Duke Bushido

You can do more damage against 25 DEF with 2d6 Penetrating than you can with 6d6 AP.

For what it's worth, Hugh, it was _absolutely_ stellar! A bit long-winded here and there, and it had all that crap in the margins I dislike, but- while in HERO tradition, there were _some_ organizational issues, it seemed to avoid any really bad ones. (For What it is worth, I submit that a lot of those issues are because up to the latest edition, the overall walk-through rules layout still follows the pattern laid out in 1e, and that just..... Well, it wasn't great. We can probably let that go now.)

5e and prior, for me, and specifically _for minions_ as opposed to agents, troops, etc- the pawns; the nobody's, the cannon fodder- minions: 20 pts characteristics and skills plus the base level equipment for their mission.

I really can't do it. I get side tracked by how satisfting it was to brutally murder them.

I have to agree with Ninja-Bear: inexperience doesn't make the difference we like to pretend it does. At one point, we were all inexperienced, and the worst thinf that happened was that we gained some really funny stories; we figured out very quickly that allowing four range doubling, telescopic sight and a dozen skill levels wasn't quite as okay as we thought it would be, or that 6 ED wasnt the ideal defense against a 14DC attack, and looking back, it doesnt seem like it really took that long, either. I think it was our third session when we started comparing average die rolls to defenses, etc, and this was 1e-- when there werent _any_ real guidelines to go by. Peoplw can be inexperienced at anything, but they arent stupid, either. Don't get me wrong: I think guidelines are a good thing as a jump-start, but even then, you are likely still going to have to tweak them to get precisely what you want, so you are kind of in the same starting place anyway.

Really? You can't see the 8?

Agreed. Now let's see what you can do with CLOWN.

I just passed a sign posted to a door on a public mens room at a local tool store. "Please lock bathroom before, after, and during use. Thank you." Part of me wants to know exactly what happened here..,

I can only speak for me, though it seems at least on the surface that Chris Goodwin and I are of similar minds in general. My hold up is not and never really has been 'good versus evil.' It's a schlep, but for whatever reason, at least amongst fantasy fans, it is a popular one. My problem is the idea of an "evil race." Every single example thus far of a potentially "evil race" has been "they have ties to evil" or are "evil-aligned." There are humans (the only actual race available for study, I am afraid) who are unquestionably evil. There are people who are unquestionably good. Are humans good or are they evil? Are they some sort of unique special case so that we can pretend a completely good or evil race is possible? How does an evil race form a society? How do they procreate? I mean, there is little that is more evil than infanticide, right? An army of people dedicated to the extermination of a nation or a race or followers of a gid or whatever-- I can totally get behind that. Trite, but again: it is a popular schlep, so enjoy it. An entire race whose point is to "just be evil?" It is impossible to get behind. I have seen the argument here about just wanting to recapture some simplicity of the way games once where-- and let's be honest, here: we are talking about DnD when we say that, because that is the game that had the mandatory alignment system. And most of you know that I don't care for DnD; that I have never cared for DnD, even when I was playing it way back in 1e, and most of you know that the alignment system was one of my first and largest complaints, even in 1e, so my inability to accept an evil race as just being "every member of this race is evil" really has nothing to do with this idea falling out of favor; I would like to think that I am one of the reasons it fell out of favor, but I know that no one in Gygax-Ville ever heard of me or anyone else I know, so.... And I accept that maybe it is a personal problem. I have admitted this before, and do not like admitting it, but I am not going to pretend it isnt true because that is dishonorable to everyone who ever helped me be who I am: I was raised by racists. I was raised to _be_ racist. I _was_ racist. I remember when the Drow were first published, and someone at the table said "Damn! Even the Elves got n××××...s!" and we laughed-- all of us, including me. And today that memory- and a thousand others like it- absolutely _disgusts_ me. I can't stand that I was once like that; I hate when something jogs those memories, but they are real, and I won't deny them, and I hope I never lose them because they are my absolute proof that I am not that person, and they are the tool-- the feeling of shame and disgust they give me-- that ensures I will _never_ be that person again. (If anyone ever has the chance to meet Mr. T, thank him for changing my life, would you?) So maybe that clouds my view, too: I totally get wanting to unload some stress into the forces of evil and save the world, and I think that drive to be the good guys and save the day is awesome! Go for it! Brinf light to the realm. But I cannot help but see the forced idea of a race that manages to form any sort of society and work together and reproduce and shelter and raise children yet still be completely self-deterministically evil as absolutely nothing more than saying "I just want a little guilt-free racism," and I absolutely will not let you have it. I will shout and dance and holler until wither the idea is as distasteful as it should be, or you accept that you are comfortable with asking for just what it is. Now I understand that I live in a real world, with people who can ultimately justify any desire or behavior they want, either because it is easier than changing or change isnt something they are interested in, so I do not expect a single convert, and that this thread may be interesting to someone, so I don't wanr to turn this into something that may lead to thread locking or other such thing. I will respectfully bow out.

