DataPacRat

Re: The Last Daredevil asks for your help

Looking for confirmation reveals that the Daredevils have had a noted tendency to act as adrenaline junkies - for a number of years, the main qualification for joining was being able to go over the Falls - but they man up to do the right thing whenever push comes to shove. (Though they /were/ implicated as the cause of both of the major eastern seaboard blackouts...) The arrests came after what looks to be a pretty thorough investigation by a binational, multi-police task force, and the evidence against the arrested Daredevils looks pretty solid, though the ones who aren't exercising their right to silence are claiming innocence.

As for what's happening in the region that might be more vulnerable or related to a set-up - there are plenty of conventions filling up the hotels; the official, technological Daredevils HQ (in the old power plant designed by Nikola Tesla) is currently empty; the more sedate Daredevils clubhouse, trophy room, vault, dating from olden times doesn't have its usual defenders; their practice ground on Navy Island, a bit upstream from the Falls, is being gone over with a fine-tooth comb by various police forces; CSICOP, a paranormal research group, has just lost some of its usual test subjects from the arrests; the power armor used by The Barrel is currently impounded. Those who have less official means of investigation might learn of the secret tribe of beaver-folk (descended from a group of Neutral Indians who used magic to escape their extinction in 1650); or that Impulse's "reserves" are mainly either gray-haired ex-Daredevils (who tend to fall in the mold of Rudyard Kipling) or the inhabitants of "Mrs. Friesen's Boarding House". These latter include such figures as "Mr. Grape", a minor plant elemental; a lady who transforms into a dolphin-like mermaid (and works at the local Marineland amusement park); a cow-woman and badger-man; and similar folk who barely register a blip on any power-scale.

Through the superhero grapevine, or whatever other means is applicable, your character receives a video...

Dressed in all-covering black, accessorized by a harness rigged with field emitters, is Impulse, a gadgeteer telekinetic. She's from the minor-league team, the Niagara Daredevils, which started out as a club of adventurers well before it became fashionable to run around in costumes. (Any psychics or super-detectives who might have previously taken an interest will probably have been able to figure out that she's really a he who takes the secret identity thing /very/ seriously.)

"If you're watching this, then, hopefully, you're one of the trustworthy few who might be able to help me."

"All the other active Daredevils have just been arrested for abusing their border-crossing privileges to smuggle drugs. From the evidence I've seen so far, they're not likely going to be able to come back on duty for a long time, if ever... which leaves me in a pickle."

"There's only a hundred thousand and change people in the twin cities of Niagara Falls - but we get a couple of /million/ tourists annually, and we pretty much watch over Buffalo, too. Over the years, we've had techno-villains and aliens attack the power plants, water and air mystics come to fiddle with the powers of the elements, would-be mind-controllers come to seize control of the population, organized crime that arrived when the casinos did, honeymooning supervillains, plus the usual street-level crime, fires, border incidents, and so on and so forth."

"All the Daredevils' funds have either been seized by the American or Canadian authorities, or frozen, or been dedicated to legal defense... which leaves me without a budget for running a team. Or even keeping up the security on the vaults of the stuff that have been collected over the past century. I've had a few offers of below-the-table help, which I appreciate, but right now I'm only avoiding getting arrested as an accessory by a thread, so I need to keep everything as squeaky-clean and aboveboard as I can."

"I've gotten an offer from the local tourism group for enough funding to keep the Daredevils' accounts ticking over, at least... if I can put together a group that's public and flashy enough to help bring in tourists to gawk at us. I do have some local reserves I can call - but, um, let's just say that there's usually a pretty good reason they're held in reserve."

"So. That's where /I/ stand. Where you come in... is anywhere you can, really. If you want to simply come and join the Daredevils on a permanent basis - great! If not, there's still lots of possibilities. I could use a few experienced hands to come by for just a couple of weeks to help transition. I could use some people to help train the reserves or any other newbies who want to sign up. I could use some over-the-table funding. I could use some juice with the Canadian or American authorities to keep the team's privileges, like being able to fly around as needed. If worst comes to worst, I could use someone trustworthy and somewhere secure to ship the contents of our vault to."

"If nothing else, if you can't help with anything like any of that - I could use having this video passed along to anyone you trust who might be able to help."

