Utech

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! Atalanta is an energy projector of sorts. A bookish nerd all her life, Cassie learned to run with the nastiest characters she could find. As long as she was with them, they weren't against her. Committing crimes makes her feel powerful. Better yet is the feeling of superiority she gains when she causes fear or embarrassment. Cassie's gold powers last slightly longer outside her body than the powers her teammates possess. By rubbing her hands together, she is able to form small balls of pure gold. Small balls of pure gold she then hurls at others. Given just a little time, she likes to shape her balls into little golden apples. Throwing golden apples at people and causing mayhem appeals to her nerdly obsession with Greek mythology.

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team!

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! The Imperturbable appears to be some sort of mammal/insect hybrid. Smaller than an average human and exceedingly thin, this chitinous female of its species was either drawn forward or backward through time -- she's not saying which. She may be an alien or representative of a domestic species not yet recorded by humankind -- she ain't tellin'. Two things are for sure: 1) her force field generator essentially renders her impervious to attacks of any nature, and 2) she has not the slightest hesitation in using her ray gun to remove garbage-can-lid-sized chunks of matter from humans, animals, walls, doors, vehicles, trees... Though she clearly lacks the correct organs for hearing and speaking a human language, that doesn't seem to stop her from doing so. She has so far been willing to do whatever the mastermind directs. So far.

Re: Superhuman Ecology

Re: Would like help with a Champions game If your players enjoy mind games, you might not want to have CorpX go all out trying to capture them right away. Let your characters spot CorpX agents snooping around after them or keeping tabs on them. Have the CorpX people harass the heroes by planting false evidence and co-opting local law enforcement and media so that no one believes the heroes. Have NPCs that could be perfectly innocent, or could be working for the other side. As a player I think it's a lot more fun to be paranoid about more than capture.

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! Parity believes very strongly in the Code of Hammurabi. Well, parts of it anyway. She's always liked the idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. That was Hamurabi, right? Or maybe it was a Taoist thing. She gets confused. But she doesn't get confused about what happens to bodies of land and water! Nuh, uh. And she knows that an eye for an eye is the just way to handle such injustices. So when somebody poisons a body of water, well, they can just figure that sooner or later Parity will get around to poisoning their body. Don't get her started on slash and burn...

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! Rudra has all the power and personality of a fierce, destructive, roaring storm. Unlike many weather manipulating supers, Rudra does not ride the winds or fly. He walks -- glorying in the devastation all around him -- on the ground. As dangerous as the storms he commands can be, it is the simple sight of Rudra that is his most potent power. He is terrifying to behold. Soldiers with ice water in their veins cower in fear, run screaming, or beg (the fools!) for mercy.

Re: Superhuman Ecology To get back on topic... Since the OP used the word "ecology" in the thread title, I think it's a good idea to keep in mind that the world's ecology (geographic and social) will need to be laid over whatever raw numbers you start with. I believe you used a figure of about 1 person in 1 million having super powers of some sort... That leaves large swathes of the world with 0 or 1 superhuman. That person would really stick out. Would they be killed immediately? Worshiped as a god? Try to hide their powers? Become a tyrant? Leave immediately for higher population centers? That also sticks between 35 and 39 (depending on how you count it) superhumans in the metropolitan Tokyo area. Those with superhuman abilities that fit in with the culture would do very well indeed. Those that do things like cause earthquakes, typhoons, a lot of fire damage, radiation . . . would likely not be received well. Would they become villains out of frustration? Move to other countries? Become ultra-patriots (perhaps guarding Japanese whaling ships?) in order to compensate? And there must be a thousand other such questions that pop up anywhere you might look in on the superhuman ecology. As a result, I'd expect that certain areas have an overabundance of superhumans while many others have none. I'd expect certain areas to have many heroes who possess powers with the same special effects -- ones that fit well culturally. And so on and so forth. All this is to say that your bell curve and basic set of numbers will be a great place to start, but it will instantly be distorted when placed on the world.

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! Insight (a.k.a. Incite) was a harmless bagger at the Piggly Wiggly supermarket more than a decade ago. She was just about to graduate from high school and college didn't much appeal to her. Until something she bagged (or the way she bagged it, or the combination of things in the bag, or something) gave her an incredible insight. Blew her mind. She walked out and never went back to her minimum wage job. What Insight gained that day was a quantum leap forward in the understanding of the universe, life, and everything. Her intelligence soared. More importantly, though, her insight suggested other questions. Focusing on those new questions meant another mind-blowing insight. More intelligence. More understanding. More questions... Perhaps all of this is some sort of super power. Perhaps it's nothing but madness. But it's undeniable that Insight is now one of the smartest sentient beings in the universe. And also quite unhinged. Every time Insight puts her incredible intellect to a new question, she bumps up her Intelligence. Unfortunately, she also goes a bit mad. Most unfortunately, what she has done, she can pass to others. She can whisper a secret in your ear and leave you with the very same ability. Few are able to resist pursuing question after question until they have learned enough truth to reduce their brains to tapioca. Might she someday broadcast that question to the world..? Insight figures things out for Guardian Angels. Makes incredible equipment for them. Reduces opponents to mindless husks.

