player doesn't think very fast. "So Bob, what do you do?" "....Umm.... I guess I.... (crickets chirp) ...I umm... (Jeopardy music) ...lemme look at my sheet."

Re: Gods with Off Switches vs. Loaded Guns. DC vs. Marvel in Character Design. Then.... what were you talking about? It's not a bad writeup if all she is is a hot chick who thinks she can act.

Re: Gods with Off Switches vs. Loaded Guns. DC vs. Marvel in Character Design. I once decided to write up Robin with little in the way of skills and powers, but with a massive Summon for "Batman". Robin gets knocked out and dragged back to the villain's lair. He wakes up tied to a chair. He uses Summon Batman and the Caped Crusader busts in through a convenient skylight. Beats up the bad guys. Batman wouldn't even need skills. He uses his "detective" skills as soon as Robin uses the Summon. It was an intellectual exercise, really. I thought it up and never actually wrote it out. It's not "wrong", but it won't play well in most campaigns. It's very situation specific.

Re: Are Thanos and Darkseid the Same Person? I always thought Thanos' chair was similar to Metron's. Thanos' is better, of course, because it kills people.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill Killing is situation and genre-specific. Look at the real world where people do kill, and where sometimes we laud it as a good thing, and sometimes we denounce it as a bad thing. Shoot Hitler good. Shoot baby bad. A crazy guy with a bomb gets shot by a cop and everyone breathes a sigh of relief. A guy selling pot gets shot and people say police used too much force. So there's disagreement in the real world over when and how much force is appropriate. The same will be true in a game. Binder is a Silver Age-esque villain. He glues people to the ground. He hits guns with glops of goop so they don't fire. It's sticky enough to hamper movement but not to stop breathing. It doesn't harden enough so you can't breathe. He's a bank robber but he isn't a killer. Therefore it's generally not appropriate for Captain Bodycount to swoop in and hit Binder with a 9D6 RKA. In most campaigns and most genres, heroes should use lethal force less frequently than police. If a cop wouldn't be justified in shooting a guy, you sure as hell shouldn't use it. Mostly heroes shouldn't kill because they aren't in danger of being killed themselves. They don't need to kill to save a life. Now if you prefer an Authority style game, where the villains slaughter babies, their only attacks are killing attacks, and they all have 50 PD/ED, 0 resistant and 10 Body, then yes, you're probably going to be killing people.

Re: Would you allow this? I wouldn't worry about him being unbalancing. You're the GM, you always have more points. But I think the guy would rapidly get bored. It might be interesting for a one-shot game, but not a continuing campaign. Because he's basically playing Stan Lee in the Marvel movies. The superhero swings by, doing something cool, battling the villain. Stan Lee stands there and watches. He's not gonna get hurt because he's Stan Lee, but he can't ever do anything. So he's basically an unkillable bank teller. Doesn't sound like fun to me. If a player asked me if he could play this character, I'd tell him he'd be bored stiff and try to talk him into something that might be useful or fun. I don't have a problem with someone with beyond-campaign-normal defenses. But you gotta be able to do something too.

Re: Gods with Off Switches vs. Loaded Guns. DC vs. Marvel in Character Design. Lois doesn't have blonde hair. So yes.

Re: The One, True Son of Krypton He's 6'7" 220? Big dog.

Re: The One, True Son of Krypton Most flexible man in history. Tied his ass to a tree and walked 40 miles.