Duke Bushido

Okay, I put this in the wrong thread a few minutes ago. Sorry The search so far: Including third party stuff like dual- and triple-statted modules from other game systems, magazine adventures and write-ups, etc- anything actually put to paper that has managed to somehow still be in my collection (which includes pretty much _everything_ except some of the 5e stuff I havent managed to wrangle: that stuff was coming out faster than I earn money, I am afraid... Anyway: I have four more 3e sources to look through, but my eyes are tired. Foing through everything up till that point, there are four (five? I think just four) published characters with stretching. There is a full-on plastic man type in Atlas Unleashed. There is a character with 1" of stretching to represent a long weapon. There is a caharcter with 2" stretching to represent a longer weapon. There is a character with 2" stretching to represent a prehensile tail. There are several shapeshifting characters. The 2e write-up of Changeling has a list of powers and characteristics bought with a 1/4 limitation "requires appropriate form" and a high-level Disguise skill as a super-skill (which is pretty much how I do it). Those written up after Champs II but before Champs III have a power pool with a limitation (1/2) that they can only pull powers and characteristics appropriate to the form, and a high-level disguise skill. (No explanation of why the same,limitation is now worth a bigger bonus on a framework that makes the powers cheaper anyway and allows pretty much _every_ power, so long as you can justify it. I put it down to power creep myself).of whom before Champs III are written up with a power pool that requires an appropriate form. Those written up after Champs III have a power pool (only powers appropriate to the form, still 1/2), Shapeshift (22 pts), and Disguise as a super skill. One from each of the second and third category have Mimicry; one from the last category has Acting. It is interesting to me that _none_ of them have instant change, though Waxman (from an adventure published in a magazine-- was it White Dwarf? spacegamer? Doesnt matter-- anyway, it mentions specifically that he wears baggy clothes because his costume doesn't change when he does. (He also seems to only shift into other people). None of the shapeshifters have stretching, though. Don't fret: I am still as curious as you; I will continue my reading.

Pretty sure I just put that in the wrong thread.... Let me see if I can fix that....

And just like that, I killed this thread. I hope do live long enough to see it necro'ed. in a few years....

Ninja-Bear: Gone through all of 1e, 2e, and all but four books of 3e-- now this includes various write-ups from gaming magazines that I have managed to keep track of, third-party material (like the dual- and triple- statted adventures from other systems that includes Champions write-ups-- And So far, no dice except for Atlas Unleashed. The most common use for Stretching so far has been 1 or 2 inches to represent a long weapon or a prehensile tail. I dont know that I have ever noticed that. Worse yet! I have found like ten Aquaman clones! In what twisted universe is a fish guy cooler than a plastic man?!

Yep. Mentioned that in my initial rant. It bugs me because-- while all xomic acronyms are sone on purpose, "SHIELD" and "TEEHEE" both suffer from the problem of the abaokutely tortuous mangling of the language to force a specific acronym. It rankles the writer in me. Though my favorite, from Captain Carrot, was A Certain Really Ominous Secret Throng Inevitably Christened- this _was_ funny, since the intentional acrostic was-- well, you can all read, but the poking fun at the convention was quite nice.

Same for TFT, which is what I thought of when I saw this. I had actually forgotten that about T and T. Wierd, since way back when, I played a lot of it.

Quoted only to point out that my thanks was not for the complement, but this part here: That is the most concise distillation possible of the problem with CLOWN. Well, and SHIELD, the Clown Car.

Opposed Skill rolls, s the best idea. The trick is finding the places at which to roll. If you are both rolling your "baseball skill" skill at each other, that die roll doesn't have to mean "and four hours later, Tom Merchison's team is victorious." For a better example: When a player in your game successfully rolls against his Detective Work skill, what does he learn? How does he learn it? How long does it take? I am willing to bet it isnt a matter of "there is a tatter of scarlet fabric snagged on the bookshelf." I roll Detecrive Work. Made it by six. Okay, that color is familiar. It looks like a bit of the cloak worn by Mister Magus. Obviously, there is a secret entrance behind that shelf. He snuck in here looking for an ancient tome in which was written something he needs. It was probably the second spell he needs for his master plan to create an army of unstoppable zombies. That means there are only two spells left. Pulling the wall sconce twice will reveal the secret passage from here to the boat dock on the marsh. This was the ideal in-and-out because he is holed up in the ruins of the Mayfield mansion out on the remote island just outside US jurisdiction. However, his guard golems crumble in the sunlight, and must be recharged every sunrise. This means there are two hours during which he is "blind" to invasion by boat, since he will be in the basement of the manor- which he has converted into a magical fortress, penetrable only by those carrying a charm of leather and wrought iron- which, coincidentally, is not unlike the keyfobs the guy in the lobby of the Carson Museum sells; those would probably work. And since this villain is a mere mortal, a little tear gas should render him helpless, so let's pick up some supplies and end this campaign, Okay? I bet you don't so that. I bet you break up the use of the more familiar clues into smaller bites. You just have to figure out how to do that with Baseball Skill. I cant help you there. I don2t know much about any non-motorcycle-related sports, I am afraid. Maybe competitive camping; I might have suggestions there, but that's not baseball, either.

