Utech

Re: BioFix - We're here to help! I made it up. It works like other bacteria. That is to say, it most certainly does not need to photosynthesize. Can we move beyond this now?

Re: BioFix - We're here to help! OK, I really like some of the ideas people have posited so far. Many thanks. Any thoughts on this sort of thing as an origin story for a hero or villain? What might it lead to? Any thoughts on this sort of thing as a military program? What might it lead to? (I've seen a couple of ideas along these lines, but wonder if they might be expanded upon.) Thanks, again, for the interest and the interesting posts.

Re: BioFix - We're here to help! We've all got plenty of bacteria living inside us all the time. Photosynthesis is not occurring there. (Least-wise not in me...)

Re: Beating Dr. Destroyer...how do (or did) you do it? You beat Dr. Destroyer with the MacGuffin Device, of course. He's clearly one of those characters who isn't supposed to be beaten by beating on him. His purpose is to be so overwhelmingly powerful that no PC (or player) should be tempted to take him on in a straight-up fight. If you have a character who could possibly beat him in a straight-up fight, DD needs to be tweaked to make that obviously untenable. Dr. Destroyer is a plot device and should be dealt with as such.

Re: BioFix - We're here to help! Sorry if this was unclear, but I'm not interested in how to build this. That's easy. I'm gathering thoughts about what might happen in (and to) the world if these things were created.

Here's a random thought. I'd love to hear some HEROdom ideas on how it might play out. The world is as we know it today. Tomorrow, a small bio-tech firm called BioFix creates two new products. OxyGen is a bacterium built from the genes up to ingest carbon dioxide and excrete oxygen. It is very happy to live inside human bodies. Someone "infected" with OxyGen will have little or no need to breathe under normal circumstances. EnerGen is a bacterium built from the genes up ingest lactic acid and excrete ATP. It is very happy to live inside human bodies. Someone "infected" with EnerGen will find that their muscles do not ache under normal amounts of exercise. Given that this is the Champions board, I'm looking for Champions-type responses here. What do you think might happen? Does the lead scientist take the bacteria and keep it for himself? Does the company make a fortune selling to the highest bidders? Does it all go to the military? Does everybody get it as the bacteria multiply and spread around the world? Does this lead to superheroes and -villains? How? Why? I breathlessly and tirelessly await your replies...

Re: Weaponmaster of the Knife

Re: Weaponmaster of the Knife

Re: Simplified Endurance Management? You might decide on simple categories for END usage in a given phase rather than for each individual activity. 0 END = All short-term, minor activities. Also any Power bought at 0 END. 5 END = Included activities requiring moderate effort (sprinting a short distance, trying to punch someone, picking up something really heavy). 10 END = Included activities requiring massive effort (long-term sprinting, a full-power punch, continuing to hold up something really heavy). 15 END = Included activities that require going beyond what you believed your limits to be. (sprinting faster than you ever did before, hitting with more force than you believed possible, holding up that school bus until the nuns get out). These are numbers and categories plucked out of the air. Naturally, you should define your own standards. You should then be able to simply charge 0, 5, 10, 15, (20?) END for a Phase without carefully tracking everything done in a given Phase.

Re: The application of added effort Punching is not appropriate for all concepts. But it's available for all characters anyway.

Re: The application of added effort An option I floated some time ago: Rule that any Power may take any amount of Advantages (except Variable Advantage, which would be silly) at any time so long as that number is balanced by an equal amount of Limitations. If you prefer, limit the kinds of Powers that can do this. If you prefer, change the ratio so that rather than 1:1, it is 1:2, or 1:3 or what-have-you. If you prefer, limit the available Limitation to Increased END Cost. The idea here is to make every hero more flexible. This allows your players to come up with all sorts of interesting ways to use their Powers right from the get-go. Of course, there's still quite an advantage (pun intended) to having full-time Advantages and/or Limitations on your Powers.

Re: What if... The Leader is a super smart gamma irradiated villain, but he doesn't transform the way the Hulk does. Similar, but different in very important ways to the idea I put forth.

Re: if you don't want your xp, I'll take it. A dimension-hopping campaign I'm running on HC has big chunk experience awards just about every time they jump to a new dimension. It works well.

