Jhamin

As I read it this really comes down to the flavor of the DC world you want.

Arkham Asylum seems to be moderately able to keep the various super-villians incarcerated.  They parole board just keeps letting them out.  On the other hand, when it's really important Joker can find a way and Batman seems to be able to get in and out whenever he needs too.  So I think the individual cells are a bit tighter but are in no way "super skill" proof.

On the other hand, in the MCU Ivan Vanko could build Stark Level tech and hack Hammer software like it didn't have a password and apparently had a lot of history in much worse prisons than he was currently in, but the implication was that the only reason he got out of prison was because Justin Hammer broke him out.

I think it is a genre choice.  Can a prison hold Lex Luthor/The Joker/the Punisher/other people without super powers but who DO have superskills? It seems like the default in most super-skill worlds is that there are ways of keeping super-skill characters in prison, but it seems to be in Genre for Batman to be able to break in whenever he needs to talk to Riddler.  If anything, it seems more common for bad guys to to take over the prison than to leave it.

7 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

Well, Peter's girlfriend, best friend and bully are all cast as ethnic kids. There's also been a rumor they may be introducing live action Miles Morales in the next movie.

 

I'm more concerned they may not execute so well on the huge number of characters they're tossing in. Into the Spiderverse did a good job, but live action supers movies with too many characters haven't always hit the mark.

When Marvel has control I trust them to do well.  Sony has not earned my optimism.

My thinking is that we already have Into the Spiderverse and it was very nice.  I'd love to see the sequel.  I'm not sure I want to see a remake so soon.  (I know it won't be exactly the same, but with all the Spiderman Plots out there did we need 2 movies about alternate dimension Spider People in 4 years?)

Am I the only one nervous that the success of Into the Spiderverse made Sony overly eager to do a live action version but without the ethnic kids?

I trust Marvel to actually do something good (and diverse), but depending on how much control Sony has.....

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Two words:

 

Team  Knightrider.

 

It's a real thing; it happened.

 

And it was _so much worse_ than I could possibly ever hope to describe......

I actually watched it when it was on, because I was too poor to have Cable & streaming didn't exist yet.  I would never want to see it again, but a whole team of heroes each with their own sentient vehicle is the most gameable version of the franchise.  Way easier to fit into a group dynamic than Michael Knight, KITT, & his DNPCs back on the truck.
 

1 hour ago, Chris Goodwin said:

I think I saw this on RPG.net, but there seems to be a principle that the less literary merit a work has, the more gameable it is.

Literary merit tends to be built out of different things than a really good gaming session.

I would never want to game out an Anton Chekhov novel, but most Chuck Norris movies are at least a decent framework for a game.

9 hours ago, dougmacd said:

 

And if the drain/aid/blast/entangle can only be used on combination with the kick/punch (not by themselves), you would actually put a Linked limitation on them, not a Trigger advantage.

Note that if you link a power, it will *always* go off when whatever it is linked too is used, so if you link multiple things to their Str, all those things will go off with each physical attack.  If you want a different thing associated with each limb you will want to buy a multipower & link the whole multipower to the character's Str.  This gets a bit dicey as you officially aren't supposed to put naked advantages in a multipower and linking a whole power framework is pretty sketchy rules-wise, but both are things some GMs handwave.

Personally, I'd go with the Combined attack route, even though that adds some DCV penalties.  If he kicks hard *and* does a big AofE cone attack at the same time it's maybe OK that he takes some penalties.

On the other hand, if you care more about the effects than the Str damage, just have power like "fire-Cone kick: 10d6 AofE Cone".  When the player uses it you say its a kick, treat it like a kick, and don't worry about the Str part of it.  They don't take the Combined Attack penalties, their kick is a cone, but it only does damage once.

8 minutes ago, AlgaeNymph said:

We see Tony Stark fighting terrorists with a super-suit, but not fighting OPEC with clean energy.