"Thank you, and good night."

Re: Stormy Relations

At least a few of my characters would end up being the God of Atheists...

Re: The thumb-lighter trick

There's president for 1 pip Energy Blast for 2pts. in one of the books somewhere.

You see, /that's/ the reason I post to these boards: that's the sort of detail about the HERO system I was completely unaware of, and never would have known about otherwise.

Being able to build an attack-type power on 2 base points instead of 5 simplifies things enormously, and as much as I liked Hyper-Man's Rube Goldberg version, I think I'll just keep it as simple as possible, and hand-wave away any details as part of the special effects.

About the only other thing I can think of is... does anyone have an actual page-reference for the 2 point EB?

Re: The thumb-lighter trick

In that case' date=' perhaps one could add the Limitation, [i']Real Weapon[/i]... or maybe "Real Flame." In the spirit of that Lim, the fire produced would be restricted in the degree of damage it could do (e.g. if applied repeatedly to a bare hand the hand's function might become impaired, but the person overall would be in no immediate danger of dying). The flame would also be easily snuffed by water, wind, or smothering agents; plus any other realistic drawbacks one could think of.

Seems 'round about right - as does Gestures, suggested further above.

So far, for an RKA-based build, to bring it from 5 active points down to 1 real point, we need around -3 1/2 in Limitations, from which I'm ending up with something like:

[1] Thumb-lighter trick: RKA, 1 pip damage (5 active points), No Range (-1/2), Gestures (-1/4), Real Weapon ("Real Flame", -1/4), Increased END x6 (-2 1/2)

Or, if I want to toss in an extra point, we only need -1 in Limits, so the extra END isn't needed, giving,

[2] Thumb-lighter trick: RKA, 1 pip damage (5 active points), No Range (-1/2), Gestures (-1/4), Real Weapon ("Real Flame", -1/4)

Hm... RKA lets you spend fewer points to get less than 1d6 of that sort of damage; is it possible to spend even fewer points to get fewer than 1d6 points of EB?

I suppose the RKA could be swapped out for 5 active points in other powers: 1d6 Energy Blast, or 1" Change Environment, or 1d6 Cosmetic Transform... is there any reason to prefer basing this on another Power over RKA?

Re: The thumb-lighter trick

I guess my only question would be if he had other fire-based powers (spells). Assuming he has some sort of Power skill (Sorcery, Magic, Thaumaturgy, whatever...) I would let him do it as a cheap power stunt.

 

This is especially true if this is more flash than function... if he can light small fires with it (in a way that anyone else could use a match), I would probably just say he can do it, at worst requiring a Power skill roll.

He has no other fire-based powers - if anything, he's an air elementalist. The metagame point of his having the thumb-trick at all are to demonstrate that he's not /just/ an air elementalist, and that he's at least trying to learn other sorts of magic, even if he's not all that accomplished in them yet. (I tried to think of similarly minor tricks for earth and water, but none appealed to me enough, so for now I've just stuck with the fire-based one.)

Re: The thumb-lighter trick

I would agree to the above if no one else in the campaign who isn't a mage has reliable and convenient access to a cigarette lighter' date=' or some comparable device for creating a small flame, for which they pay no Character Points. If they do have access to such a device, then the mage's trick is just a neat gimmick which shouldn't be paid for with points either.[/quote']

 

As it seems to make a difference to at least one person trying to help out, the setting in question is modern-day supers.

A mage-type character, with no related MPs, happens to be able to pull a classic mage's trick - he can flip his thumb from his fist, and create a small flame. Basically, he's got a built-in lighter.

Right now, the exact wording on the character sheet is:

[1] Thumb-lighter trick (Do I really need to work up stats?)

So, in case the answer is 'yes'... 1-pip No-Range RKA? Change Environment? Transform? What do you think?

Working on a new character idea, who's been a "not-really-so-evil thief" for a while. Given the prevalence of DNA-tracking techs in modern-day fiction, he obviously wants to avoid leaving even a single hair behind... so I thought of adding some Power-type thing to his bodysuit description, with the effect of making it harder for people to use Criminology rolls against him.

I checked my old, previous-edition of Dark Champions, and it had something of the sort, but used a Transform, which is always the option of last resort.

