Jhamin

Rodger Smith is basically a skilled normal built on more points than most everyone else. A couple of the villians are as capable as him but that's about it. Good Ego, Good Int, Great Presence, Great Str (he can lift Dorthy). A couple of gadgets and points spend on a follower (Norman the uber-butler) and a vehicle (the bullet proof, gadget laden black caddie). Rodger has Dorthy as a DNPC, is hunted by the various villians in the show, and has psych limits centering on his own sense of free will and destiny. His refusal to wear any color other than black is odd, but probably doesn't rise to psych lim status. His refusal to use guns probably does. Why this doesn't prevent him from firing Big O's machine-cannon arms I'm not sure, but it doesn't. That fact that he pilots Big O seems to work more like a perk than a vehicle. It is shown several times that the Megaduces seem to have their own intelligence and merely allow drivers to pilot them. Big O and Rodger are as effective as they are partially because Big O actually seems to want to be driven by him. Several other Megaduce pilots have been abandoned or even killed by a mecha that didn't like them. Schwarzwald and Big Duo also seemed to have this going, but he was a little too nuts to make it work for long. Dorthy is a robot and does in fact seem to use the automaton rules. She has had arms and legs disabled by damage but seemed otherwise unhurt. She is strong, fast, and durable but seems to be passive to an extent that could probably be a psych limit. She weighs about 3-4 times what a woman of her size would, and this freqently funtions as a physical limit.

Interesting, I always thought of Colossus as the poster boy for buying powers and stats "Only in Hero ID". He keeps all the same skills, psych limits, and even his physical appearence. I mean, what does he lose by "powering up"?

I also usually rule that things like tar would also prevent the use of foulable/restrainable powers. Even though you are not actually pinned, the power will be useless until you can wipe all the goo off. I've seen flintlock pistols bought this way to reflect how much more vulnerable they were to the environment than modern semi-automatics.

Whenever you have a field of endeavor or a genre of entertainment, it will develop a rabid following that will inevitably break down into factional subgroups. These subgroups have chosen a particular style which they prefer. It is human nature to defend the familiar against that which demands change/a new way of thinking/an admission that personal preference is arbitrary. Has anyone here ever listened to two artists discuss different styles of art? It gets ugly quick. Or farmers debating International Tractors vs. John Deer Tractors? Or Martial artists debating the merits of their individual styles and how much but you can whuup with theirs alone? Or Country vs. Hip Hop vs. Metal vs. Pop? To someone outside the field, the argument is ridiculous. Does it really matter what company made your tractor as long as the field gets plowed? But whenever I have been around farmers talking shop, opinions have been forcefully stated. If we extend this to our own hobby, it is really pretty ridiculous to debate Hero vs. Palladium vs. D20 vs. Storyteller vs. Tristat, but we do. Heck, I have even run into people who refused to update between different editions of the same game, proclaiming the set of rules they are using to be the "One True Thing". I do defend my preference, but just as a Metal head True Believer will likely never allow themselves to enjoy Bluegrass a true Storyteller aficionado will likely never convert to hero.

Freedom Force wasn't really a RPG at all. You had missions to beat, but the way to win was set and nothing you did would alter the course of the game. That being said, it was one of the best games I've played in the last several years. While the missions were set in stone, they were creative, balanced, and an absolute blast. Once you got into the silver age mindset the path to victory always felt correct. Robots trying to destroy the city, Mutant Ants stealing whole buildings, A radioactive communist freezing the city and holding it ransom with an atomic bomb! Never have I seen an origional set of characters and scenarios that so perfectly embodied the Early Silver age spirit. The characters were all archtypial without being total ripoffs and the cutscenes and in battle banter was priceless.

