Utech

Re: Create a Hero Theme Team! Ganymede appears to be a youthful man of tremendous beauty. And he always will. Ganymede is both immortal and able to regenerate. Any injury that might mar Ganymede's beauty is swiftly erased. Because of his looks, most people pay attention to Ganymede and listen to what he has to say. He is often able to diffuse tense situations simply by walking in and offering a warm, understanding smile. When talking proves impossible, Ganymede makes his attacks by way of cup. His magical cup of the gods is filled with whatever he might like it to be filled with at that moment. In the past it has been filled with water, oil, wine, blood, acid, gunpowder, diamonds, the needed hotel room card, and many other items of interest. Ganymede represents Aquarius.

Re: Thoughts on Breakout rolls. Remember that the Thug will know after the first Cumulative Telepathy attack that he is under attack. If the Player wants to achieve the +20 level that keeps the target unaware that he is under attack, the Player will need to declare a target number he thinks he needs to achieve and then make as many attacks as necessary to achieve it. Check the Rules FAQ.

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! A summer job cleaning out an old Post Cereal warehouse. What could be safer? Duller? Farther from adventure? Apparently many things. Because when Simon Lenz located the very first box of ever made -- and ate them -- he became a man of tremendous power, influence, and odd speech patterns. Able to whip up fantastic, exciting, sometimes dangerous food, the Swedish Chef is also able to inflate things until they explode into a shower of delicious cinnamonnamony goodness. Police consider this villain armed and baffling. New team: Name: Hired Guns Theme: What do you do when you're a megalomaniac and your grand plan is about to come to fruition? When every superhero on the planet (and some off) are looking for you? When every one of your minions is busy with their part of the plan? You buy yourself some insurance -- that's what you do. One popular insurance policy is the group of mercenary villains known as the Hired Guns. These grim, serious professionals don't ask questions beyond those necessary to identify who or what needs to be shot and under what circumstances. After that, they do their job and get out. They are always paid in advance. Always worth it. No few supervillain masterminds have lived to fight another day because the Hired Guns succeeded where all their minions failed. All of the Hired Guns use guns of some sort or other. This is a serious group of hard-core villains. No joke villains or comic relief, please. Number of Members: 7

Re: Create a Hero Theme Team! Kamadeva brought his/her powers to bear on an ambitious young professor of computer science in Bangalore one day some six years ago. The man easily fell prey to Kamadeva's powers for a time, but could not be brought fully to heel. Something. Someone. A part of his mind escaped Kamadeva's clutches and clung to the beautiful woman next door. The woman he had known since both were children playing in the streets. They had grown together. Grown to love each other. Were planning to marry. Kamadeva throttled the man, of course. But did a sloppy job of it. Kamadeva left him alive. No so his love. Kamadeva found that unfortunate young lady and killed her. The young man recovered. He had every good reason to want revenge. But path led him away from vengeance and violence. Away from desire. "No desire, no suffering." Bodhi was born that day. He lives without desire of any kind. He is compassion itself. And the one he feels the most compassion for? Kamadeva, of course. Bodhi's presence is enough to calm. His smile drops hardened criminals to their knees. If only he desired world peace he might bring it about! But no. He desires nothing. Nothing at all. Still. Somehow. His path seems to intersect with Kamadeva's again and again...

Re: Mental Parasite Lots of Shrinking and appropriate Life Support would allow this being to get inside people quite easily. No need for Desolidification.

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it. My brother used to have a poster with a quote I rather liked, but apparently not well enough to have memorized it. It basically stated that no creature of our imagination, no matter how fantastic, can be anything but a collection of the parts of known animals. I rather think we have the same problem in imagining intelligent alien life. It is entirely possible that intelligent alien life would have no cells, no limbs, no sense organs we might recognize, no need to eat, etc. The problem with this sort of speculation, however, is that it's simply unplayable unless you're going the HP Lovecraft route. Then you can cryptically describe your aliens as impossible to describe, shapeless, formless, and intelligent in a way unknowable to the characters. Fun with horror, but probably less fun for most SF. What's most playable is to take what we know about life and civilizations on our planet and take that to an extreme. So you can base aliens on non-human looking creatures such as octopuses, sponges, starfish, and so on. Then you give their civilization some hodge-podge of Earth civilizations and cultures and you are good to go.

Re: Ninja Gaiden 2's Shadow/Spirit Clone What is the need? If it's just distraction, build the clones' attacks as sfx on Sweep and Rapid Fire and build their distraction as Images.