Good. I won't hear of it! in all seriousness, though: I won"t defend CLOWN. I can't defend CLOWN, because they are presented not as a problem to solve or an organization with a goal- good or ill- but as nothing but something unpleasant to endure and to take the character you have worked hard on creating and playing into a credible part of the story make him look ridiculous. Absolutely agreed. Better: you don't need a Gilt Complex situation to tie a character's hands or to make him vulnerable or to shake his (or the public's) faith in him. There are already classic tropes: to the west is disaster A; to the east is Disaster B. Which one will you avert, Hero? Who will live, and who will die? if you raise your hand against us, then this busload of baby nuns will die!!! Wait... What-? Oh you've got to be-- never mind; I can save this... This busload of penguins will die! Or to make him look bad: If you do not rip the doors off the bank vault at precisely 2 PM Sunday afternoon, this busload of penguins will be dropped from the sky onto herd of nuns! What? Seriously? Why don't you screen for this stuff? Okay; I can work with it-- Onto a beach filled with rental umbrellas...... And any of these options work better because even though the hero is under the same pressure: I will come off as a heel in some way no matter what-- there is still opportunity for role play (as he wrestles with the decision), for heroics (no matter east or west, he is going to save someone, and of course, the public will be aware that he did all he could, even if some are angry, others will understand), and to apprehend the villains (you know, I kind of enjoyed riping opwn that bank! Where's my cut, and when can we do it again? And after another job or two, he has been able to learn the hostages location, make plans with outside assistance (you know- the other players, who have tipped off the police or whoever about what's going on (or whatever is appropriate to your universe), then on the fourth or fifth job- the hostages are reduced, the loot is recovered, the organization is exposed-- The character is a hero again, though he may have to work a bit to convince _everyone_ (even though Little Timmy comes forward out of the crowd, hugs his leg, and cries "I never doubted you, Captain Awesome! Not for a minute!" All of these achieve the same results of making the HERO look briefly weak or incompetent or vulnerable, but they do so in a way that is _human_, rather than just pointlessly embarassing him. They leave the opportunity to bear up under pressure and scrutiny without resulting to ridicule or pointless shaming or dirty-laundry tactics, and the leave the character the opportunity to redeem himself without having to deal with his "private home videos" being up on the internet or random callbacks to his humiliation: "Hey, Captain Awesome! How'd you get that thing so far up there, anyway?" or being doxed or whatever it is the kids are doing these days. And when he tackles the villains behind it, he doesnt have to worry about them not being what he thinks they are: it doesnt take a handful of brittle miscreants goading him into a power suplex to create the effects that CLOWN strives to create. As for the membership: Let's also remember that it is really only the Main Three members that are truly breakable, though their most-common fourth isnt really Timex quality, either. (If You got that one, you're old) There are other members- ancillaries amd reservists alike- who are more soundly built for a thrashing, even if it is a gentle one (and honestly, if your heroes are tackling every new opponent by opening with their most brutal Haymaker, well... Look; there is no "wrong way" to play, but if that is the style your group prefers, then the GM should build opponents accordingly- at least make them as tough as they look, etc. CLOWN is off the table for such a group anyway) But there are a few of the Irregulars- Tag and the Power Armor guy come to mind- who, as a team that is _NOT_ CLOWN, could be cobbled into reasonable adversaries, though their entire personalities and motives would have to be rewritten from the ground up to get rid of that ludicrous CLOWN stuff. Make them straight up thugs or theives or mercenaries or whatever, and they are usable characters. Maybe leave CLOWN itself as some sort of lunatic fringe arm,of Greenpeace or something.

Yeah, that's a little screwy.