Funny timing, you saying that. I have to recreate a villain my original Champions GM created. This villain was created to serve as a nemesis for a character I was playing: the Good Guy (if you havent stumbled across any descriptions of him, don't ask. He was supposed to be a character in a short campaign and disappear forever, but he was popular with my fellow players, and ended up getting a lot of reuse. Suffice it to say he is a bit "off" ). His nemesis was JoJo, the Human Clown. (This was pre-CLOWN by a couple of editions). JoJo was once a normal human, until the fateful accident that gave him all the powers of a real clown. (My GM decided he wanted in on the screwball action)

Per Phase, _I believe_. Obviously, I am not the guy to ask 6e questions, but with the chance to play in an upcoming 5e game, I have been browsing 5e a bit (because I am not the guy to ask about 5e, either), and if it hasn't changed for 6e, it seems that when you open the gate, you are essentially holding the power at maximum utility, at least the way I read it, since your maximum target size can pass through it 'whenever.' Based on this, I would think that you pay END per phase until you close the gate.

To expand on what our friend Chris has given us as a theoretical example: If a party of monks came across a Kobold baby freezing to death in the woods and, rather than slaughter it, their order commanded them to shelter, educate, and raise it as of their own- and they are, for rhe sake of this discussion, a "good" order, is the end result an evil kobold adult?

Well, there is still some good to be said for Thanos, ans even for Doctor Destroyer, really. They are not CLOWN.

I actually dont mind that he is a rip-off. As Christopher pointed out, it is difficult to make an original character. I hate that he is not interesting, even a little bit.

Thanks for the clarification, Sir. Of course! Who could even conceive of some other situation?!

Unless Legolas has kryptonite arrows, I know where my bet lies.

Those are called polar bears, and they are being dealt with.