When my group switched from 4th to FREd I ran a "Crisis" style multiverse spanning type game. The Despoiler actually cracked the Keystone of Reality (From Champions Universe 4e) before Doctor Destroyer and the PCs stopped him. Wacky hijinks ensued. My PC group has existed in one form or another for about 10 years as players drifted in and out and PCs died or were retired. As the PCs slid from world to world they met alternate versions of their team with alternate world versions of themselves as well as alt-versions of other bygone PCs and NPCs. Lots of plotlines from past games were taken in new directions and old favorites were seen one more time before the realities collapsed back into a stable form. It was a great sendoff for the old edition and a chance to seemlessly integrate all the new baddies from CKC. Among other places, they went to: Mirrorworld - where all the heroes are violent & amoral and all the femal PCs wear halter-tops. Anti-Mutant world - Where the mutant PCs and villians are nowhere to be seen and the disturbingly good and heroic Alt-PCs call on Minuteman backup when things get really ugly. Apocalipse World - What happens if the current crisis isn't prevented. A series of "the hunteds win" worlds - Where that alien invasion the charaters stopped had succeeded. Or where the demon summoning didn't get stopped, or where the Day of the Destroyer had succeeded. Or where Mechanon had wiped out all organic life. It was a good time.

No, that's a campfire story. Now, if you spin a bottle to see who has to tell the story... No wait, that's a party game....

I agree completly. But things get fuzzy in some cases. The Transforming Motercycles/Power armor from Southern Cross could go either way. As could the Shrikes from Blue Gender.

The other obvious question (to me at least) is why go with a MPP at all? Why not go for a variable power pool. Once you start getting dozens of slots in MPP it starts to be more cost effective.

Re: Re: Life on a Lunar Colony How did that work? The moon doesn't have a measurable atmosphere, so what do the wings interact with to generate lift.

Three things: 1 - You may have answered your own question. It is generally held that Str is already real cheap and if buying Growth or Density Increase "always on" is a way of getting it even cheaper then you may have a character that is too efficient. I haven't run the numbers on this, but I suspect that the rule was changed partly for that reason. 2 - This was partly done to make nonhumans in Hero system much more consistant (dogs, cats, whales). Shrinking was the real problem but Growth was altered to keep it in line. A infant would end up being more points than a typical street tough because they would have to buy all those levels of shrinking to represent their size. Then further wierdness ensues when they grow up and get better in every way but actually lose points because their levels of shrinking go away. 3 - It is generally not a good idea to convert from 4th to 5th point for point. Alot of rules have changed (as you have noticed) but there are also alot of new options and modifiers. I have found alot of charcters are now easier to model than they were before using the new options. While you could plunk a 4th ed character into 5th and they work just fine 90% of the time you are usually better off going back to the concept you were trying to model in 4th and see if 5th doesn't make it easier to buy in a slightly different way.

Not necessarily, Sure your M-1 Abrams is pretty inconvenient, but the Flying Ferret-Cycle goes pretty much wherever you need it to. A lot of Anime also include mecha that go pretty much everywhere. If power armor guy only got a -1/4 or -1/2 for his stuff, it just isn't fair for mecha guy to pay 1 for 5 for all of his powers. The fact that he has to get out from time to time is already being made up for by the 1 for 5 he paid for up to his character point total. You also have to remember that you can double the number of vehicles you get for +5 points, a lot of people I know of interpret that to mean you can have many different vehicles for +5 or +10 points. This explains the Bat-Mobile, the Bat-Boat, the Bat-Wing, etc. Problem is that if a PC pilot goes that way it will be really hard to come up with a situation that he doesn’t have a vehicle for.

Anyway, vehicles are not inherently less cost effective than characters are, so if you did have a pilot type character whose main power was a vehicle then why should they get it for 1/5 the cost of the rest of the team's powers?

But you have to remember that European archaeologists knew of Chinese and had deduced that the symbols represented concepts rather than sounds, but that didn't help them much. They still didn't know what any of the symbols represented. The Rosetta stone gave them a sample of text in three different languages, two of which they knew. It still took years until a language expert worked it out. Language is pretty complex. The Navajo code language wasn't a weird dialect or special obfuscation of the normal, it was only slightly modified. The thing was that Navajo had origionated from an entirely different langague family than anything the Japanese were familiar with, they simply had no way of relating it to anything. That is why they could never translate it.

