Jump to content

Balabanto

HERO Member
  • Posts

    4,198
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    2

Everything posted by Balabanto

  1. That is Ultron's original purpose. That's what Hank Pym was designing him for. Unfortunately, it didn't go the way Hank Planned.
  2. Uh, don't you mean Agents of Hydra? At least, for now...
  3. So buy martial arts and martial dodge. I was in one of those games once and I had a 3 SPD and two other people had 4s. I martial dodged and it would buy me phases and phases of not being hit. You have to figure out what the advantages of having a lower SPD are. The weakness in the system actually occurs when everyone has the SAME SPD, rather than people who act on different phases. The mistake people make in Champions is that it's always best to attack every turn. This is a fool's paradise. You want to hold a lot of actions, especially if your DEX is high, and think strategically. This is why the game was originally developed for battlemap use. That guy who has SPD 6 can still be crushed by a low DEX character with SPD 4. If the martial artist just unloads, the brick just picks up a tractor trailer and drops it on him. He doesn't even need to do damage. He only needs to hit DCV 3, and that martial artist probably can't lift the tractor trailer. A lot of people focus on damage dealing and attacking too much, and not thinking about the system as a whole during combat. That's why SPD isn't broken.
  4. Yes, but. that's the whole point, my good friend. He can kill anyone from his living room, the players never see it, and their comrade falls over, dead. He can make virtually anything Uncontrolled, Constant, 0 END, Based on OMCV, and Fully Invisible. In direct combat, he desperately needs protection, and I agree with you that in direct combat, he should be paste. The problem is, the PC's will never get there if the guy is run according to his INT score. I'm not saying you're wrong. The problem is, I'm saying you're right. But the problem with giving him the advantage of his INT score also means that he will be using his abilities to the fullest in noncombat all the time, and that means things like..."So, Captain Heroic, you've thwarted DEMON twenty five times?" PC: Yeah. GM: Guys, you see a carnivorous beetle crawl out of the corner of his mouth. And another, and another...He seems to be vomiting up beetles and blood. What do you do? A kind GM won't do this stuff to people. And I agree that that style is not for everyone. But the problem is that we have very different expectations of what this guy can do. See the banana example above.
  5. Marvel Heroic is unplayable. There's no chargen.
  6. Not to make anyone hot under the collar here, and I don't mean to, but in my professional opinion, the size of Luther Black's VPP makes this irrelevant. He can literally generate so much power compared to the average superhero that he can pop anyone like a grape. If he was limited by a massive multipower where he could only do a couple things at a time, sure, but a VPP on the scale that he has basicallly gives him the ability to globally obliterate people. Plus, his knowledge of magic is literally so supreme that the only thing stopping him is probably Takofanes. This is what I like to call "Not fun." The level of power being thrown around will never be achieved by most player character groups, unless outrageous XP is awarded every time the players complete an adventure. Not to mention that being saved by an ancient undead sorcerer's desire to rule the world should really only happen once...maybe. If Luther Black was a moron, this might not be an issue, but because all of these characters are genius-level intellects, it is. When you're dealing with a bunch of guys who can use subtle sorceries at that level of power, and they're smarter than Albert Einstein, you run into a giant wall of problems. If you're a storytelling GM, everything is fine. You just fudge whatever you need to and move on. But what if you don't fudge dice? Or you're a comic-book simulationist GM who runs people at the intellect level their stat says they should have? Not everyone runs their game the same way. If Luther Black can defeat his enemies without ever leaving his chair, he should at the very least attempt this, the same way Takofanes should. "My minions will deal with this" only goes so far. Now, in a lighter hearted game, this can be used for comic effect, especially if a player happens not to be there that week. "Captain Ohio just became a banana!" Players: Damn you, Luther Black! You'll pay for this! OOC: George is sure gonna be mad when he comes back next week. The problem is, in a slightly more serious superhero game, A-la Astro City or the like, we begin to ask questions like "Why hasn't the villain done this?" And this is the heart of the problem. When I see these huge die totals on book NPC's, I go ape, because I know darned well what this means for even the most skilled group of players. Mastery of the combat rules is huge, and when you get a villain who throws out that much raw power, it is possible to take the combat rules and use them to turn your PC's into beef jerky. While I'm certainly not suggesting that this is what a good gm should or shouldn't do, I am suggesting that if you're going to use these NPCs like Takofanes and Luther Black and Doctor Destroyer on a regular basis, you may need to lower the power level of the characters