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! She calls herself the Displacer though that does not precisely describe what she does. What does she do? She meets you. Makes conversation. Touches you. Brushes a hand against your face, perhaps. Maybe she fixes your hair. And you feel the change. And . . . well, by then it's too late, isn't it? By then you're not the person you used to be. You look different -- sometimes drastically so. Your fingerprints are different. Your retinas. Your voice. Your smell. Your very DNA. The only thing left of you that's still you is your mind. And that's the way she likes it. Because you find yourself unable to return to your life. No one recognizes you. Not your spouse or your children or your boss or your dog. No one. And there she leaves you. A new man or woman. Trying to get by without an ID, a birth certificate, a bank account... A life. That's what she does. And she does it with a smile on her face. New group name: Smash Ltd. Theme: A loose organization of British Commonwealth villains. All are brick mercenaries who specialize in smash and grab, massive destruction, and bodyguard work. Smash Ltd. sometimes creates their own missions when funds are running low, but they really prefer to be pointed in the right direction and set loose. Members: 7 bricks of various flavors

Re: Ninja Gaiden 2's Shadow/Spirit Clone The clones sound like sfx when using Sweep or Rapid Fire to me. No need for Duplication or Summon -- though you could use them if you want opponents to waste attacks on the clones.

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! The Spectacle is a garishly clad woman with a penchant for ropes and wires of all sorts. She is best known, however, for her outrageous eyeglasses. The big candy-apple-red frames are fused to her face, but the lenses can be swapped out. The Spectacle's various spectacles include those that provide her with IR, UV, telescopic, or microscopic vision. After lassoing and/or whipping her opponent into submission, the Spectacle is fond of tying up her foe and leaving him in an eyebrow-raising compromising position.

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! The thrill of the chase is all that matters to the Master of Hounds. A burly, barrel-chested, bearded man with a decidedly uncouth love for dog-eat-dog nature and the law of the jungle. The Master of Hounds has nothing but disdain for the weak, flabby mass of humanity that crawls on its belly through a life without value. How he'd love to shut down all the little conveniences of modern life. Take away their electricity and their cell phones and their vitamins and their damned psychologists... Yes. Return them to the jungle. Let nature take its course. Reduce this writhing pathetic mass to a hard core of men and women worthy of being human. Ah. Those would be people the Master of Hounds could talk to. In the meantime, he'll settle for the members of the Wild Hunt. He even has respect for a few of them. But what does the Master of Hounds do? He's the master of his hounds, of course! All he needs is a target. A good, clear target. Then he sets his hounds on that target. Huge and black. Glowing red eyes. Sharp of tooth and claw. Swift as the wind. Silent as a shadow. They'll find the target -- they always do. Hunt them down. Flush them out. Run them to ground. Tear them to shreds if that's the mission... All of the Master of Hounds' Powers are actually psionic in nature. His Mind Scan has very visible effects (the hounds) and sometimes takes a while to get results. Once he has "locked on" to a target, the Master of Hounds can attack through that Mind Link with a Killing Attack BOECV, Does Body. Then . . . things get sort of messy.

Re: Create a Hero Theme Team! He is the young, arrogant star of the Moscow Theatre who shares in part the name of one of the greatest Russian actor/directors. He is Constantin Sergeyevich Alexeiev, but he is best known by his superhero name: If. Constantin has the ability to rewind time precisely three seconds. Every random event in those three seconds then has the opportunity to play out differently. A colleague struck is missed. A wall that teeters and falls teeters but does not fall. The red wire is cut instead of the blue. Constantin has thusfar been unable to "edit" the same three second window of reality more than once. That's probably because he spends far more time working on editing his own reality. When dealing with matters that deal only with himself, Constantin is remarkably adept at causing the if his opponent missed result to turn up more than the alternative. Constantin's high Skill Rolls, DCV, Armor, and other defensive powers all have the sfx: "if". He has very limited offensive ability and works best with a group.

Re: The Millennium Bugs I'm not sure I know how to do this. I'll try to post my quicky 350 point version of Gnat here.

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! They call him the BFG -- and it don't mean "Big Friendly Giant". Jack -- "Do the impression. Go on. Do it. I dare you... -- Sparrow has all the subtlety of a typhoon. He points at something with both arms, takes a few seconds to power up, and BOOM! The something is lots of little pieces of somethingfetti. Given the time it takes for BFG to activate his power, he's best at blowing up things that don't move or people who don't know he's around. The Interruption often use BFG as a distraction rather than as an integral part of the main mission. He can be across town from the actual caper causing a skyscraper to teeter, giving old City Hall that new "tunneled" look all the kids are screaming about these days, or reducing a power substation to a couple of wires and scorch marks. From time to time, though, the Interruption actually need BFG in on a job. Mostly when there's a stubborn wall that just can't be removed without his inimitable charm, wit, and BOOM! BFG is a glass cannon. He has little in the way of personal defense. His typical MO is to show up, blow up, and shove off before the law arrives. Precisely what his BOOM! power consists of is left to the gentle good graces of whichever GM might wish to make use of dear Jack. My intention, though, is for PCs to look at the aftermath of a BOOM! strike, shake their heads, whistle softly, and maybe pee their pants just a little in fear.