I think the real issue with this sort of thing is that if Stark brand ARC Reactors put OPEC out of business there would be a LOT of knock-of effects and most comic book creators don't want to deal with that.  They want Iron Man punching WhipLash and don't want to tell a story about how gas stations everywhere are out of business because everyone's StarkCar has infinite range now and what that is doing to small town America.  Same with how Spiderman's webshooters aren't standard issue nonlethal side-arms for Police (and pay for Aunt May's healthcare), allowing them to web up low level supercriminals without calling out the Avengers every time Electro holds up a Credit Union.

You do see changed societies in "what if" and alternate future type stories but never in the main continuity.  If Heroes actually changed the world the comics would get further and further from the world people live in.

My first thought is: How does someone keep him from switching to his alternate form?

If there really isn't any way, then he shouldn't really get a point break as he pretty much has those powers whenever he wants them.  Maybe his defenses would get it as you would get one shot at him with his defenses down before he changes over. 

How does his life support: Doesn't age, only in alternate ID work?  Does he age when in Facade form but if he stays in Morphus form he will live forever?  If so, why would he ever be in Facade form?

From a pure play ability standpoint I'd buy his Silver and Fire issues as a Complication rather than as a limit on defenses.  As written a silver bullet would go through *all* his resistant PD like he was a normal person, which may be appropriate but also means a beat cop with a clip of silver bullets can gun down your tank throwing uber-monster.  If you are concerned that it only works in one identity I might give it -5 points to reflect it only works when he is in Morphus.  The same would apply to his Distinctive Features.
The cold skills seem fine

Otherwise, this is a pretty straightforward build.  Normal guy becomes uber-monster with lots of strength and speed.  Unfortunately there aren't a lot of tricks to make that cheaper.

4 minutes ago, zslane said:

 

I think you may be confusing Rob Liefeld with Todd McFarlane and Jim Lee. Liefeld was responsible for revamping New Mutants, not the X-Men, and it was McFarlane who created the new Spider-Man design that breathed new life into the title and made him a comic book artist rock star.

You are of course correct.  It was late, I was distracted & not thinking clearly..

However I stand by my larger point.  A bunch of new blood was doing a lot of exciting work & decided to go found their own comic company instead of being cogs in the Marvel or DC machines.  They succeeded for a while.  Until they didn't.

And as much as I hated the comics zeitgeist of the 90s with it's dark, violent heroes who all seemed to be government hit men for some reason... a lot of people loved it.  Things needed to move on from where they had been and these guys helped to do that.  Its easy to forget how much they as a group moved the ball.

Early on, the Image guys were mostly doing traditional comics at Marvel and broke out on their own to keep all the money they were making for others.

It's hard to remember now, but back in the day what Liefield was doing on Spiderman and X-Men was so different than what everyone had been doing before that it was really exciting to 14 year olds in the early 90s.  I was never a huge fan, but *so* many of by buddies were.  I knew one Spider-phile who at the time *loved* Spiderman under Liefield. He loved that the super humanly agile character was much more of a contortionist & many fans felt his yards and yards of webbing everywhere made comics before Liefield got on board seem pretty staid visually.  I had to admit that it made sense to give Supermodel Mary Jane Watson a non 70s haircut.

They were part of the big 90s comic bubble, and I don't think it's unfair to say the "fresh look" of the art combined with improved printing made the comics of the time feel like they were something different than what came before.  After the Image guys formed their own company for a while they just got *bigger*.

Personally, I think it was a classic example of fooling all the people some of the time.  They were kings of the world until Image started missing deadlines more than it hit them and people started to notice that so much of what was happening in the new comics was just art with no story.  Turns out just making splash pages with baddass assassin heroes only works for so long.  Eventually you need a plot.

7 hours ago, Old Man said:

I've played in games where the players just gave up trying to protect DNPCs that were this helpless or unlucky.

Years ago there was a Webcomic called "DM or the Rings" that was made entirely of screen grabs from the LotR movies and told the story as if it were an RPG game.

Boromir & the Hobbit's players abandoned the whole thing to play Star Wars after Boromir got killed.  The rest of the game was the remaining players being murder hobos and putting up with Gandalf the GM PC while ignoring the occasional updates on Frodo (whose player convinced everyone to play Starwars instead of the Battletech game another Hobbit player was pitching.  The remaining players enjoyed all the fighting at HelmsDeep & The White City but were a bit peeved when none of it mattered because the entire game came down to Frodo's will save at Mt. Doom.

