segerge

On 7/3/2019 at 1:20 PM, steriaca said:

Desolfication, only vs AoE attacks, requires a dex roll.

A standard feature of Ladyhawk's character sheet in the TASK FORCE universe, except I have it requiring an Acrobatics roll and call it "Artful Dodging"

"Evasive" in Fantasy Hero basically does the same thing.

I did a variation on the old "You All Meet in a Tavern" trope for a one shot I ran for some old gaming friends of mine a couple of years ago.  The trick was in planning the multiple entry hooks for the characters that would all eventually converge in Indianapolis February of 2012 during Super Bowl week, made all the more interesting because everyone bringing a serious character wanted to play either villains or anti-heroes.  I put one character in Hot Sleep at the Goodman Institute, with multiple characters hired to break him out -- when that was done, he learned the NPC hero whom he blamed for his powers would be in Indianapolis and immediately wanted to go there to fight them.  A couple more characters were approached by UNTIL's Section 13 (basically SAT from earlier versions of Champions) with a job offer to aid in the defection of a member of the Vril Society.  The anti-hero was a member of that society and was attempting to break up its alliance with DEMON, which he hoped the fellow member's defection would aid. 

Surprisingly enough, it worked when gamed.

Because I came up with a playable timeline intended to be played this summer with friends of mine in Indianapolis that Real Life has prevented me from Game Mastering

If I gave everyone a Champions-based timeline would that help?

Don't assume the time dilation between the alternate Earth and your Earth/V'Ha-1 has always been a constant.  Assume they all started with time flows at about the same speed.  Over the course of eons, the Alternate Earth drifted away from the other dimensions.  The farther away it drifts from Earth or V'Ha-1, the larger the time dilation.

If I had time (see what I did there? ) I'd come up with a more techno-babbleish explanation using healthy doses of General Relativity and Kaluza-Klein Theory.  I'm sort of remembering how time dilation can change as a function of gravitational potential energy as I write this.

5 hours ago, BoloOfEarth said:

 

Go for it.  I had it as initially a Mechanon plot (though at a larger scale and meant to cause planet-wide extinction), stolen by a villain team and scaled down.  And having a bunch of tiny satellites working in concert, rather than one large satellite, meant the heroes wouldn't be able to just shoot it down easily.  At the first sign of attack, they could scatter and then regroup later.

True.  Hundreds of tinysats can't be shot down by a guy with a telescope, lots of patience, and access to a hardware store in Dalhart, TX.

If Doctor Destroyer had ever found out exactly WHAT happened to his Mind Control Satellite network in 1984, the retribution would have been lethally epic...

On 6/4/2019 at 10:44 AM, BoloOfEarth said:

Launching hundreds of small (textbook-sized) satellites into orbit, each of which can generate a localized gravity field.  Combined, they can create a giant gravity lens capable of focusing the sun's energy into a massive (half a kilometer wide) laser-like beam directed at any point on the Earth's surface.

 

 

This... this is sheer genius.  Mind if I steal borrow it?

On 6/4/2019 at 10:44 AM, BoloOfEarth said:

 

Use cell phones and electrical lines to generate fields that interfere with the intelligence and common sense of anybody nearby. 

Too late by at least a decade.

17 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

"UNTIL's answer to Project Awakening (VIPER's psionics program), Project Mind Game is a group of UNTIL agents with mental powers... and the scientists who study them. Unlike VIPER, which has no scruples against experimenting on human subjects to induce mental powers, UNTIL must recruit its mentalists. Thus, Project Mind Game is quite small -- it has only six psionic members." [Names and descriptions redacted for Fair Use.]

[deletia for brevity]

BTW UNTIL has several of these "Special Projects" dedicated to countering particular threats, or classes of threat, including "Project Hermes" dealing with magical ones.

 

Shame on me for forgetting about that, especially since UNTIL's Project Shiva (Doctor Destroyer) and Project Citadel (Istvatha V'Han) figured in several TASK FORCE stories.

I was trying to come up with a cool hunted for a psionic character I was designing, and it occurred to me that while the Mystic World of the Champions Universe has the Trigmesistus Council to (sort of) police it, there is no equivalent in the Psionic World.

In a world where psionic powers are prevalent enough to be noticeable by the population at large, what would such an organization look like?  What code or codes would it enforce on psionics?  Or am I totally crackers for thinking such an organization could exist even in a superheroic setting?