NSLs seem much closer, but they use END and so on. Would the right way to go about this be adding 0 END, maybe even Persistent? Or am I chasing the goose up the wrong tree?

I'm part of a long-running PBeM which is based in a vaguely Star Trek setting, plus elements of Star Wars, Bugs Bunny, and whatever else we feel like making fun of or fun with. I've written a character mentioning that her species (a sort of bipedal rat) had a 'century of masked vigilantes' around five hundred years previous, which is now viewed much the way we view knights and King Arthur and so on. This period was followed by something called a 'Crazies War', a sort of Kingdom Come slash WWIII slash Moore's Twilight of the Superheroes event, in which the Crazies had gotten to the point of running whole countries (eg, imagine the Joker running Latveria) before the big climactic battle between the heavy hitters. Another detail of this species is that, over their history, they have had various 'Prophets', several of whom claimed to be time-travellers.

I'm currently thinking of having some of the game's main PCs ending up traveling from their somewhat 'Legion of Superheroes' present to the costumed crimefighter past era, and seeing what fun can be done there. Of course, this also means that I have to come up with some more detail about this past era, and I'm trying to come up with as many cliches as I can possibly fit into the historical period. That is, there's a certain limit to the available technology, no magic, specific arrangements for psionics, and nothing that obviously violates the laws of physics. But we can still have crimefighting-obsessed vigilantes, a stranded alien or two, some other time-travellers, increasingly useful powered armor (and robots, and maybe even a few AIs), secret identities and lairs, costumes and masks and capes and utility belts, and a whole variety of whackos that need to be smacked down... maybe a visit by a Q-type entity... I've mentioned that the general IQ of the species went up about 20 points during that century, allowing for a certain amount of 'mutants' and a Wold-Newton style family... lots of "advanced" technology prototypes made by geniuses, like night-vision goggles or pheromone emitters... probably super-adventurers were the first rocketeers and astronauts... maybe a few one-offs that break these limits, but were lost by the end of the Crazies War... I'm thinking of having some of the top runners being called Brick, Blaster, Gadgeteer, Speedster...

Any thoughts, opinions, or suggestions?

Re: Not Quite Arm-Fall-Off Lad

I think Mr mattingly has a good point in invisible' date=' indirect stretching for the toe in the room idea but you have a case for that being too distant for stretching to cope with.[/quote']

 

Could this be a case for using Megascale on Stretching?

 

I presume that you could use an ear (for example) to get to a place (location A) - re-attach the ear then appear at another location where you left an eye, with ear intact (location but then be unable to get back to location A.

 

Precisely.

 

(Toes happen to have a lot of joints, and are generally useless, suggesting that, if they can be safely stored with enough room for the

rest of him to un-vanish, they'd be the ideal 'place-markers'. One at the local base, and several across the globe in various vacation spo- er, trouble sites. Even if something goes wrong and the storage site gets invaded or repossessed or whatever, he can simply vanish the toe-joint from there.)

Recently, I've literally dreamed up a character with an interesting set of abilities, and, naturally, am now trying to build them in HERO. I can manage most of it, but am futzing around with the main superpower. I'm pretty sure it's some variation of Duplication and Teleport, but /which/ variation, well...

Power description:

1. This being can remove his body-parts, generally at the joints - arm, hand, finger, head, ear, etc. He still feels them, they're still part of his body even if they're in the next room (so a toe getting stepped on still hurts), and can be recombined at any time. As he can be in more than one place at a time, this would seem to be some version of Duplication, possibly involving Multiform.

2. In addition, he can 'vanish' any or up to (almost) all of his body, potentially leaving him as just a head, hand, or even an ear. Desolidification, maybe? (Note that this does not affect any clothes worn or items carried, just his own body.)

3. And, finally, the 'vanished' parts can be un-vanished at any of his remaining body parts. For example, if he keeps one knuckle of a pinkie at his safe-house, while the rest of him is on a caper, he can vanish all his body save a toe, un-vanish it at the house, have a meal, relax, and then have himself vanish again and un-vanish it at his toe. Maybe some combination of Duplication's 'can recombine at range' and Teleport with Fixed Floating Locations with Focii?

