segerge

Thanks. I was a little busy this afternoon/evening...

BUMP!

Until Hermit finishes the last chapter, I shall NOT let this fall off the first page of NGD!

For a moment, I thought you were going to go with the classic 1990's character from the old USENET rec.arts.comics newsgroup that resulted from a typo.

Well, that makes me feel bad The TASK FORCE version of Leap Day had Shadow Destroyer masquerading as Chantal in the Inner Circle waiting for the correct moment to subvert the ritual. And that was before Captain Chronos dropped the original Doctor Destroyer and the two superheroes who had saved him back into the normal flow of time right in the middle of the summoning circle...

The idea I had after posting yesterday was that the energies released caused... something... to happen with the Kings of Edom. Something which has been sensed by the leader of each surviving faction of the original DEMON. In short, think of Game of Thrones, with the Kings of Edom playing the part of the various claimants to the Iron Throne and the surviving parts of DEMON fighting the Kings' proxy civil war on Earth to determine which King wins. I swear I was sober when this idea originally came to me.

5th Edition had him pledged to the Solipsist at the time of his death (The Mystic World, p. 54). Having said that, I'm with Lord Liaden on this one. Given the nature of the entities involved ([cough]Sharna-Gorak[/cough]) and the rather spectacular nature of the canonical working's failure, it's not that much of a stretch to see something like this happening. Even worse, have both Archimago and a surviving Black Shepherd competing for control of the remains of DEMON. You all thought the Leap Day working was bad...

I like that handling of the Inverted Trinity post-Leap Day. I do, however, have a question concerning their regeneration ability, which was specifically tied to Luther Black being alive. Are you saying that the backwash of the ritual's failure gave the Black Shepherd enough points to buy that limitation off (so to speak) in addition to casting out Imhullu? As an aside, the fate of the Inverted Trinity was something I wrestled with when plotting the TASK FORCE version of the Leap Day working. I had almost resigned myself to them surviving the ritual in my version until I noticed that limitation with all three of them.

Hmm, Valorous is a flying brick with a noticeably bulky belt and an extremely defensive reaction toward Partials. I'm guessing he's either a Partial who's supplementing his powers with invisible forcefield augmentation, or had a sibling/parent/relative who was a Partial and got into major trouble. This is a good read -- as in "multiple binge-reading sessions in one day" good.

5th Edition Champions Universe, p.140 recommends using the standard VIPER agent as a template for ARGENT, then provides some sample equipment in the sidebars on p. 140-141.

That's... awesome. That idea belongs in APG III should it ever get written. That's also something I've only ever been able to achieve in written stories and not game sessions.

Don't forget that complications can sometimes be entertaining as well. That one player's 2d6 Instant susceptibility to Teleportation defined as "throwing up", for instance, can be good for more than a few laughs out of combat. Like one of the earlier editions of Champions said, the primary purpose of the game is for the GM and the players to be entertained. Also, if the player in this example is quick enough on the uptake and realizes that vomit and electronics don't mix very well, they might learn a valuable lesson in how to role-play turning a weakness into a strength.

I abort to Martial Dodge

Sure. In the Champions Universe timeline, Menton's writeup in CV1 (page 118) mentions a secret UNTIL mission to prevent him from becoming President of Guamanga. The definitive version of what UNTIL exactly did in the CU is in News of the World, starting in page 101. Short version (which I followed in "Jungles of Guamanga" except for changing a villain or two in my version), UNTIL worked through back-channels and contracted with TWO teams of supervillains for the takedown -- a decoy team and the real team of shooters. I needed an organization within UNTIL which was willing to hire supervillains Suicide Squad style to do this in-story. From what I remembered thirty years previously, SAT was an almost-perfect fit for the type of agency which wouldn't be too concerned about morals or ethics to get this type of job done. So, I reinvented them as a non-canonical UNTIL Section 13, doing the jobs the rest of UNTIL is unwilling (or unable by treaty obligations) to do. I even borrowed Major Barrington as their leader... Hopefully, this makes things a little less confusing.

There was a reason SAT came to my mind so quickly when I made that post. Using only memories of their original writeup from the very first editions of Champions, I had recently repurposed them as UNTIL Section 13 for the TASK FORCE story "Jungles of Guamanga". They were the in-universe explanation for why UNTIL would hire supervillains to try and assassinate Menton.

Horrible things. HORRIBLE...

Like what the CIA used to have? Look up "Glomar Explorer" on Wikipedia.

A suite of magical spells which can only be cast through animals the caster has made their Animal Friendship roll with would be highly useful and very much in-concept for druids and shamans.

If I or my DNPC were superpowered animals, I'd be very worried about Animal Control. Oh, wait...

In my experience, the 700-point optimized invincible combat monster usually comes at the cost of buying those points through an almost-crippling series of limitations. If that GM is not derelict in his duties, your Destroyer rebuild should still be combat-effective in situations which would leave those other characters ineffective. By startling coincidence, I am GM'ing a scenario for a gamer's reunion in late July or so with a 500 base and 200 in disadvantages. On the off-chance you're one of the players for that, I'll just say that based on the characters I have already seen and approved they're in for an... interesting run.

The subject of a Vanguard write-up comes up here occasionally (most recently last year sometime), and some of us have taken unofficial cracks at his stats until such time as Silver Age Champions becomes a thing. A forum search should turn up the last thread where he was discussed. At a minimum, he should probably be equivalent point-wise to Doctor Destroyer in the 1980's -- call it roughly 1700 to 1800 points in 5th Edition.

A civil war among surviving Morbanes to determine who leads and rebuilds DEMON. Now that is a scenario worth writing...

Then how about going really old-school. SAT, anyone?

The closest thing we have to a canonical fate of the Leap Day working is in D:SoD pages 155-156. Whether the writers of CV4 decide to stay with this explanation or go with a new one is entirely up to them.

But... but... Comic Book Plot Logic! Snarky answer aside, enough samples of the original Spanish Flu genome exist in modern research labs that any supervillainous mad scientist worth his reputation could get enough to synthesize his own mass outbreak today. That in itself would make a good Dark Champions plot, now that I type it. You then, of course, lose the Rule of Cool factor involved with any Time Travel story, plus the "layers upon layers of misdirection" element behind the original idea...