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Spidey88

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Everything posted by Spidey88

  1. Re: Ways to manage a huge team with a lot of characters? Once we get past the initial competition to be on the team, I'm going to figure out who has other priorities, who's available all the time, etc. I also figure I'll be responsible for who is available to be on active duty, but I'll take requests from the players. "Sorry, Extendor has to take his mom to the mall today. He says he can come in tomorrow. El Toro Rojo called, though - he's got some free time and was hoping to get some help cleaning up the organized crime in Mazatlan." I'm also going to assume most of the NPCs will get some points here and there, but I'm not going to worry about it excessively. My only real concern was from a bookkeeping perspective (keeping track of who got what over time is harder than just saying everybody gets the same). Actually, I'm going to have VIPER attack the well-publicized super-base when it's populated only by the misfit "F-Team" (all the oddballs who didn't quite fit in elsewhere) who are waiting around for something to do. You've pretty much come to the same conclusion I have - always picking the perfect NPC for the job can ruin certain types of stories. They'll get to do that sometimes, but not all the time - gotta make sure they have to work hard for success from time to time!
  2. Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play I was going to say: "I can give you the play-by-play" - but this is way faster!
  3. Re: 5th Ed. Question: Desolidification(is affected by magic) vs Magical being? Well, that limitation means Ghostwalker is affected by magical attacks normally, not (if I recall the rules correctly) that he couldn't pass through a magical barrier, area, or person. I'd lean towards "sure, why couldn't he possess Bocal?" Now - if Bocal has a magical force field, I could see that being a slightly stickier issue special effect-wise.
  4. Re: Therietical "Champions of the Rising Son", what would you want to see? I'd also like to see this theoretical book in a format much like Champions of the North. While a lot of the background wasn't necessary for me (being Canadian myself), it seemed to be great spread of useful info that GMs would need.
  5. Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play For my part, I'm sorry for having inadvertently stirred this particular pot a bit in another thread. I know that's I'm firmly on one side of the fence on this particular issue, so I'm not going to comment on it - perhaps we should all agree to disagree? Not that anyone here is getting terribly hostile or anything - I just figure we should maybe try to let sleeping dogs lie before it gets out of hand. Previous searches here have indicated this topic is quite a hornet's nest... Anyway, back to the topic of the thread: My current campaign has, as major NPC team-mates: 1) a stretchy guy 2) a shrinking lady 3) an invisible/desolidification guy 4) a shadow/darkness manipulator 5) an amphibious guy (not helpless out of the water at all, but has some aquaman-esque elements, and will be talking to certain aquatic animals in short order) 6) 2 superscientists who aren't gadgeteers. 7) One of the players has telepathy and mind control, but no TK. Granted, there's 30 NPCs on the team at the moment, so they're bound to cover a lot of ground concept-wise. That being said, I've never played with a character who was an energy projector without flight. One of the PCs is "Cyclops, done the way the player would have made him" - so in addition to versatile energy blasts and martial arts prowess, he can fly. Other types I've rarely seen: High-level bricks without high defenses, period (resistant or otherwise) Power-armour wearers without gobs of tech skills (eg. pilot the suit, but didn't make it or can't fix it) Speedsters with low DEX (pretty odd, but certainly not impossible to have an effective character like this)
  6. Re: popular super heroes and villans
  7. Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play Eep! Forget I said anything...
  8. Re: Dinosaur Write-Ups for Shapeshifter For speed, maybe a Dromecieomimus (an ornithomimid) - thought by some to be able to outrun an ostrich, which can get up to about 50 mph. For agility, perhaps a smaller dromaeosaur like Velociraptor or Deinonychus, or perhaps a Troodon (any of those would have a good combo of speed and agility, extra inches of leaping, nasty claws, coupled with keen senses and at least modest manual dexterity - a dino that could hold a gun or something). If any dinosaur could pull off martial arts or ninja-esque sneakiness, it'd be these kind of guys. Troodon is also generally considered to be the likely contender for "smartest dinosaur", if that counts for anything. Ankylosaurs would have pretty awesome defenses - just about the only animal I can think of that had armoured eyelids. Built like a tank, in both proportions and toughness. Pachycephalosaur of some kind for powerful move-throughs (bony skull for ramming attacks). Brachiosaur or some other sauropod for raw STR and massive amounts of stompyness. Parasaurolophus for a stentorian voice (HEY! OVER HERE!)