Still fiddling around with Mike the Demoness's character sheet, two questions have come to mind. How would you build the ability to literally buy someone else's soul, and have it become yours when they die? And, other than souls possibly being some sort of medium of exchange in Hell, how would possessing one benefit the new owner? Preferably, answers to reflect the existence of a typical superheroic multiverse.

My best thought so far for the first is Extra-Dimensional Movement (base 20), single location in single dimension (Mike's official residence in her 'native' Hell), Indirect (any location, +1/2), Trigger (set trigger: target dies or voluntarily "gives up their ghost" to Mike, +1/4), Usable As Attack (+1), (active 55) Limited Power: Only against those who voluntarily agree to transfer their soul to Mike's control (with any additional terms to the contract they agree upon) (-2) (real 18)

One possibility is merely being able to Summon up their ghosts, but that could just be via a magic spell Mike doesn't know. So let's say some sort of Transfer from them to END (which most similar succubuses would use to power their magic). My HERO-fu is particularly weak for adjustment powers, though, so I'm asking the hivemind here about how to build it. Another possibility is some sort of END reserve reflecting the "mana" slowly being drained from the souls

I recently recalled one of my earlier characters, a minor Egyptian spirit/deity, "Abbashon, the White Rat". Now, I'm thinking of using him as an inspiration not just for a single character, but for a whole series of them over the campaign's history. I have a few ideas, but would love to have a few more, and any suggestions to expand upon what I already have...

Original background: When Egypt was learning to store grain to bake bread, their greatest menace was the rats who ate the grain. Two spirits competed to become the deities to solve the problem - Bastet, the cat who ate the rats; and Abbashon, the /white/ rat, a good rat opposed to all the nasty evil rats. The two were briefly lovers, then bitter enemies, and eventually Abbashon was sealed away by her for a few millenia. Somewhere around 1895-1906, scientists started breeding white labrats to help them... which weakened the seals on Abbashon, allowing him to start influencing the world again...

1930's Pulp "White Rat": A hard-boiled noir detective in the style of the Shadow, the Spider, the Green Hornet, the Red Panda, the Gray Ghost, and so on. "Sure, I'm a rat. You know that and I know that. Everyone in this cesspit of a city has to be one just to survive. But unlike all those dirty, stinking, low-down rats who're always scrabbling on top of each other for a bigger hunk of cheese, /this/ rat has a /conscience/..."

1940s WWII White Rat: A guy wearing a white costume and a rat's head, like DC's Wildcat the fighter.

1950s Golden Age commie-buster White Rat: Update the fighter with a techno-suit, like Blue Beetle's.

1960s Silver Age mystical White Rat: Instead of wearing a suit, this hero has actually made contact with Abbashon and has rat-related magical abilities.

1970s Bronze Age fad-era White Rat: Gotta admit I'm kinda stumped for this one. Maybe a 'White Rat Society' that does general good works and which kids could send in coupons to join, sort of like a 'Junior Green Lantern League'.

1980s Iron Age gritty White Rat: Cashing in on the TMNT phenomenon, an actual white rat who's been granted intelligence and has to deal with being a rat living in a human world, ala the "Rats of NIMH" book and movie.

1990s Vertigo-style White Rat: Abbashon himself is now out and about, finds out what happens to the rest of the Egyptian pantheon, visits various afterlives, meets and/or merges with other supernatural rats (such as the Chinese Rat of the Zodiac, and Ganesh's pal, and the rat-kingdom established by the rats who survived Hamelin's pied piper, and Discworld's Death of Rats).

Cartoon sub-universe White Rat: Merging several of the other White Rats and never quite making it clear which one it really is, ala DC's "Teen Titans"' Robin.

Movie sub-universe White Rat: Hm.

Foreign Adaptation White Rats: The Japanese version has the ability to turn into a giant monster rat, the Indian version is associated with the Karni Mata temple of rats.

Millenium-era self-conscious White Rat: Spread thin by tie-ins and crossovers and universe resets, even /he/ isn't really sure what he's supposed to be or how many of him there are anymore.

21st Century cyberpunk future White Rat: A member of a species of genetically engineered sapient animal slaves. Or maybe a hivemind created from the individual processors of a line of robot rats.