Here we are

5 hours ago, Opal said:

Superman epitomizes it since he has just sooo much power, he absolutely should be corrupted by it, but instead he's a total boy scout.

When I was reading your post I thought of this:

This actually goes on for a couple of pages like this, with each being astonished that the other is a good man.
 

I think the thing of it is that we trust Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent to be on the side of the angels because they are written as good guys.  I don't think a lot of us trust that our fellow man has as good a heart as either of these folks.  I don't think I'd trust myself not to be corrupted by power.

At the risk of bringing real events into a comic book discussion: Right now as I write this my urban area is Rioting.  Again.  It isn't as out of control as the last time, but then the authorities are more experienced this time around.  I wish I knew how to stop it, but there is so much anger and bitterness all through all of it that I don't know what "stopping it" would look like, or if I should, even if I had the knowledge, resources, or power.

I think it was in Kingdom Come where it was pointed out that Superman's real power isn't being faster than a speeding bullet or more powerful than a locomotive, it's knowing whats right and what to do.  All. The. Time.

I think we don't trust proactive supers because believing a mortal would know what to do when the world is going sideways is harder than believing a man can fly.  I'm preoccupied a bit by the violence going on a few miles from me, but I've heard a lot about what "should" be done about things and most of it seems to come from a place of ignorance and fear.  There are so many who believe that if one side or another were punished things would be better.  One side has my sympathies more than the other but I don't believe that a good kicking would correct the problem either way.  I don't believe there is a reasoned middle ground on every issue, but I also don't think that simple solutions fix most real problems.   I don't think the existing system had done a great job of dispensing justice, but I *do* think it would be so much worse of there was less accountability than there is.

To bring this back on topic, I don't think that super heroes would fix as much as we imagine.  I think they would either end up committing atrocities in the name of "justice" or would just keep the lid on longer and let the pressure get higher before it blew.  Either way, right now I'm glad there isn't someone out there proactively Punisher'ing their way through my community.  We have enough problems.

Which is why Proactive Super Heroes terrify me.

But it would be super nice if Superman or Batman would show up.

I try to make sure my games are serious, never deviate from the plan, and are, if possible, depressing.

That is why I game.

2 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Anyone have an assessment of the usefulness of Urban Fantasy Hero in running this genre?

I actually did run an Urban Fantasy game using that book.  It imploded fairly quickly because there was a lot of disconnect between players about what we were actually trying to do with that game.  Some wanted more fights, some more investigation, and no one was clear on what the genre expectations were.  If you pick a fight with a troll under a bridge, do you have a chance or not?  Conan wins, Fellowship Samwise loses, RotK Samwise has a chance, how does your street magician do?

It wasn't the fault of Hero's book, as the GM I was the one that needed to establish the tone.  That said, I found Urban Fantasy Hero to be generic to the point of not being very helpful.  It laid out broad ideas of what Urban Fantasy could look like, gave you three settings to play in and set you loose.  If you picked one of those three you mostly got a magic system instead of a setting and you exhausted most of what was setup in about 3 game sessions & were then on your own.  You actually needed to roll quite a bit of your own to even get it to the table, unless the PCs did nothing but buy all the package deals. (None of my PCs made magic users, so the detailed Magic Systems didn't really help me)

I've been playing a lot of Hero for a long time so the mechanical comments didn't tell me what I didn't already knew about making my own magic systems.  Maybe if I hadn't been playing Hero in Non-Supers before it would have helped, but there was so much "mile wide/Inch deep" info on a broad genre that I very much felt I was home-brewing everything if I wanted a real game.

Champions Complete actually gives a *lot* more info on what your characters should do and what they should look like than Urban Fantasy Hero does, and imagine if all there was about the Champions Universe was what was written in Champions Complete?  Better than a completely blank slate, but a long way from a game in a book.  I get that you can't lose money on books and can't print books that don't sell, but if you know there is never going to be a Terran Empire setting Star Hero becomes a lot less useful.

