Blade

Re: "Neat" Pictures Actually the "Black Knights" Plane is an F/A-18 F Super Hornet. If you look under the wing you will notice that the intakes are squared off, distinguishing it visually from the previous versions of the two-seat F-18. This is marked as a Navy or Marine Corps aircraft, if it was Air Force, the tails would not be in contrasting colors, they would be the same color as the rest of the airplane. Also the squadron nickname would not be on an Air Force plane, but the Navy and Marines do that stuff. The rondel under the cockpit, which I assume was what was referred to as an Air Force marking, is a United States marking, found on all United States military aircraft, USAF, USN, USMC or USA. Just to clear up any confusion.

Re: Help, Rune Mystic For an example of something similar to a runic magician, you could look at Sigyl (I may have misspelled this) in The Ultimate Brick. He is a mystic who has tatoos (runes, sigils, etc) that give him powers. He is a heroic-level character, but could serve as inpiration for a super-heroic level character.

Re: Superhero Images I don't know about completely unrealistic worldview. There was a Senator, in the 1960's I believe, who uttered the words: "I will not rest until everyone in this country has an ABOVE AVERAGE INCOME!" Far more unrealistic, and betrays a total ignorance of basic math. I always loved (to hate) The Champ. My GM used to bring him in as a GM-PC from time to time, when we needed a brick. I always wanted to behead him, and my character was just the one to do it......

Re: Name that Nazi! To steal from the DC Young All Stars of many moons ago, how about Ubermensch (OverMan)?

Re: Name that Nazi! There's always the simple names like "Hauptman Sieg" (As I get it: Captain Victory). You could go with "Donnerschlag" for thunderclap. I think that Champions Universe has a few names for Nazi supers, and you can always use one of those names also.

Re: Batman, the Disgustingly Powerful Ninja I think you have that with any established comics characters. No matter how many points you use, someone will say "But in Issue X, he/she did this, and again in Issue Y. That's nowhere on this sheet." That's the problem with the genre, in the books, the character can do whatever the writer says, but we don't have that kind of flexibility in the game. The best you can do is a character inspired by the comic character, who can do MOST of the same things. My opinion only, but there you go.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Sarah Yellin' -- 3 Doors Down

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? I Walk the Line -- Johnny Cash

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Iron Man -- Black Sabbath

Re: Damage from extremely high velocity Actually, I think 100 km was the level set for the X-Prize private spaceflight competition, and IIRC, NASA gives out Astronaut wings for flights over 100 km altitude. I'm pretty sure a couple of men (Scott Crossfield comes to mind) got astronaut wings in the X-15 program. I would call 100 km outer space, even the shuttle doesn't go that much higher (depending of course on how you view these things) at about 300 km. BTW, if you can get up to about 7.5-8 km/s you can stay in low earth orbit without burning further END (at least by orbital mechanics, if not game mechanics)

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Twilight Zone -- Golden Earring

Re: Damage from extremely high velocity If I was going to reccommend a package for fast flyers, I would say around 20 rPD/rED, and LS: High Pressure, Low Pressure, Self Contained Breathing, high heat, low heat. The Def would be to deal with the aforementioned impacts of bugs/birds/raindrops and the heat of flight (This would, on the average, deal with my suggested damage for hitting a seagull at Mach 5, best to fly higher if you are going to fly faster). BTW, those temperatures are not due to friction, they are due to compression of the air in front of the flying object (whether it is man, missile, airplane, bullet, whatever), viscous heating (air friction) may raise the temperature a little more, but the recovery of "Total Temperature" (to use the gas dynamics term) is the majority of the temperature rise. This is the heating mechanism that brought down the space shuttle Columbia, after a failed heat tile allowed the high-temperature gas to get to the underlying structure. The LS: Low pressure is to deal with altitude, as those parts of the body that are close to parrallel to the flow direction will experience the local pressure, and the LS: High pressure is to deal with the high pressures on the leading edges of the body. At Mach 5 these will be up to 529 times the altitude pressure, at Mach 10 the leading edge pressure is 42,439 times the local pressure due to altitude. The self-contained breathing is obvious, and the temperatures are to deal with altitude and speed derived conditions. I always liked goggles for fast moving characters, it just seemed to fit, so I would probably add Flash Defense (OIF Goggles) to the list, but that would be largely esthetic, as you could have goggles without flash defense. [The rules of safe flight: Don't Fly at Night, Don't Hit the Ground, Don't F*** with the Red-Guarded Switches. You could also add: High + Slow = Bad; Low + Fast = Bad; Watch for Cumulo-Granite clouds....]