If you are concerned with people just plopping down some points and "figuring out" the language, then just remind them that many GMs require people to actually justify their point expenditure. If the language is that odd, then the justification gets that much harder. In the real world there are several languages no longer spoken by any living person that are not intrinsicly harder than a living language but that scholars have spent decades trying to deciper with little or no success. If Hyrogliphics were un-learnable without the rosetta stone, then a language that is intentionally obtuse is pretty safe.

I would point out that existing characters already have some really nasty reversal effects. If Slug from CKC transforms you the only way back is a mystic ritual that requires you to have the Talisman of the Elder Worm. I don't know about most campaigns, but in mine that is alot harder to accomplish than just staying in the hospital for a few weeks.

I'm not "in the know" in any way, shape, or form. This is just what I understand.... From various rumblings here and on Mr. Alliston's web page I sort of got the idea that while alot had been written for a new Strike Force book it was all in a very rough form and would require a moderate amount of work to be presentable. The problem with that is that Mr. Allston makes his living writing books that tend to sell (and therefore pay) better than your average RPG supplament. I got the sense that Steve and Co. payed him more than anybody else would have gotten for Champions and he still mainly did it for old times sake. If DOJ were to pay for a Strike Force revamp that would take him away from his other novels it would once again be a drain on Hero games and would further rely upon his nostalga for the subject. Steve has generally been very specific about not giving anyone hope that anything like that will happen anytime soon.

My thought on the matter is that while the characters did stuff we probably can't in the real world, within the context of their world anybody could do it. Their superhuman feats weren't meant to be superhuman, they were just overzealous writers. The fact that the A-team got shot at all the time but never got hurt doesn't mean they were intended to have buttetproof skin, it was because they were a tvshow in the '80 and that level of violence was unacceptable. This is what I mean by "TVness" Batman and Punisher are not typical guys off the street. You need origin stories to explain them. The Rat patrol were really skilled, but were not superhumanly so within the context of their show.

I almost forgot about TimeTrax! The main character not only had future gear, but had superhuman speed because of "future mediacal advances"

A few quibbles Angel - While Buffy is a Movie character, Angel is origional to TV. L.A. Law - Unconvinced anyone was superhuman beyond basic "tv-ness" M.A.S.H - Unconvinced anyone was superhuman beyond basic "tv-ness" Rat Patrol - Unconvinced anyone was superhuman beyond basic "tv-ness" Sabrina the Teenage Witch - Originally a Comic character, she was published by Archie comics for decades Schoolhouse Rock - A cartoon

This is the sort of thing my players and I agree upon when a Focused power is bought. It is assumed that they keep a bunch of spare Team communicators back at headquarters, so whenever theirs get's destroyed they just pick a new one up. This seems to be how Iron Man operates in the comics. Tony Stark always seems to have a spare set of armor around for when his gets damaged, destroyed, turned to lead, etc. But that doesn't help him when he is caught away from home. On the other hand, I've also had players with foci (herbs and roots) that can be found out in the woods. If they are lost then the character has to have a couple hours to track down the right kinds in a local national park. If the characters are currently in space or the Sahara, he is out of luck.

Hercules (Kevin Sorbo version) Xena Warrior Princess Raven from Disney Channel's That's so Raven

If we are including Monk, then how about McGyver?

If magic counts... Buffy The Vampire Slayer Angel Duncan McCloud Nick from Forever Knight Barnibus from Dark Shadows The sisters from Charmed The angels from Touched by an Angel Michael Landon from Highway to Heaven Mama & Fester from the Adams Family Pretty much all the Munsters

Re: TV Superheroes Nightman was an extremly obscure comic character before he became a TB character