And what a slog it was to grind two or three dungeons to earn enough coin to raise a dead companion, after dragging him halfway across the know lands... Uphill.... In the snow.... So you generally looted his corpse while he rolled up a new guy. And Iron Array. And no Feats every time you gained a handful of EPs And starting out at level 1. Or zero.

Ah, Primus. Second only after VIPER, and pushing Lit by Koo down into a distant third place for creating the most official published super villains. Such a great job they do. Reason number one they were defunded IMCU long about 1985 or so....

Oh, _thank you_! For the first time _ever_, those wierd tiny skulls make sense!

Valid points, but I take the oppoaite tack: Villains who have been captured and processed no longer have a Secret ID, at least not most of them. It would be difficult to run the fingerprints of Plasmus, for example. Characters whoe develop physical characteristics that cant be concealed- well, they aren't going to easily handle Secret IDs, either. As an example, Rook (former player's character now an NPC in the youth group's universe) is a brick who, like many bricks, developed immense stature and musculature. She is eight feet tall and wider across the shoulders than most doors and is seventy-two years old. She couldn't maintain a secret ID if she wanted to. Still, those sort of chracters are a minority of characters (at least, those who aren't bricks, who seem to receive physical grotesquery at a disproportionately high rate). But again: the majority of villains who get even a little bit through processing are never going to have a points-worthy secret ID without completely changing their villainous ID, and in forty-four years of Champions history, I don't believe I have stumbled across one of those in any official product. Still,like LL, I have occasionally enjoyed letting the villain's secret ID assist the PCs on a case- in one case, I had a villain's secret ID who became a regular go-to Contact with the PCs-- to the point of eliminating four of his alter-ego's competitors, celebrating each victory with the heroes, ingratiating himself into their lives until they finally figured him out (caught him rifling through some,of their files on other "competitors" and after trying to figure out what they had in common, the high-tech HERO recognized the architecture of some spyware left behind in their systems-- The players were genuinely surprised, and genuinely felt taken in, and they somehow managed to both be furious and hurt by it as well as love it as a plot twist that they had fallen to, hard. They were _thrilled_ when they finally took him down: it was very personal for every one of them. unfortunately, it also cemented in their minds that they should never reveal their own secret IDs, even to each other (which was always a problem even before that camoaign, and this made it worse), so we have an entire battery of various Bat Signals in use.... eh... win some; lose some, I suppose.