Re: A crazy way to handle damage? You could substitute 12-sided dice for two 6-sided dice. You could roll half as many dice and multiply by 2. You could slap Standard Effect on 1/2 the dice and only roll the remaining dice. You could do all of these things at once.

Re: The Millennium Bugs I slapped together a 350 point 5th version of Gnat while riding the train yesterday. I'll post what I've got for comment later. I'm not sure how Gnat would have gotten to know the other members. There's the old chestnut about Gnat getting caught for the first time by X and deciding to work for X ever after -- but it's an old chestnut. Hope I can think of something more interesting.

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team!

Re: Create a Hero Theme Team!

Re: My Failed Project It's a conversation between GM and players. If you don't get buy-in from all parties, you'll end up with disappointment. Right. I said that, too.

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! It ain't easy being a zombie. You tend to shamble a lot. Everybody screams. Everybody runs away. Lots of them go and get guns and shoot you in the head. It's enough to make you cry. If you could. Which you can't. But the worst part? The constant decomposing. Man, that bites. So if you're one of those rare ambitious zombies with dreams of an unlife, what can you do to keep from falling to pieces? Get new pieces, of course! Corpse will work for pretty much anybody who promises extra parts. In a pinch, Corpse can raid a graveyard for the recently deceased, but it's far better to get them real fresh. Real fresh. But parts ain't parts, if you catch my drift. Some parts are more equal than others. A good pair of marathoner's legs? Great! They let you go all 28-Days-Later on people. Weightlifter's arms? All the better for ripping up the opposition. An archer's eye? A surgeon's fingers? Yeah. That's where it's at! Constantly in a state of decomposition, Corpse must replace his entire body at least once each month. Being dead, he's a darn sight hard to kill. It's much easier to disable him by pulling off the limbs...

Re: My Failed Project Ah, my example was written in haste and not as complete as it should have been. I'll edit. What I meant to say is that there's nothing at all wrong with playing a superhero (I know this is the Champions forum) who is no more agile or tough than a normal human. There are plenty such examples in the comics. If you'd rather play a game where all the superheroes are immune to small arms fire and faster than Bruce Lee, get player buy-in, sink the required buy-in cost worth of character points into your Characteristics, and game on! But if you'd like to play a game where not all superheroes are immune to small arms fire and many are slower than Bruce Lee, there shouldn't be any need to sink character points into Characteristics that don't match the character concept.

Re: Create a Hero Theme Team! Alvis Saracen is old enough to remember the good ol' days when SWAT was first introduced. The looks on crooks. Ah, the memories. That was back when SWAT meant Special Weapons Assault Team -- before some limp-wristed fainters got their frilly whites in a bunch and switched the acronym to some god-forsaken focus-group-approved pat nonsense. Bah. Time has marched on and Alvis has marched on with it. It's a damn good thing that Alvis has some sort of slow-age mutant freakiness in his cells. Extra-long teramirs or some-such weirdness. Every year, though, it's gotten a little harder to keep up. Every year there are new SWAT men (and women!) and every year they get younger and faster and stronger. They all know how to work the computer doo-hickies. They all know the protocols for handling the fools looking for suicide by cop; and how to wrangle crowds of gawkers; and how to look damn good for the freakin' bloggers. But none of 'em -- not one! -- was ever able to open a door like Alivs, keep their Sig singing like Alivs', or remember under the heart-pounding stress of an assault the load out on a pump action shotgun set for 1) lock removing, 2) window opening, 3) put the fear of God into 'em with a hole made in the freakin' floor, and 4-8) fill their sorry asses full of rock salt. No sir. Alvis has always been one of a kind. With more and more dropped comments all dancing around the issue of retirement, Alvis had to take action. And he did. He got himself a ticket to ride. Ride out of the good ol' red white and blue and into Lichtenstein (which isn't even really a country, it's like a friggin Dutchy for crissakes) for some very unusual treatments. Cost him pretty much everything he had. Every penny and a couple of promises he might regret some time in the future... But screw it! Right? SWAT is Alvis' life. Some damn pencil pusher makes him retire, they might as well hand him an H&K-shaped popsicle with his gold watch. For practice. Hell, it was worth it. Damn straight. 'Cause now Alvis Saracen is a tank unto himself. Forget the body armor. Forget the battering ram. Alvis can take a shotgun blast to the face. He can take a door off its fool hinges. And he's got 50 years of SWAT experience under his belt. Oh yeah. Look out criminals, Alvis is comin'. No. Not Alvis. Heh. From now on, how about you call him BearCat. Alvis is one of those half-bricks. He's got all the invulnerability you might want in a brick, but nowhere near the strength he'd need to work in the big leagues.

Re: Inventor skill clarification...