I saw the references to "Fantomas" out of the corner of my mind and immediately thought "The Phantom of the Opera"

I'm not sure how much of a master villain he'd be to the heroes, but he is a gadgeteer with a massive Presence score and a flair for the theatric.

5 hours ago, archer said:

 

Are you absolutely sure one of your main characters wasn't elected President in 2016?

 

That would explain so much!

Unless he changed his name to "Julie Dormyer Hawkins," yes

If you look at my forum signature, you'll see a link to TASK FORCE, which starts more-or-less as the Champions Universe in August 1982.  It's stories based on characters I first played with friends in the Indianapolis area throughout the 1980's and reinvented starting this decade, as explained in the Frequently-Asked Questions section.  The style of story-telling and characterization gradually changes from "beginning superheroes" in 1982 to "legendary figures" in 2017.

The TASK FORCE universe doesn't jump the rails with respect to the CU until the Leap Day working in 2012, and with respect to Real Life when one of the main characters gets elected President in 2016.

If your campaign has Doctor Destroyer (or an equivalent villain) being brought to justice and the location/keys to his master HQ being turned over to UNTIL (or an equivalent organization), his technological treasure trove will become an irresistable target for most supervillains looking to "jump themselves up the food chain".  Bonus points if you can have some level of antipathy between the heroes attempting to keep that tech out of villainous hands and the organization holding it.

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

I also have a quibble with "Immobile."  I will, however, accept a STR-Minimum and "Bulky."

 

 

Deal

On 10/1/2018 at 8:11 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

 

Focus, Dead Time Lord, Expendable?

You made me do this...

If we assume the Dead Time Lord is OAF Fragile immobile and make it Extremely Difficult to obtain, that's -3 1/4 of Limitations and lowers the Real Point Cost from 9 to 6.

That's almost worth including  

I have to admit a little disappointment with the lack of development of the IHA in FRed and 6th Ed.  Enough so that when 4th Ed "The Mutant Files" became available for purchase again I did so with the intent of merging the the IHA and GENOCIDE to flesh out some Hunteds that a couple of my TASK FORCE characters had.

Major kudos to Lord Liaden for fleshing the IHA out like this.

11 hours ago, archer said:

 

I don't understand the "TASK FORCE universe" reference. If someone could point me in the right direction, it would be appreciated.

TASK FORCE is a side project I've had since 2012 when I rediscovered Champions.  Wanting to re-learn it, I started by revisiting characters I had played back in the 1980s with friends in a "Where are they now?" manner.  I ended up getting so carried away with it that I gave them their own timeline starting with the Champions Universe in 1982 and then running forward in time 35 years to 2017.  The story archive (fanfic only for what should be obvious licensing reasons) should be in my forum signature.  A second site which includes background material on the characters and answers to some frequently-asked questions can be found at task-force.droppages.com

11 hours ago, archer said:

 

That final "Resurrection Only" might need to be phrased as "Resurrection (with fully restored Limbs when applicable) Only" so something similar. As it reads, that limitation prevents the healing limb part from working at all?

That actually gets around the whole "hand gets chopped off but regrows since he's within 15 hours of his regeneration" problem from "The Christmas Invasion."  I like that.

11 hours ago, archer said:

And I'd prefer to deal with the other side effect as a permanent physical complication of the person's body changing into a different body rather than treating it as a cosmetic transform. The cosmetic transform might fail and leave the Doctor in the same body. Part of the fun is the dealing with the new body and none of the people she'd previously met in the campaign knowing her, you don't want to miss that experience due to bad die rolls (or the transform wearing off over time).

An interesting take.  This handles the 10th Doctor's aborted regeneration in "The Stolen Earth" now that I think about it...

11 hours ago, archer said:

 

Not a fan of the RKA thing at all but if you're looking for an exact duplication of the power, I guess something like that is needed. You didn't specify how many dice of RKA so I'd assume it is 1d6?

1d6 each phase for 4 phases.  On the whole point of adding the RKA as a side effect, it's worth noting that regenerations in Classic Who (including the McCoy-McGann regen from the 1996 movie) were nowhere near as traumatic to the surrounding environment as they have been potrayed in New Who.  Though now that I write that, I remember that in the two regenerations I listed to justify its inclusion the Doctor was trying VERY hard to forestall it from happening.

Need a sanity check on an already-designed character in the TASK FORCE universe.  Apologies for the extremely-specific geekiness in advance. 