Oh my god; _THANK YOU_! Wow. I really thought I was the only one.... I really, _really_ dislike that character. I dont hate him, simply because there is nothing there to hate: a collection of cliches isn't out of place in comics; some are just more tired than others. Agreed on all counts, but my list against him has one more entry: Derivative. Yes, that is a word that gets thrown around a _lot_, even when it isn't really a good choice: we all know that Mechanon was an homage to the robot from the Avengers movie, and many, many characters were similarly pastiche or love letters to favorite characters from the source material, especially early on, but Dr D always felt like "we need a villain! Who's a good villain?" I remember when the Venture Brothers was fresh and new, and the Monarch got off his line "that dime store Doctor Doom!". Yep; niether Doom nor even Underbheit were the first character to pop into my mind with that line. I thought immediately of Dr. Destroyer as the most obvious "dime store Doctor Doom." Frankly, Underbheit is a _way_ better framework for an interesting Doom-type knock-off character, and he is specifically a joke character from a joke show poking fun at a genre. And yet- he is by far the more interesting character. Doctor D comes off as "okay, we need Doctor Doom, but he can't just be some rich guy with a grudge over a lab accident. He has to be _evil_. Okay, make him a Nazi. He was an evil Nazi scientist doing horrible things-- Dude.... That would make him.... _how old_..? Well, he invented life-extending science and built it into his armor- So what happens when he takes it off? Well, he probably shouldn't... I bet it _reeks_ in there! I mean just _reeks_! And he's like ninety something? I feel like we accidentally pastiche-ified The Terror from the Tick. I don't know how my players are going to feel about fighting a mummified nonogenarian who smells of rot and possibly urine... He has to be a Nazi- Nazi _jerky_, you mean! Well he has to be a Nazi, because we don't really want to put a lot of thought into this, and we don't have to, because you are not allowed to question or wonder about anyone's background or to ever think anything but "yep; pure evil" when someone says 'they were a Nazi,' so we save a crap ton of time there.... He was supposed to be _the_ Big Bad of the Champions Universe for decades, and yet he was so hopelessly, blandly generic that he may actually have been the single biggest reason I was and remain turned off on the entire Champions universe. (Well that and Mechanon. While he is a much better homage /pastiche than DD will ever be (apparently), I find the idea of the ultimately unkillable / undefeatable recurring bad guy to be supremely distasteful. A couple of reappearances? No problem. Batman's Joker? No.)

This reminds me of Edgar Deal's sign back many years ago. Mr. Deal had a used car lot- it was just north of Darien on the coast on US 17 (been gone for a couple decades now). He was also a very devout man (and may have been a lay preacher; I no longer remember). Either way, he was a very pleasant, personable man. His sign, like the signs of so many small businesses here in the South, testified to his faith before all else: "Jesus is Lord! Ed Deals Used Cars." Everything to its place, see.

Subverted.

I may have missed this completely, but it would help if we had a definition of evil, and what all-pervasive traits would define a race as evil.

Though I have to say that I find it quite surprising to learn that a star has such a small amount of BODY. Are they hollow in this supplement?

Perfect for the older gentleman who is otherwise prone to falling out of bed.

Oh, as to defending / dodging: Make an attack roll against the target hex (as it is an AoE). Apply your OCV and deduct the city's DCV (for anything larger than a Hex, consult the growth chart to determine the city's DCV). Do not forget to apply any appropriate Skill Levels the city may have when determining it's success at a Dodge maneuver. (Alternately, assume thw city is built with the Disadplication: immobile: Cannot dodge.) Any citizens who percieve the attack and are not surprised by it and have a movement value sufficient to carry them outside the field of effect should, technically, have a chance to dodge, so to catch those two or three people who saw you, you might consider Indirect and IPE as well- surprise them all. As far as resisting, as you said "spell," I assume both that this is for some sort of fantasy game, and that magic is a thing here. You might treat any sort of blessing, counter-magic, or anti-magic in play as a means of avoiding the efdects of the spell, or you might even create a "magic defense" akin to Power Defense and work out how it applies to attacks that aren't measured in dice. Perhaps it removes inches from the AoE?

I wouldn't bother spec'ing it out, either, unless it is important that the PCs find this spell written down or if there is a chance they can learn some variation of it during the campaign. But if I _were_ to build it, off the cuff I would go with EDM, UAA, AoE: diameter (if that is still an option in whatever edition you are using). Alternatively, AoE:Hexes or AoE:Line, and consult Force Wall for converting that to a dome, if volume is important here. The other dimension being, if course, the interior of the bottle. _however_, a case can be made (since you aren't actually moving it to a different dimension), use T-port and Shrinking. For what it is worth, I would use EDN and call it good, for several reasons, not the least of which is tidiness of the build. See, if you define the interior of the bottle as a pocket dimension of sorts: rivers still run; the sun still rises and sets, etc. Further, you don't have direct access to the city inside: you can't just wipe out the city by pouring the bottle full of water or asphyxiate them with a cork. You also don't have to worry about vengeful micronauts cutting your throat in the middle of the night. Hope something there helps.