Re: How to handle infiltration? (Mass Combat Rules Question) Figure out how many infiltrating units you've got. Figure out how many infiltrator-finding units the defender has. The infiltrating side writes down a location for each of his infiltrating units. The defending side writes down as many locations as he wishes each infiltrating-finding unit to check. Do a straight up Skill vs. Skill to determine if the infiltrators manage to avoid the infiltrator-finders. Lower the defending side's skill roll (by whatever you feel is fair) for every location beyond one they try to check.

Re: if you don't want your xp, I'll take it. The main trick is to convince players that the game will be fun even if their characters are built on just a few points while their buddy is built on lots and lots. There are dozens and dozens of examples of this in books and movies, so it shouldn't be impossible to get the concept. So long as the GM gives opportunities and challenges appropriate to each character, you're golden. So long as everyone agrees that it's just as heroic for the simple librarian to try to hit an agent over the head with a frying pan as it is for super-duper-dude to catch a falling building, you'll have no trouble with the set-up. As for groups sharing out a pot of XP, I think you'll find this works best if all the players talk quite openly about what they want to see in the game and the story moving forward. It's entirely possible that one player will be satisfied with his character right at the outset and be happy to pass up the chance at XP for a long time.

Here's the game: Pick one of the senses from the list below and write up whatever you like about what happens when the sense is Flashed, is in an appropriate Darkness field, or someone is Invisible to it. You might want to write up something about the attacker and something about the defender. You might want to add to the list of senses. Whatever you decide, it's all in fun. Senses: aesthetic sense common sense sense of balance sense of community sense of curiosity sense of dignity sense of duty sense of entitlement sense of fair play sense of futility sense of humor sense of intimacy sense of irony sense of morals sense of ownership sense of place sense of proportion sense of purpose sense of self sense of shame sense of time sense of well-being sense of wonder sense to know when it's time to come in out of the rain Example: The Tablodian is a villain who lives to publish embarrassing pictures and stories of the rich, famous, and powerful. The villain spots the mayor at a local charity event, bribes the band, and then starts his powerful "What the F-?"-erator up. Just as the band strikes up the first few notes of the macarena, everyone in the hall not wearing the proper counter device finds themselves lacking a sense of shame. When the Tablodian shouts "Let's do it for the orphans!" the mayor jumps right in. Pictures are taken. There will be shame tomorrow. Oh yes. There will be shame.

Re: Worst Hero Names (of your campaigns) Middle-aged Englishwoman who constantly generated a thick cloud of fog around her. She had Personal Immunity and couldn't see it. Name? The London Fogger. Gamma Lad. Gamma Lad was once exposed to gamma radiation and assumed (wrongly) that he must now have super powers. He was constantly leaping from rooftops, walking in front of buses, running into burning buildings. Great DNPC. Timmy Titan. Brick who intended to go by Titan in order to protect his secret ID. Unfortunately he was dumb as a sack of hammers and kept introducing himself to the press (and everyone else) as Timmy. He had a public ID, but thought he had a secret ID.

Re: Sonic Screech (suppression) Change Environment to make people go away. Darkness (to prevent people hearing anything except the screech). Possibly a tiny bit of damage.

Re: Points and Parameters for a "Sunday Drivers"-like scenario Thank you for the replies! CO: I like the idea. I do, however, want to encourage people to spend points on more than characters. I suppose that might be ruled in with something like, "You have X points to spend on characters, Y points to spend on vehicles..." etc. Susano: The Space Hulk scenario suggests a way to simplify all of this. As I remember, the Space Marines simply picked from a short menu of equipment options and the Gene-Stealers were all identical. It would really speed things up if the GM were to create a menu of character, vehicle, automaton, computer, etc. options. I'll look into it.

This is rather long. At the end, I'm asking for input. A fond memory: Playing one of the "Sunday Drivers" Car Wars expansion scenarios. One side was playing the residents of Midville and the other was playing a group of drivers coming into town to trash it. Each side was given a certain amount of money to spend on cars, motorcycles, weapons, armor, etc. The townies could set traps and generally prepare for the drivers. The drivers would come up with their own tactics. Mayhem (fun!) followed. I'm considering setting up something similar for HERO as a one-off battle royal. Each side is given some number of points and encouraged to spend them all on characters, vehicles, automatons, computers, etc. One side must also spend points on a base. In the base we place the MacGuffin. The invaders want to take/kill/turn on/whatever the MacGuffin and the defenders want to stop the invaders from doing so. This could be for all sorts of different genres, of course. Fantasy: invaders want to kill the king in his castle; invaders want to disrupt the end of the world ritual the local necromancer is conducting in his crypt Star Hero: aliens attack the star base looking for unobtainium; space marines enter the space hulk in order to activate the self-destruct sequence Pulp Hero, Champions, and more are certainly possible. Here's the input I'm looking for: How many points should each side be given? What are some general cut-offs? What restrictions should be placed on what the points are spent on? (Example: All points spent on a big bomb might win, but would also clearly not be in the spirit of the game.) What problems and/or opportunities do you see arising with this sort of game? Any thoughts are much appreciated.