It's why I'm hopeful about the discussion going on in another forum about a "Campaign in a Book" instead of another "Genre Hero" overview book.  Something for a GM to pick up & run rather than a "here is a guide to roll your own" is a pretty big gap in the Hero line IMHO.

6 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

That's a very reasonable criterion, Opal, and a thorough list, Jhamin, although as you say, not complete. There are some things that would be judgement calls. DEMON still exists in name, but in its current form is nearly unrecognizable compared to its earlier incarnation. The Institute for Human Advancement has replaced Genocide, but it still uses Minuteman robots. Hornet isn't Stinger from Deathstroke, but his origin is practically identical.

 

As steriaca points out, some of the classic characters, like Professor Muerte, several members of Deathstroke, the Fox of Crime, and Bora from old-school Eurostar, are part of the "past history" of the current official setting, but are officially dead or retired. That includes the only hero from the old days that I can think of, Starburst, who was a member of the Justice Squadron during the 1970s.

 

As far as "books" go, that's true. However, https://www.herogames.com/store/product/350-digital-hero-44/

 

I think that the IHA and Genocide exist in the same "niche" of Superpowered antagonists but are different enough from each other to be different.  Demon might be a contender, but the totally different ways it is portrayed over time work against it IMHO.

I think characters that are referred too but don't have write ups in more recent editions have slipped too far into obscurity to count as Iconic.

I also tend to discount Digital Hero.  I have a complete run myself, but it was a e-publication back when that was a thing only the truly hardcore paid for.  I think that appearing there & nowhere else doesn't make you prominent enough to "count" as having shown up in an official publication.  Its like a Star Wars movie vs Mandalorian vs the Clone Wars cartoons.  All are "cannon" but your average viewer knows Luke Skywalker, maybe knows the "Sliver Bobafett Looking guy" from Disney+ and likely doesn't know who "The Bad Batch" are

2 hours ago, Opal said:

So paying 30 is arguably over-paying, thus the 1/2 limitation, which gives a similar result, without the oddity of 'buying off' limitations on a 0-pt power or 'adding onto' an independent focus or whatever.

I do see your point, but by that logic any alien that has horns or scaly skin should also get the 1/2 limit because there are knives and body armor.  Is Str cheaper if exo-skeletons are common in the setting?  It maybe isn't unfounded from a game logic point of view, but IMHO it stars to get weird when basically everything is cheaper because you can just use a gizmo anyway. 

If that is really how it works I start to wonder if Hero is the right system to run the game in.

9 minutes ago, steriaca said:

Cobra/King Cobra and his organizations Cobra/CoIL (Cobra Imperial Legion) and his supers The Oborous. He appeared in 3rd edition, was renamed King Cobra in 4th, got his supers in 4th (late 4th is still 4th), and many of them are still around in the 5th and 6th edition.

 

I would say Professor Murtie/Murtie and his agents if Terror Incorporated. Ok, officially ge is as dead as  a doornail. But there are so many fans of him that we had to bring a shovel and a lightning rod and give him a Jason Lives treatment. And not only that, but Gigante, and the other classic members and brand new guys.

 

I probably misspelled his name. That is to be expected. 

King Cobra is a good add, but Professor Muerte fails the "Made it to 5th/6th edition" test.  I loved him too, but he hasn't been in a book in over 20 years.

1 hour ago, Opal said:

So, does that narrow the field to nothing?  For Heroes it may well, there were  never that many heroes published - the players are supposed to provide those.  

 

For villains, is Mechanon still around?  Sounds like Dr. Destroyer is. 

I don't think that is unreasonable & actually still leaves us with a decent chunk of characters as possibilities.

Mechanon & Doctor Destroyer are both central to Champions & I can't imagine a list of iconic Champions villains that doesn't include both of them.