I am attempting to duplicate Regeneration as shown in Doctor Who, and could use some sanity checks on what I've come up with.  This is what I have so far, based on New Who regenerations (Jphn Hurt through Jodie Whitaker) and 6th Edition Build Rules:

Regeneration:  Healing BODY 3d6 (standard effect: 9 points), Can Heal Limbs, Resurrection, Constant (+1/2) (82 Active Points); No Conscious Control (only at time of death; -2), 8 Continuing Charges lasting 1 Turn each which Never Recover (-2), Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (2d6 Drain INT self only constant (for duration of power) recovers 5 points/hour; -2), Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (10d6 Cosmetic Transform [Change appearance]; -1), Side Effects (Side Effect only affects the environment near the character; 1d6 continuous (for duration of power) Area Effect radius RKA personal immunity no range; -3/4), Resurrection Only (-1/2)

The "Drain INT" side effect will subtract on average rolls over the course of 1 turn 28 INT, which won't fully recover for 6 hours.  The RKA side effect rolled over the course of 1 turn properly simulates the damage done to the TARDIS during the Tennant-Smith and Capaldi-Whitaker regenerations, but not what the Smith-Capaldi regeneration did to the Daleks on Trenzalore.  I have no clue how to simulate Tennant's hand regeneration in "The Christmas Invasion" short of a compound power with a trigger and an appropriate 15-hour time limit.

Thoughts?

{EDIT] Assume the character has a SPD of 4 when looking at the power and side effects.

8 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

To clarify, Galactic Champions does not deal with "DEMON 3000." (It does briefly describe "VIPER 3000," as well as the future Mechanon.) The detailed description of the outcome of the Edomite's apotheosis scheme, and how it indeed leads to a potential resurgence of DEMON in the 31st Century, appears on pp. 156-57 of DEMON: Servants Of Darkness.

I have both books and and got them mixed up.  I've even quoted the DEMON passage as you referenced correctly in a thread last year. 

This is what I get for posting off the top of my head.  Thanks.

The closest you can get in published Champions Universe canon can be found in "Galactic Champions'.  If you limit yourself to a range of 2010 to mid-2018, you get the fate of the Edomite's Leap Day Working of 2012 (the chapter on DEMON 3000) and Mechanon's fate in 2017 (the chapter on Mechanon 3000).

When I was writing TASK FORCE (with stories spanning from 1982 to 2017 in-universe), I attempted to stay with known CU canon up to the Leap Day Working.  After that, I jumped the rails and kept going on my own.

Heisenberg compensators, because quantum physics operates on time as well (and because you can steal shamelessly from Star Trek:TNG)

Entropic Compensators would be useful as well, since you'll be jumping to a time period with a wildly-different entropy than your origin point.

If you're changing spatial location on Earth at the same time, your villain will also have to compensate for things like different heights between points A and B (air pressure and gravitational potential energy) and different latitudes (earth rotational speed).  I'd probably hand-wave some of those away with something like "hyper-dimensional modulation"

A physics degree is a wonderful thing to abuse...

I wrote a story in the TASK FORCE universe that takes place during the 1999 World Series of Power at a fictional superhuman-themed casino/resort on the Strip.  I was trying for an "Ocean's 11" parody but got something considerably... different when I was done. Follow the links in the .signature block, and the story is titled, "What Happens in Vegas..."

If you do have an villain org infiltrate your version of PETA, some of the larger and/or more subtle ones have operatives within the news media, perfect for spreading damaging stories about interfering heroes.

Invictus is obvious (and has the media connections), so let's look at other possibilities...

For an intriguing variation, how about Franklin Stone?  He may not have the media connections, but he does have business, government, and high-society contacts which could be just as effective if used cleverly.  Heck, even have him make anonymous donations to PETA (which of course cannot be traced to him) on the understanding that they be used against Honey Badger...

Then there are people out to have nookie in odd places and a museum is perfect for this. Certainly less sacrilegious than a church.

That rather depends on the museum and your background

Case in point: years ago, my reserve unit was having a banquet at the Air Force Museum.  My wife at the time suggested we sneak out for a little bit of, uh, personal time in the Apollo 15 Command Module on display there.  I reluctantly vetoed that idea mostly because, as a child of the Space Race era of history, it seemed a little sacrilegious to me.

 

I walked with her, "Yeah, The Adventures of Fish Guy," I snorted with a chuckle, "That'll be a hit."

It already is.  I go here first before anywhere else on the forum.

Also, Lady Obsidian is awesome.