30th Century sci-fi future White Rat: A generic super-alien in the shape of a man-sized rat. Or a hivemind species of rats.

(Partial inspiration also from 'other versions of the Crimson Chin' at http://www.answers.com/topic/crimson-chin )

Re: Doesn't he look familiar?

Whatever the points that you spend on the familiar, I'd recommend you model it as follows:

 

Follower: Familiar (however many points)

Hunted: Familiar (8-, less powerful, mildly punish, hero is easy to find)

 

This represents the fact that the familiar is available at all times, as a follower. However, about 1/3 of the time, the familiar "helps" out by doing something the character doesn't want it to. With GM permission, you can actually combine the Familiar with the Hunted and purchase it as a single advantage (or disadvantage).

Heh. That's just about the sort of relationship I'd be happy to model, whether they're combined into a single item or not.

Do you have any examples of such a combination being used elsewhere, which I can show to my GM when I mention this idea?"

Re: Doesn't he look familiar?

For some reason, I'm thinking Invisibility and Teleportation are appropriate powers for the little imp to have. The Invisibility would be broad (probably cover sight and hearing - somehow I have this picture of the little lizard thing sitting on the character's shoulder or standing on the furniture, yakking away, and no one knows it's there except the character) but with limits (Visible to anyone or anything supernatural, for starters. Possibly even if the only connection to the supernatural is being a member of the clergy...)

 

Besides, both those powers are good defenses, and this low-powered imp should have ways of staying out of the way in superpowered combat.

Not a bad approach... "Okay, she's a flaming demoness, and she's talking to mid-air. Is there really some sort of other demon there that we can't see... or is she just bug-nuts? And which would be worse?"

Possibly use Desolid instead of Teleport, so he can simply fly/slither/whatever through walls, ala the shikigami who hangs around the protagonist in the manga/anime DeathNote.

Re: Doesn't he look familiar?

Quite. I'd be really annoyed if a GM started treating something I spent points for like a disadvantage. Just how is this "sidekitsch" supposed to be useful' date=' huh?[/quote']

 

If nothing else, he's got eyes and ears and a mouth, and, at least some of the time, can be convinced by his 'boss' to go look at something and report back, or deliver messages, or maybe carry a spare widget.

 

Whatever else he might be able to do... has yet to be established, and is kind of what I was asking for suggestions on. A bat-winged cat who can fly? A walking talking END Reserve? A Deadman-a-like who can possess random civvies for a few moments at a time? A minor tempter mentalist who can make a mortal indulge in a sin? Maybe he can pop over to Hell and back on his own power?

 

And while we're at it, what would the most interesting disadvantages to saddle him with? Physical Limitations versus holy ground and objects, or maybe a Vulnerability or Susceptibility to them, are fairly obvious... but what else?

Mike the Demoness's character sheet is still somewhat in flux. One idea I've added to the original concept is a Follower - a fawning, lizardy, familiar-type demonic imp who thinks Mike is still the original succubus pretending to be someone else. Partly as light comedy relief, partly to show Mike what a /real/ demon would think about any given situation, partly as an occasional GM mouthpiece.

As is obvious from my questions here, my HERO-fu is weak. And, I seem to have mislaid my HERO sourcebook on mystic superheroes. So, what sort of low-level evilness would you find most interesting to inflict on a PC (your own or someone else's)? (Currently, the sheet lists him as a 5-point follower, so he'd most likely be built on 25 base + 100 disadvantage points, if that makes any difference.) The fellow may or may not actually provide any /benefit/ to the PC for those 5 points, but he's glomped on tight for the foreseeable future...

"/There/ you are, boss. That was real smart of you, getting yourself shown on a reality TV show - you /know/ I'm addicted to the things. I don't know what sort of plan you've got going in that sneaky head of yours, but I want in on it, because it's gotta be big. I mean, you /know/ how annoyed the Big Boys get at publicizing the existence of Our Side. Clever dodge with the new name and claiming to be an atheist. So I figure, either the payoff for this plan is so big that it's gonna be worth the risk, or you've got something to hold over the head of your boss to keep 'em from coming after you, and either way, I'm gonna stick by your side 'till I figure out what it is..."