Re: A super school You might consider eliminating the idea of classes, years, grades, and exams entirely. Make a bunch of teachers available and allow students to go to whomever they want for as long as they want (or as long as the teacher will have them). It might well be understood that super students cannot commit to the same sort of schedules that normal students do. Some students will want to live at the school.

Re: Damage Class and Balance

Re: VPP/Multiform - Assume GM is Insane The simplest way to handle this is to just make that a part of your campaign groundrules. No need to write up the Power. Just tell everyone that they can juggle 400 points during each session with very specific allows/disallows. And done.

Re: Character that keeps on going, even if in pieces... Duplication is really what you're after here. Might be a pain in the butt to write up, but it takes care of most of this. If you're really looking for every possible permutation, you'll need a VPP dedicated to Duplication...

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! BMOC is not only capable of growing to be the largest, most impressive, and sexiest male physical specimen on any given college or university campus, he is capable of recruiting 64 "agents" from any such campus in a very short period of time. It's often said that the ladies he recruits are more into him than the cause and the men are more into the ladies than the cause (with roughly 10% of either group oppositely interested in joining up), but that doesn't stop them from hauling around The New Peace Armada's stuff, forming the core of protest marches, engaging in vandalism, pelting superheroes with eggs, and generally mucking up whatever joint they happen to be milling about.

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! I think Badger added the seventh and final member of the Globe. Officially it ought to be Badger who chooses the theme, name, and number of members for the next group. But since he didn't, I will. Theme: This group despises (though does not fear) new technology. Convinced that modern technology is detrimental to both individuals and communities, the Neo-Luddites do all they can to convince others that new technology is untrustworthy, dangerous, or otherwise undesirable. They might cause a new robot to go haywire, make sure that hackers get hold of personal data on millions of people, or assassinate scientists who move too far too fast. Name: The Neo-Luddites a.k.a. The Nuddites Number of Members: 5

Re: Inflicting Drowning... Link to Transform air to vacuum?

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! Imagination is able to create Images and Mental Illusions. His powers are restricted, however, to those images and scenes found in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. He must be able to recite the line or original stage directions in which the image is embedded. Examples: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May Blow, blow, thou winter wind! Thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Exit pursued by a bear. Enter a messenger with two heads and a hand. thunder and lightning. Enter three witches

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! Modeler is a beautiful woman with a mind that works like a supercomputer devoted to violence. When not fighting, she thinks about fighting. Models fights in her head. Studies likely opponents to analyze their style, procedures, abilities, and proclivities. When she fights, she is constantly modeling what each person on the field is likely to do and what would happen for different actions she might take. The more variables in play, the less Modeler is effective. But when she's fighting one-on-one with someone she's studied . . . she'll always find a way to put them down.

Re: Beginner Character Creation It can help a great deal to compare with other characters and build your character accordingly. You might start with the average person template and then ask yourself, "Is this guy just as strong as a normal guy? Twice as strong?" etc. Of course you don't have to compare your character with the average person. You might find someone's write-up for Superman or Bruce Lee or Conan and work from that.

Re: Strength Minimum Another simple option would be to make the butterfly sword more expensive to buy and repair than the broadsword. Perhaps few blacksmiths know how to make one. It seems quite natural to me that a more effective (in this case lighter and/or better balanced) sword should be more difficult to obtain and keep up.

Re: Villain Theme Teams I'm afraid I don't have groups ready to go to offer. I hope you won't mind my jamming on the idea, though. Some possible themed groups (from the obvious to the maybe not so much): Elementals 1: Fire, Water, Earth, Air Elementals 2: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Void Elementals 3: Fire, Water, Earth, Metal, Wood Elementals 4: Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, etc. Chakras: Thought/Space, Light/Dark, Ether/Sound, Air, Fire, Water, Earth Apex Predators: Python, Cheetah, Wolf, Grizzly Bear, Hawk, Alligator, Shark, etc. Direct Action: Politically motivated group of villains specializing in sabotage, vandalism, assault, and murder. (heroes first encounter this group sympathetically as they engage in non-violent, though illegal, protest) The Furies: Unceasing, Grudging, and Avenging Murder. Three female chaotic agents of vengeance. Punish those who break oaths. Avenge the dead.

Re: The PCs are Villians - Which Villians? You might want to have one (or more?) of the villains actually be a hero in disguise...

Re: Newbie and GM shouldn't go together. I strongly recommend setting up a few simple encounters with enemies tweaked to slightly different power levels. This lets you see how changes to CVs, defenses, DCs, etc. can really change the way your game plays. You could set this up as sparring practice, a "danger room" session, or putting the beat down on some unruly mimes. Honestly, it doesn't matter. After each combat, ask your players for their input. With small adjustments you can make your combats: Short, deadly affairs. Long battles generally decided by TKO. Toe-to-toe slugfests. Exercises in using the terrain and environment to give you the edge you need to win. Cinematic "Dang those bad guys can't hit the side of the barn, can they?" fights. Cinematic "It's a good thing the heroes have teamwork -- it's the only thing keeping the bad guys from stomping them!" fights. Etc. etc.

Re: BioFix - We're here to help! They create oxygen and consume it. Is it impossible to imagine that they might be modified to create more oxygen than they need to consume? The leftover oxygen goes to the host. Honestly, have a little imagination here, OK? If this is all too much for you, please leave the thread alone.

Re: BioFix - We're here to help!