What you have here is a GM call. This is the same problem you run into with Drain, suppress, and a few other things: Mechanics and special effects in Champions / HERO are intentionally separated. They are also used to define each other. That makes sense: you can't use a word to define itself; you have to use other words. These things (mechanics and SFX) are purposely split apart here, so there will never be a problem. Right up until Drain: Flight can remove the ability to fly from everyone in the room. You know: _everyone_. The guy with the natural alien ability to fly. The guy with the rocket pack. The guy with the wings. The guy that rides the ley lines across ancient trails of mana. The alien that fills his float bladders with hydrogen. They _all_ lose their flight because the _mechanic_ says so. So I now have the power to destroy rocket packs, empty alien float bladders, rip wings off of falcon men, etc. And now I have to pick a special effect. Well, my character is an alien parasite that has the ability to psychicaly drain away the metabolic functions that result in flight energy. Therefore, my target cannot provide chemical or photovoltaic energy to the cells that power his alien flight ability- I mean wings I mean gas bladders I mean telekinetic self-lifting I mean gravity manip- Uh, magic ley line- no; jetpacks! Definitely a parastic ability to destroy the metabolic process by which you control your rocket boots and- crap! Glider capes, too! Wait! What edition is this? Is this an edition where I can take out swinglines with this, too? And traceless ninja movement? And keep the Flash from running up walls? Tradition here is to "solve" this sort of conversation by suggesting some different SFX that can be better-stretched over the problem. In this case gravity control, massive telekinetic powers. "Freakin' _magic_, Dude--!" Yeah, well.... I don't want gravity control or ancient wizardry. I want to be an alien parasite. And the rules say I can. I can be an alien parasite, and I can have Drain: Flight, and it can work metabolically, even against rocket boots and Bat grappling cannons, because the rules say special effects do not matter, really, so long as everyone is sort of cool with it, and it is detectable by some number of senses (I think 2 or 3, depending on edition). I picked Drain to highlight this because this is where it tends to be the most obvious: the unregulated clash of SFX, I mean. It is a well-known, under-discussed problem, and it is created specifically by "build anything you want." If what you want is kind of mismatched..... Well, them's the breaks! I don't remember if it was Champs I or Champs II, but there have been attempts to solve the problem since 2e. One of those supplements addressed the problem by offering alternative forms of Adjustment powers, such as replacing "Drain: Energy Blast" with "Drain: Firepowers." Alas, there wasn't too terribly much interest at least not in the growing shadow of the almost-immediately-after released 3e, which I do not recall having _any_ such options or discussion, but I never played 3e.,,I have only read it a couple of times, and even my most recent memories are stored in a very old brain. I know it wasn't discussed in 4e, at least not the core rules, and not 4e's Western HERO (while a lot of folks used DI or JI or even Dark Champions as their template for Heroic games, we used 2e Champions and guidance from 4e Western HERO). Possibly Fantasy HERO, where it wouod have been ideal for maybe eighty-million spells, but I have only read it a coyple of times, and I do not remember if it was in there. In fact, I don't think it was addressed again until Steve brought out a variant of the idea as an optional rule for one of his editions. I could very well be wrong (I own and have never read both of the 4e HERO System Almanacs, for example. There are some things I haven't read- I hope to live long enough). Which brings us back to the beginning: this is squarely into GM territory. As others have pointed out, there is not mechanical interaction between the two powers you mention. _however_, if you feel that the special effects _should_ cause an interaction of some sort, or if your player _wants_ (or even believes) there should be an interaction, then get together with that player, and ultimately the whole group, as you are potentially setting a precedent that can have long-lasting effects in your games now and going forward into other ones. If you see an interaction-- for example: "I cast detect magic." This character _is_ a magic. I will definitely detect them with this spell. I might not detect a character; I might just say "yep. That illusion right there? Definitely magic." If the character _is_ an illusion and someone casts "dispell illusion," what happens? Does the character become invisible? Become a single flicker of magical energy? Take STUN damage? Fall unconscious? Suffer BODY damage? Just disappear for a while? Are you Dispelling the character's total points, or just their BODY score? Yes, that is technically a function of Drain: BODY, but if you allowed a spell that targets a special effect (in this case, "Magic," then you and your players have to be prepared for this spell to affect anything with the SFX of "Magic." Anyway, I am dictating this to my copilot, who is looking a bit annoyed, so I guess I am done for now.

You know, Bolo, I hate CLOWN _so much_ that I had to ruminate on this for five months befire squeaking out a begrudgingly mumbled "that might be acceptable....." I have to go stew a bit now.

Try hyphenation: Mis-hits. Or just "missed hits." Or "misses." Either way, thanks for the chuckle this morning.

Almost forgot: a Atlas Unleashed (3e) p28., Character's name is Recoil. That is the onlt rhing I have found thus far.

Well I must say... I've got a lot of books. Anyway. Nothing,in 1e, nothing (so far) in 2e, though I'm bouncing between 2 and 3 (nothing there yet, either). Anyway,I am going to,bed.

Uh-- Let'a remember I never liked DnD enough to move beyond 3e, so when I say "I dont play DnD," it is specifically 3e and newer that I am talking about, in spite if not havibg (or wanted to play) any other edition for decades. So, without attempting to discuss the pros and cons of its presence in DnD, would someone be kind enough to guve me a couple of examples of social justice as it appears in DnD, because I seem to have just entirely missed it....

I will try to find time to crack a few books over the next couple of weeks-- at this point, I am curious, too!

Like some of the others, I don't care for (but also do not dispute the validity of) the Duplication technique. However, I actually kind of like this "side effect" you've pointed out in the mechanic. I actually _do_ like the idea of a finite number of extra lives! I think I am going to add this little quirk if I ever get around to statting up Adam West's greatest character: Timmy Turner's Catman!

You dont remember the title, do you? That comic book presentation sounds extremely cool!

I don't know if this os the sort od thing you are looking for, but one thing that has bugged me in Champions since 1e is that we can buy attacks (HKA, H-t-H-- edition dependant as to appearance and pricing) and those same powers exist as a separate listing as "Energy Blast," RKA, etc. Yet "Range" exists as a modifier that can be applied to non-ranged powers. Why is there not just "deal damage" where dice of damage are bought and then the "Ranged" element bought to the desired degree of range? I hope that is something worth pondering, anyway.

5e's Ultimate Metamorph has several power examples-- I honestly cannot remember if there is a full character sheet or not. If no one here knows for certain, I will check it tomorrow (heads for bed now; I have done too much research for my own queation in another thread. They eyes aren't what they used to be.