Re: Have a Holly Jolly Security Breach

Mike the Demoness: "Okay, so there really /is/ a Santa Claus, or at least someone who can do a decent imitation thereof, and wants to. I suppose that isn't any less plausible than a demon walking the Earth. Well, let's see what I got..." One possibility - clothing that's immune to her hellfire Damage Shield, so she can actually stay dressed when she's being all demony. Another possibility - a leather harness full of jingly bells, which, when worn, turns her humany bits into reindeery bits, plus an invitation to help pull the sled next year and meet the Easter Bunny and other such calendrical myth-beings.

Rubber Mousie: If she didn't get the kitty from the psycho hostage taker from another WWYCD, she gets one now, and either way, supplies for the new Dependant. No need for amusements, of course - she /is/ the cat-toy.

Re: Alternate Earth/WWYCD - Enough?

I happen to enjoy WWYCD threads, both reading and writing them; in fact, they're about the only thread that I'm guaranteed to read all the posts of, here.

(If it makes you feel better, though, I have other things to do this afternoon, so won't be adding any further posts to them for a while...)

Re: Alternate Earth Characters #11

Mike the Demoness: Heaven and Hell are still as present as ever, so his succubus would still be able to find him and mind-swap with him... and so, Mike, not worried so much about the nature of the supernatural as how he/she can use it, would find any number of uses as an immortal being who can assume any number of mortal shapes and call up fire. Of course, with Hell on Earth being so literal (Armageddon already having /happened/), there are probably a lot of other demons running around, who Mike's going to /need/ all those abilities to defend his home town/tribe/whatever against...

Rubber Mousie: Aliens can pop a wormhole onto a post-apocalyptic Earth and abduct a human from there as easily as they can from the original RM's world, and all the off-Earth events that ensued, and the on-Earth ones that led to her current gelatinous state. Would probably find a struggling on-the-way-up recovering micronation to help out, and put her talents to use keeping any attackers from doing it harm.

Re: Alternate Earth Characters #10

Mike the Robo-Demon: Even robots have 'robot hell' and the 'robot devil' (just watch Futurama). Mike, a bog-standard bot who doesn't compute in such things, one day finds his processor swapped into a robo-hell battlebot's chassis...

Rubber Mousie: Abducted by aliens, but instead of the process leaving her mostly dead, it leaves her all the way dead, so they take the patterns of her brain and add them to a mixture of strange substances, using it as the baseline to program their nano-morph, a sort of T-1000 sent back to learn about Earth.

Re: Alternate Earth #9

Mike the Demoness: Without a renaissance having taken place to undermine the Church and introduce the scientific method, it's doubtful Mike would have been an atheist before meeting the succubus who mind-swapped with him. Upon discovering his/her new demonic state, and truly believing in the divine, she'd have immediately prayed for forgiveness and redemption... and is now 'Mike the Angel', doing whatever good works she can think of.

Rubber Mousie: Her origin includes being abducted by aliens, among other events, so she'd probably still be pretty much herself. Though she'd have a different name for herself; maybe 'Black Water'. "Vile fiend, you think your sword can hurt me, and your armor protects you? Let me show you how useless such solid objects are against flowing water..."

Re: Alternate Earth Characters: Heinlein-verse

Mike the Demoness: There are a /lot/ of hells that have been written about... and in most of them, infinite torture for finite sins is, in her mind, very, very injust. The various heavens are about to get an influx of large numbers of damned souls who've just rebelled against their demons...

Rubber Mousie: "Okay, so if we're all fictional characters in somebody's book or movie or comic or whatever... can I meet whoever's writing me? Hello, Authour? You listening up there? Any chance I can give you some input on what you should write about me next?"

Re: Alternate Earth Characters #5

Mike the Demoness: Instead of being a rationalist-and-thus-atheist who got body-swapped with a magical creature of evil, he'd be a rationalist-and-thus-atechnologist who got body-swapped with, say, an android, a creature that's only supposed to exist in stories.

Rubber Mousie: "Let me give you one piece of advice. If you ever find a bottle, about four feet high, that looks empty - never, ever open it, unless you want to get sucked inside and turned into Genie Cola. Those genies get /mad/ after being bottled up for a few millenia, and once they're freed, are only too happy to return the favour..."