As for others who go back at least to 3rd edition, and still exist (with a write-up!) in 6th how about:

Ankylosaur

Black Paladin

Bulldozer
Dark Seraph

Eurostar

Firewing

Foxbat

Green Dragon

Grond

Howler

Leech
Ogre

Shrinker

Sunburst

The Ultimates (mostly)

Utility
Viper (as a legion of Agents in Green, none of the "Viper Supers" or the various leaders over the years qualify)

I'm sure I'm missing a few who qualify, and I'm not sure *I'd* put all of these on my Iconic list, but they all have the longevity.  If we include characters that started in 4th and still exist in 6th there are another couple dozen that could be added, but I'm not sure all of them were that prominent in earlier editions.  (The Devil's Advocates & Joseph Otanga showed up in "Creatures of the Night" back in 1993 for example, but I don't know that many folks took notice of them until they were given a bigger spotlight in later Enemies books and I don't know that they are that big a deal now)

I think you might be able to argue Defender as a Hero even though he originated in 4th.  I'm not sure where I'd file the Harbinger of Justice.  He is *the* Iconic character for Dark Champions and dates back to 4th edition but how much that subline "counts" has changed over the years.

As organizations, PRIMUS and UNTIL are both good guy Agencies and have had long enough runs, but I'm not sure if either are as big a deal as Viper in terms of "IP".

13 minutes ago, steriaca said:

But I'm looking at the entire history of published stuff for Champions anyways.

That is where it gets complicated.  Champions has been a long running RPG & which characters get love has shifted several times.  I get that many of the mentioned characters were important when people got into Champions, but lots of these characters haven't seen print since the Reagan Administration.

I've been playing Champions for 30 years, but I started with 4th edition.  So Seeker is my jam & I never owned most of the 3rd edition stuff until long after the fact so Strike Force characters, Marksman, Gargoyle, etc don't really mean anything too me.  The Circle & Mete, Blood & Dr. McQuark, etc were all out of print & hard to track down when I was getting into Champions in the 90s.  The Big Blue Book and Classic Enemies were what formed my impression of Champions.

If we are looking at the whole history I think we eliminate everyone who only saw print in 1st-3rd, and most everyone who didn't survive the cutover from 4th to 5th.  I would argue that even if you were on the cover of a book in 1987, if you haven't seen print since then you probably aren't Iconic.

Part of the problem with all of this is that Hero basically rebooted it's universe between 4th and 5th edition.  From 1-4 pretty much everything that was published was still "in continuity", but lots of fundamentals were replaced in the move to 5th edition.  If you read it in a 5th edition book it probably still applies in 6th edition books.  As I understand it this was partly because when the new owners of Hero bought the IP before releasing 5th they discovered that they didn't own all the old school characters, the original authors did.  The rebooted 5th/6th edition universe was in part an exercise in only using stuff Hero Owned.

Seeker is an in-universe comic character now.  Solitaire, Jaguar, Obsidian, Crusader, Starburst don't exist and are likely not coming back.

So as many warm memories as people have for some of these characters, many of them haven't been official Champions characters for over 20 years.

If you want to go Iconic in a way that is useful for the future, you need to stick to 5th & 6th edition.

Also, how does Champions Online fit into all this?  I'm willing to bet more people have played that in the last 10 years than have played Tabletop Champions.

7 minutes ago, Opal said:

See, that's why I brought up Replaceable.   I don't think there's any precedent, for, say, starting with a mundane piece of gear and 'adding points to it.'

Replaceable was a -1/2 limitation in the original Star Hero, it was to recognize that in a setting where, say, anyone could pick up a 2dRKAe laser pistol, an alien with 2dRKAe laser-eye-beams was not really getting a whole lot for his 30 pts (I believe that was an example, it's been a few... decades). 

See, I would argue that the 2d6RKA Eye Beams cant be disarmed, taken away, or run out of ammunition & wouldn't be affected by EMP Grenades.  They can be pushed and would run off END instead of a supply chain.

Basically, by actually buying them as a power you don't have to deal with the "Real Weapon" limit all the free equipment always has.

Years ago my group played through "Pyramid in the Sky".  At one point one of the PCs is captured by Psionic Crab-Men who are fixing to invade the earth.  He is brought before their leader on the mothership.  Hero in Chains, Psionic Crab man on a throne surrounded by his Crab-Man Guards, I went full on space man spiff roleplaying the situation as the Alien Leader went on a long rant about how weak and pathetic the earth was, how futile human resistance would be, how soon the earth would be their plaything, etc. The PCs were into it.