  9. Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play Well, not everyone. I loved that story! (I was 13 - admittedly, I still like it.)
  10. Re: Ways to manage a huge team with a lot of characters? LOL - that is NOT a blizzard. Visibility is too good.
  11. Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play Even more so now, since he's been getting training from Shang-Chi in martial arts.
  12. Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play No groaning here - I never really developed past the "Spider-Man + ninja = awesome" phase. Truthfully, while I've gained a considerable amount of maturity and new interests over the years; anything I loved when I was 6, I still love now - pretty much without exception. I just have a bigger budget for toys now!
  13. Re: Ways to manage a huge team with a lot of characters? That's a rather interesting idea - I may have to bring it up with the players to see what they think. The only potential problem is the fact that not all the NPC team-mates are not all built to the same power level - some of them are considerably less than the PCs. The way Followers are built, you pay for the most expensive one, then 5 points for each 2x multiple. As-is, there'd be nothing stopping the players from adding enough points to the lower-powered NPCs to match the higher-powered ones - it wouldn't cost a single extra point to the cost of the Followers to boost the low-powered guys by 100 points or more! Going with the Multipower/VPP thing might work out a little better in this regard (as long as I can accept the base having a thousand extra points or something tossed on top).
  14. Re: Ways to manage a huge team with a lot of characters? Alternatively, you could just move to Edmonton...
  15. Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play He's also got 45 STR and OCV levels with Sweep - he's an absolute holy terror in HTH combat, but only in short spurts (he tires very quickly doing that sort of thing). I posted him in this thread: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/81640-The-October-Eight-competition Scroll down to post 13 - he's spread out over several posts, otherwise I would have linked to just one post. He's actually a remade version of my absolute first Champions character from when I was 13 - in many ways, he's sort of an amalgam/homage of Spider-Man and Dr. Octopus.
  16. Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play One of the other players in the campaign I'm in does this, plus ninjitsu stuff. She creates darkness, can make shadows come to life and grab foes, form duplicates from them, and teleport through them.
  17. Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play
  18. Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play My current character is Kraken, an amphibious cephalopod-man: he combines some Aquaman-ish elements, as well as relying almost entirely on a stratospheric DCV for defense (only 3 rPD and rED from Combat Luck). He's pretty much the definition of "squishy" - it comes in handy when he needs to wriggle through a drainpipe, but less so when he actually gets tagged. So far it's worked out pretty well - he's got a 38 DEX and 8 SPD, but he's got to act defensively enough that he doesn't dominate fights too badly.
  19. Re: Ways to manage a huge team with a lot of characters? I worked really hard to make sure all the NPCs were as unique as possible - that being said, there's obviously at least some overlap in skills and such. I think I'll just have to sit the players down and spell things out in terms of "try to do things yourself - but if you get stuck..." Perhaps nudging them towards a small team with a rotating roster, rather than a giant group with several subteams, will help to keep things a little simpler from a planning perspective (they choose who's along for each mission, but can't bring EVERYONE - and I don't have to plan for the actions of six different groups of heroes). We'll see what the players have to say about it. I also need to make sure the PCs aren't overshadowed when an NPC seems like the perfect fit for a particular mission - Booster Gold might want to be involved in detective work, but why bother when you can get Batman to do it? I didn't deliberately make any of the NPCs more powerful than the PCs, but with so many of them, some of them will be better suited to deal with certain situations. As long as everyone has the chance to contribute meaningfully, I suppose - I guess I'll just have to play it by ear to some degree.
  20. Re: Ways to manage a huge team with a lot of characters? Thanks for the feedback! I'd rep you if I could. (Must spread around, yadda yadda...)