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Why Do You Love Me? -- Garbage

Re: Mystic Team Vehicle? "Bus, Magic Bus... Can I ride your Magic Bus..." (Apologies to Pete Townsend and the Who)

Re: Damage from extremely high velocity I have to agree with Trebuchet, if you have superheroes flying to begin with, then surviving the flight is not the biggest "reality" problem you have. That being said, if you want an idea for temperature (friction) effects, the temperature on the forward faces of the body in flight would be roughly as follows: (based on Sea Level Temperatures) Mach # Speed (mph) Skin Temp (Farenheit) 1 750 140 2 1500 440 3 2250 940 4 3000 1640 5 3750 2540 6 4500 3640 7 5250 4940 8 6000 6440 10 7500 10040 The temperatures for speeds in excess of Mach 5 are a little high, because of effects like oxygen and nitrogen dissociating (splitting into individual atoms, rather than diatomic molecules) which tend to absorb energy and limit the temperatures a little. However, for reference, Stainless Steel has a melting point about 2500 F, and Tungsten melts at about 6100 F. The surface of the sun has a color temperature of about 10,000 F, and the Apollo re-entry capusles reached about 18,000 F on their lower surfaces on re-entry. The space shuttle experiences surface temperatures above 10,000 F also. For impact effects, you can calculate the energy involved and compare to a standard, like a .45 bullet, and make some judgements. Energy would be: 0.5*m*V^2, and if you use mass in kg, and V in meters/second (or in Hero system terms: inches per turn/6) you will get Joules of kinetic energy. For comparison, a .45 bullet represents about 1000 Joules. Therefore if you run into an aviation standard bird (5 lb = 2.27 kg) at Mach 3 (2250 mph = 3750 kph = 1042 m/s = 6250 inches/turn) you will absorb 1.2 Million Joules of energy, or about 1200 .45 bullets. Given the doubling nature of Hero System Str, you might consider this a .45 (2d6 KA) + 10 DC (2^10 = 1024), or a 5d6+1 KA, and buy DEF accordingly. (The Air Force lost a B-1 to a pelican several years ago, the plane was just below Mach 1, and the pelican, about 12 lbs, hit the wing root, completely severing the wing. This is not a small amount of energy). Again, I think that this may be the wrong place to start inserting realism into a superhero game, but this information might help, hope it does.

Re: Mystic Team Vehicle? You could consider a somewhat normal vehicle, that happens to be magically powered, and may have modes of movement that would not be normally associated with that type of vehicle. Some examples might be: the flying, invisible Ford from Harry Potter, (stretching the SFX a little, somebody said advanced technology might be equivalent to magic) the jet-car from the first Men in Black, if you ever read "Shadowrun" books, in one of the stories in "Wolf and Raven" there was a luxury yacht that was basically the physical manifestation of a very powerful spirit. You could also go all Victorian magic/tech with a base/transport like the airship from the end of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (vol I, trade). Sure it's powered/supported by "Cavorite", but a similar construction could be powered/supported by an ensorcelled chunk of gemstone, orichalcum, purest gold, the heart of a dragon, whatever. You could also go a magical creature route and have a group follower/member who happens to be a dragon or similar creature capable of carrying the whole group. If they are a follower they might be bound to serve, but unable to engage in combat due to the terms of their binding. Hope that helps some.

Re: "Mostly Harmless" powers How about low STR telekinesis, say about 5 STR? Enough to let you get the remote you left across the room, or tools, keys, pick up the coffee table so you can vaccuum under it, etc, but the ability to pick up 50-100 lbs from the other end of the house is not going to set the world on fire as a hero, however useful it would be in real life. Or the ability I've often wished I had: to be able to reach my hand through phone lines (and hit/strangle the telemarketer or customer [dis]service rep on the other end). Although that could make for a very interesting crime wave of "locked room" assaults/murders to solve.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Only a Lad -- Oingo Boingo

Re: Just Picked Up Champions Worldwide

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? People are Strange -- The Doors

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? The House is Rockin' -- Stevie Ray Vaughn & Double Trouble

Re: Just Picked Up Champions Worldwide Actually the part I liked the best was the "thumbnail" drawing of Rashindar on page 61, where he looks more "Native American" Indian, than "Home of Ghandi and the Taj Mahal" Indian (feathers, beads, warpaint, etc). That being said, a previous poster had a comment about the absence of Rashindar's six arms. I think that the drawing on pg 65 shows definite hints of the other four arms and the write up mentions illusions to hide them being common tricks of Rashindar. Overall I was very impressed with the write-ups and most of the art, good mix of original concepts with comic-book classics (had to have a Nazi with powered armor--Great villian, one of my favorites). I did find it interesting that many of the heroes, particularly bricks, who were built on close to "starting character" point levels have absolutely devastating offensive capabilities (as compared to the published 350 point Champions). For example: Corrente: 15d6 strike, Fist of Allah: 14d6, Anvil: 19d6, Brigade: 15d6. I was wondering, for all the GMs out there, How many of you would allow a beginning level character (under 400 points) to have this kind of offense? Either in straight up STR, or STR plus HA or Martial Arts? Particularly Anvil seems to be very powerful for the number of points he is built on. I love the character (super-fanboy to the rescue!..Ooops...Sorry 'bout that...), but a 382 point hero (no glaring weaknesses either) that has a fair chance, solo, against Grond? Wow.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? My Head's in Mississippi--ZZ Top

Re: Playing with watercolors Just as a note for those who may be concerned about it. Two points: First, "Properly" the American flag should not be used as an article of clothing. However, being a comic book type of character that could be let go. Second, whenever the flag is displayed (or worn as a cloak) the blue field and stars should be at the top right as it is viewed (or intended to be viewed). A "Patriot" type of hero would certainly display the flag correctly if they were going to display it at all. Not intended as criticism, just for your future reference.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Twilight Zone -- Golden Earring