Re: What if... Bruce Banner is exposed to gamma radiation. Thereafter whenever he feels helpless, he undergoes a dramatic transformation into the Savant. His logical, rational mind takes over -- pushing aside his emotional, compassionate mind. His intellect is vastly increased and when faced with a problem his intellect is no match for, he grows ever more intelligent until he makes a breakthrough. As the Savant, Banner sometimes thinks of radical solutions to problems facing humanity -- solutions that might include mass murder, sabotage, mind control, and worse. The Savant is aware that he will eventually become Banner again and that Banner will prevent him from enacting some of his solutions. Therefore, the Savant gives his plans to others. To those called "supervillains". Banner must constantly try to figure out what scheme the Savant has cooked up, who he has given it to, and how it might be averted.

Re: Plot vs. Rules - Species Burnout I think many people are overthinking this. Any players who agree to play in a SM campaign are well aware that their character will die within a year and shouldn't want any control over it! Using Hero Points (or any other mechanism) to put off your character's death is horribly out of place in a SM campaign.

Re: "Alternate" Ideas for Freemasons? You might want to check out the Order of St. George as used in the Shadowline series of Epic Comics. The Order exists to fight the Dragon (Dr. Zero) and does so, in part, by recruiting new knights (St. George) and providing them with magic armor and weapons.

Re: Teleport redirection The instantaneous aspect of Teleportation really makes this difficult. Unless built with some sort of Limitation (even a -0 Limitation brought on by sfx) or only used when a character is Teleporting non-combat (or using Megascaled Teleport), there's no way to know that a character is about to teleport. This means that your "teleport redirection" power would have be in constant use around people who can teleport, or there's no way to "catch" them as they're about to teleport. Again, without some sort of Limitation, there is no time taken when a character teleports. Not even a teeny tiny fraction of a nanosecond. Because of this, it's impossible to "catch" them in the act of teleporting. As has been suggested, you could definitely teleport someone who just teleported. This, however, seems substantially different from what the OP asked about. I wonder if it is helpful to consider a broader question: How do you cause another character to use their power in a way they do not wish it to be used? How would you... ...cause a character to use their Blast power at less then full power? ...cause a character to deliver an order via Mind Control different from the order they intended? ...cause a character to activate minimal defenses rather than maximum? ...cause a character with a movement power Useable as a Second Form of Movement to pick one form of movement over the other? I'm becoming convinced that this sort of thing just demands Mind Control of some sort.

Re: Plot vs. Rules - Species Burnout Doesn't everything? Your GM can add or subtract at will from die rolls, defenses, attacks, number of villains, traps, nuns in the line of fire, explosive poodles, clues, red herrings, helpful NPCs, time required to complete a task, the contents of a drawer, the contents of someone's drawers, etc. Of course the players also have input. They decide if they will or will not play, what their characters will do, how their characters go about doing what they do, if they will give up on something (or someone), what attacks to throw, what defenses to raise, where to move, if they give a fig about nuns, if the explosive poodles make them cringe or smile, etc. The original SM material made it clear that each person who went through the process would definitely die within a year. It could be a minute after the process or a minute till the one-year mark. One of the original comics showed the writers tossing darts at a dartboard covered with character names to decide who would die that issue. I doubt that's exactly how they decided who died, but it was very much in fitting with the idea that death due to the process was entirely random. Having players randomly determine their lifespan by rolling dice at the beginning certainly fits SM. Another option that occurs to me right now, however, would be to simply allow players to draw straws at the beginning of each game session. Short straw dies. If you want it secret, have them draw cards numbered 1-6, then make a show of rolling a die behind a screen, looking at the die, and then covering it with a cloth so that no one can see it and the GM cannot disturb it.