Our strong jawed hero looked him square in the Eyestalk and declared: "You Overestimate us!"

The entire table rolled on ground laughing.  The Player took a good 30 seconds to realize he misspoke.  Ever since then is has been really hard for anyone in the group to really roleplay a defiant hero without anyone else mentioning the enemy overestimates them.

On 4/6/2021 at 11:57 AM, BoloOfEarth said:

Had a non-Foxbat adventure where a group of vampires were trying to steal something that would have made them very powerful.  For the minion vampires, I included one who had been an Elvis impersonator before getting bit.  I rewrote the lyrics to a number of Elvis songs - Don't Step on My Blood Red Shoes, Undead Hotel, etc. and sang one of on each of his Phases.  Keeping in mind this was a minion, not the big bad or even one of her major minions... but half the hero team ganged up on Vampire Elvis just to shut him up. 

My Teen Hero PCs accidentally set free Nosferatu Red & his Proletariat of the Night while they were beach coming in Oregon.  They were a coven of Communist Vampires that had been imprisoned in a cave in 1937 by a Golden Age Hero.  They immediately resumed their plan to return Alaska for the Soviet Union.

My all-time favorite home-brew Foxbat Adventure was when he stole a time-machine in an elaborate scheme to make the Star Wars Prequels better.  He actually succeeded & The PCs just decided to let it slide.  In my ongoing Champions campaign everyone acknowledges the Prequels as superior to the original movies and Lucas Studios has bought Disney.  Episodes 7-9 are still fairly controversial, and Foxbat is scheming....

Black Harlequin once launched a scheme to steal all the hot toys of the Christmas Season & Foxbat was the one who turned him in to the PCs for being a creepy jerk.

As I'm running a Teen Hero game I'm also seriously contemplating doing "FoxBat Beyond", where the old Foxbat retires after developing Tennis Elbow and Shin Splints & a few months later the PCs have to deal with the "new" Foxbat, a teenager who spends half his time arguing with the voice in his earpiece.

Dr Nope had a different damage value for his toxic punch on the front and back of the sheet.
I might break his Powers and Knowledge into two sections.  You basically have that already but without section headers it's harder to read on the back.

On 4/7/2021 at 10:30 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah and that's the idea I had that led to posting this thread: what was once amazing and super powered stuff is now mundane and ordinary.  I wrote both The Island of Dr Destroyer and the upcoming Champions Begins with the assumption that every superhero is also carrying around a smart phone of some sort (probably a cheap disposable so they can't be tracked in their secret identity, but still)

On the other hand, I'd say that on the Island of Doctor Destroyer you probably get Zero Bars while your Team Communicator Headsets built with superscience and bought as a special device still work.

The evil Doctor's missiles can also lock on to unauthorized IPhones.  The Team Communicators are probably a grey area.

I think people are overthinking letting PCs have smartphones.  Sure, they should be ubiquitous in the game just like they are in real life.  Your Character can call up Google Maps or Social Media, Take Photos of stuff close by, call other team members, etc but they are also going to be real limited just like they are in real life.
Smartphones are delicate, don't like water, don't like lots of high energy discharges, etc so be careful with it.  Assume all the super-science villains are hacking you.
Coverage in most major cities is going to be OK, although at least where I live the lower income parts of town are always the last to get the new stuff like 5G so your IPhone is going to do great in your stately manor but not as great in crime alley. 
If you have access to Police Databases or Military Satellites those are still point-worthy Perks if you get to them from a phone or the HeroComputer in your HeroCave.

I think the comparison to a Car is a good one.  There is a huge difference between a 2018 Toyota and the Batmobile and there is a huge difference between a Samsung Android and the Avengers Communicator Cards.  If you want to fight crime from your Honda Fit go for it but you aren't going to win any Fast & Furious car chases unless you pay points.  Same with the Smartphones inside a Viper nest.