  21. Hey, gang! Thought I'd ask a few questions of you that relate to my current Champions campaign. In this campaign, all the PCs (and a couple dozen NPCs) are in the process of trying out for a superteam with limited global jurisdiction (much like UNTIL's UNITY, only on a scale a little more like the JLA). They've got a base on the scale of the Avengers Mansion, a team super-jet, support from the UN (again, much like UNITY), and a few regular folks who will act as support staff in and around the base. It's set in a more-or-less straight-up Champions Universe; with Grond, VIPER, and most of the rest (as well as plenty of my own creations). So far, the PCs are the frontrunners for the team, but they've taken a shine to many of the NPCs and like having them around. Also, one of the players has a bit of a tendency to get bored with his characters and likes to switch them out for new ones from time to time, so I'd wanted some decent excuse to be able to allow him to do this without it being disruptive. This is a good thing - I'd kind of intended this to be a very large team with a very deep bench - but I've got to keep things at a manageable scale, too. 30+ characters won't fit in the team jet, and coming up with opposition that can challenge them all at once would be an absolute nightmare (combat would take forever). I'm going to suggest a rotating duty roster, with the PCs as full-time members. 4 or so team slots will be occupied by different NPCs for different missions (sometimes semi-randomly). My questions are these (followed by what my current off-the-cuff answer is, if I've got one): 1) How would you handle the potential for the team to overwhelm its foes? The fact that the team jet only has eight seats helps a bit, but I still fear for the potential for the Ultimates to get swamped by 32 well-prepared heroes after their latest bank robbery! (I plan on simply asking the players to try and keep a max of 8 teammates in the spotlight at any given time for the sake of my own sanity - if the rest are waiting on call, or off on side missions, I'm fine with that.) 2) How would you handle character advancement? That is, how would you allocate character points to the players and NPCs? I'd like the NPCs (even the ones off-screen) to be able to advance too, but giving every team member full points doesn't seem quite right. (I'd assume each PC would get full points as per usual, and perhaps each NPC on active duty as well. Reserve/off-duty members might get half of that. Maybe a floating pool of points the players get to allocate, within certain limits? Voting for who in the roster gets a full or half-share of points? I might just give slightly lower CP rewards across the board, but give to every character equally to avoid bookkeeping issues.) 3) Any random thoughts that you think would be great for a campaign of this type? ie. must-have elements of a team charter, great ways to give the players something fun and unique to do, things to avoid at all costs, etc. Basically, any random useful ideas will be more than appreciated. At this point, I'm quite confident in how things are going. I'm really just looking for some input from you fine folks as to how I can make things even better, or avoid pitfalls in the future - I've never ran a game with a cast of characters this potentially huge! Thanks in advance!
  22. Re: Would you buy... 1. Meh. Not my cup of tea. 2. I WOULD BUY THIS IN A HEARTBEAT. 3. Doesn't seem like a rich enough topic to fill a whole book - I'm not terribly interested in filling out Krim that much, either. 4. Seems like a "must-be-written book", honestly. Takofanes is far, far too powerful for me to ever likely use - but the I feel the same way about Dr. Destroyer, and found the thorough coverage of him in Book of the Destroyer to be both quite an engrossing read and full of potential uses. 5. I'd buy this, but there'd be other areas I'd like to see a treatment of first (like the aforementioned Kingdom of Champions).
  23. Re: Help!!!!!! As LL mentioned, the changes from 4th Edition to 5th edition were fairly minor. Some holes were filled, and pretty much EVERYTHING was expanded and clarified. The changes from 5th to 6th were bigger (the biggest of which, IMHO, the decoupling of figured characteristics from primary characteristics), but the core of the game (and most of the details, in fact) is still the same. I can pretty much guarantee you that if you were to look over the writeup of a 6th Edition version of Foxbat, nearly everything on it would make sense to you (assuming you've still got a decent memory of 4th Edition). The biggest confusion factor for you would likely be the size - characters these days get a whole lot more character points, but it's mostly because the design philosophies behind building characters has changed. In 4th Edition, it wasn't uncommon to see a published character have only 2 or 3 skills, total - these days, there's much more of an impetus to "fill in the blanks". Your character's a super-genius inventor and scientist? He'll probably have several science skills, Systems Operation, Inventor, Electronics and/or Mechanics, PS:Scientist, and more - and them you get into Combat, Social, and Background skills... Bottom line: more of your character is defined on the sheet these days, but overall power levels haven't drastically spiked too much (until you start getting into master villain territory). Grond still has a 90 STR, Dr. Destroyer still has a 35 INT, and Foxbat still has a 23 DEX. FYI - a pretty hefty proportion of the classic villains (like those three, and more) are still kicking around in both 5th and 6th edition and doing fine. It might be worth your time checking out the various villain books. As mentioned, Hero Designer is great, and can really save you a lot of time and number crunching.
  24. Re: How can mutants be discriminated against while other "supers" get a pass?
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