in order to give the players a fair shot. And here is my reason why. NPC's that are iconic are useless if the players cannot fight them. And what this means is not that they are badly designed, just that they are incredibly powerful. I know a lot of GMs favor proxy versions, or lesser fake versions of these characters that are robots or constructs or whatever, but there's only so many guys you can do that for before one of the players says something like "So he wasn't even the real bad guy? Didn't you do this to us two weeks ago?" It has always been my belief that unless a villain like this shows up every so often and either A) Trashes the player characters without killing them (And it's way too easy to accidentally overkill this at these levels where 150 active is being thrown around like candy) or Is driven off by the PC's because they defeated his plans or put the big hurt on him. The way these guys are built, option B is pretty much off the table. Sure, they can defeat his plans, but they sure won't whup him or get any sense of roleplaying satisfaction. I'm not saying that guys like that need to be completely neutered, but maybe I just have a slightly different concept of scale from a lot of the published material. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that a lot of these guys are iconic, but because they are so amazingly powerful, new players can't face them, and they don't teach the intricacies of the game. And as someone who writes for the game, I'm worried that this has made us as players of the game a little insular, and possibly arrogant. And you want new players to be able to face these iconic adversaries, because they are marketing draws and bring people into the system, because they are iconic and exciting. I find that very troubling.
  7. The problem is that this leads to what I like to refer to as the Shadowrun problem. Any system like this is automatically going to run into this wall. SPD is still better. Otherwise, you get weird values like 31, 21, 11, and 1, which is WAY more effective than 30,20,10, back to the top.
  8. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul Train Hitchhiker's Guide to the Guardians of the Galaxy So Long and Thanks for All the Rumble Fish Restaurant Wars at the End of the Universe
  9. 10. Cheshire Cat 9. Bluejay 8. Eurostar 7. Neutron and the Conquerers 6. Deathstroke 5. Ladybug 4. Ogre 3. Foxbat 2. Doctor Destroyer 1. Mechanon
  10. Find ten positive things. Pay ten compliments and say "That's a great idea." Then vote.
  11. Yeah, we need to flood this poll. Hyper-man is right. Make us the winner and people will beat a path to our door.
  12. I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the credit card virus on the porn site of crime! I am Darkwing Duck!
  13. We interrupt this mapmaking for a special announcement. We have reached over 90,000 words. We are on page 200. Thank you.
  14. A Savage Placement Test The Empty Copper Sea of Love The Long Goodbye of Bartholomew Cubbins
  15. I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the broken safety pin on the diaper of crime! I am Darkwing Duck!
  16. Yeah. People should get out there and pimp it. Feel free to post a link to my Journey to the Center of the Earth thread when you do. Sometimes new products help. Hit Surbrook's new ones too if you can find links to whatever Mike is doing. Spread the word that there is new stuff coming out. That helps the most.
  17. I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the fish flavor in the steak tartare of crime! I am Darkwing Duck!
  18. Captain Americathon: The Winter Soldiers of Fortune The Mighty Wild Geese
  19. I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the carnivorous parasite in the burger barn of crime! I am Darkwing Duck! I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the smell of three day old fish in the refrigerator of crime! I am Darkwing Duck! I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the ill-prepared fugu at the table of crime! I am Darkwing Duck!
  20. Watership Down Among the Dead Men What's Eating Gilbert Grapes of Wrath? How Green was My Valley Girl?
  21. We might as well get this one out of the way now: Jupiter Trainspotting
  22. ' And whenever his Tardis lands on a boat, it sinks.
  23. I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the glitch in the pokemon release mechanism of crime! I am Darkwing Duck! I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the constipation that overwhelms the Ex-lax of Crime! I am Darkwing Duck! I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the blue screen of death in the eproms of Crime! I am Darkwing Duck!
  24. I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the tape measure that cuts short the last inch of crime! I am Darkwing Duck! I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the foot that squashes the overripe tomato of crime! I am Darkwing Duck! I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the cheap flavoring that ruins the gourmet restaurant of crime! I am Darkwing Duck! And my favorite one from the actual show! I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the zit on the night of Crime's big date! I am Darkwing Duck!
  25. The problem with the Luther Black version of demon is the same problem as Takofanes. If the character can take over the world from his deck chair, there's no need for him to face the PC's.
×
×
  • Create New...