Supreme

Re: Dealing with Invisible Heroes In other words, Marcie from "Buffy." OK. First of all, never let a player buy invisibility versus everything (is that even possible). Second, the master villain(s) of the game, must have a sense to detect this person. Third, introduce a few more villains with either enhanced senses to either detect the character, or warn of his presense (people can still shoot "blind" and get him, especially if they spread their autofire attacks, or use AE). Fourth, keep in mind the things that still make characters like that detectable to normal senses: foot prints left behind, suddenly unconscious villains, attacks not bought with invisible power effects (a character with invisibility to all hearing should still make noise when they punch someone), etc.

Re: Need Help with Some Villain "Lackeys" It does and it doesn't. Though it would probably be a bit more period-appropriate, I prefer the neuro-transmitter feedback I mentioned earlier to the "you have to have faith, Mr. Vincent." I know it seems like I'm being arbitrary, because I am, but I've just seen and read too many "powered by your emotions" stories. So the reaction is powered by the personality of the vampire itself, not by the cross-weilder. Also, my way I get to have the vampires cringe at the symbols of the Golden Age Justice Brigade -- something I know the players will love (an adventure to be kicked off at the beginning after the unveiling of statues of the Justice Brigade). I'm also, definitely going to have Silver be counter-agent to the "strange chemicals" ("Omenium?"). These chemicals would actually be a class of chemicals with a common component that Omenus will repeatedly try to isolate with a certain amount of disaster each time. The first time, Omenus will accidentally "kill" himself and come back. Omenus is actually a sci-fi Lich. This requires him to go to various lengths to keep himself alive. It also allows him to appear to "die" several times only to return later in a different form. Another time, when an experiment goes awry, he is forced to flush it all down the river (the "Lieber" river in honor of Kirby's partner, Stan Lee). Unfortunately it doesn't die, but Omenus will get the idea that he should call upon the super-heroes to stop it and see how tough they are.

Re: Need Help with Some Villain "Lackeys"

Re: Invisible to Infrared only I'm confused, I thought you could just buy the invisibility per individual sense now.

Re: Need Help with Some Villain "Lackeys" Now there's an idea! But I wouldn't use Superman and Batman, but symbols of the Justice Brigade, the Golden Age team of the campaign which takes place before this one! Eeeeexcellent! And the idea is that such symbols trigger neurochemicals in our brains which, in combination with the vamp-chemicals, causes some kind of reaction which sets off all the pain-receptors or something. This could, of course, lead to finding the cure. As for the werewolves, I don't mind opening that door, but I'm not wild about the sight or specific light frequencies of the full moon. This means that they can force the wolves to change back with a darkness field. Isn't there any other phenomena consistently associated with the full moon?

Re: Need Help with Some Villain "Lackeys" I like the silver, but not the reflected light. Light has two applicable attributes here: intensity and wavelength. All light that you can see is in the same wavelength range: visible light. How bright it is is determined by the intensity, which is to say the total amount of photons. All light coming from the Moon is just reflected from the Sun. There's no fundamental difference except for intensity, which is much lower. Thing is, if I say the werewolf chemical (I'm going to use "strange chemicals" btw, instead of nanites, as it's more period-apprpriate) activates at lower intensities, then what's to stop it at lower intensities during the other phases of the Moon, or in a room with no windows? Saying the exact combination of frequencies and intensity of a night with a Full Moon could work...

Re: Need Help with Some Villain "Lackeys"

Re: Need Help with Some Villain "Lackeys" Not bad (though the Moon's gravitational force doesn't change during the full Moon). Could be an intentional control trigger too. I plan for each of the minions to have various control vs. independant thought issues (the theme of this villain is control: political, personal, social, etc.). Vampires are very powerful and very intellectually capable, but are the most likely to turn on you (as Omenus will learn when he turns the girl friend of one of the PCs into a vampire, his "Immortal Beloved"). Werewolves are very powerful, but hard as heck to control so you make them only turn at select times (the goop that they carry in their blood streams will, of course, change color dramatically on the full moon giving the PCs their signal). So they'll change at the precise moment of the full Moon (I've got a chart) and the effect will last for four hours or so (give or take an EGO roll). I was going to have the next set of minions be zombies who are the least powerful, but the easiest to control (unfortunately for Omenus when the PCs discover the transmission frequency for the commands). Trouble is, this is a game set seven years before "Night of the Living Dead" so...

Re: Need Help with Some Villain "Lackeys" That's a good one. I was going to say that the drinking of arterial blood solves some of the conservation of energy problems that vampires, and any other super-human, have. They drink blood full of oxygenated iron and glucose, and all the other nutritional goodies (not to mention the adrenaline and epinephrine) so their calories are already prepped and ready to go. But your idea works well too.

Re: Super Metals and Alloys According to uber-comics-guru Kurt Busiek, Adamantium was created --by accident-- by the same scientist who later made Cap's shield. Because the shield was an accident, he was never able to recreate the same material. Thus, Adamantium is an inferior substance to the shield, and this Adamantium cannot be completely "indestructable." When people like Stryker refer to it as such, they're probably just being (slightly) hyperbolic. Either that, or they're just commenting on the fact that they've never known anything to break it. Technically, any metal can be worn down by applying enough electrical charge over time. Just the fact that it's a metal (correct me if I'm wrong science-guys) means that it readily gives up its electrons. When that happens, the atoms that have given up their electrons become positively charged ions, which then repel each other. Thus if you apply enough current and drive off enough electrons, the remaining Adamantium atoms or molecules will drive each other away... just like family members at Thanksgiving.

Cometeer, please do not read past this point! Okay, he's gone. Here's the deal. The villain for my upcoming Marvel Age game is a Dr. Doom homage named "Dr. Omenus," self-appointed ruler of Kirbania. He's a guy who uses technology salvaged from a crashed alien space-ship to simulate various sorcerous effects. His "lackeys" are technologically-simulate monsters, such as vampires, werewolves, etc. The underlying idea is that the crashed space-ship leaks all kinds of radiation, nanites (or 60s equivalent thereof), ooze, etc. that creates these things. Thus, the Kirbanian monsters are actually the basis for all those legends. Now I can think of (pseudo-)scientific reasons behind most of the monstrous effects. However, there are a few I can't, like: [*]Why a werewolf would be caused to change only during a full-moon [*]Any way that vampires could be repulsed by holy items. Naturally, I'm going to have to take some liberties with some of these legends, if for no other reason that to spring some surprises on the players ("What do you mean wooden stakes don't kill them???"). Also, if any one wants to suggest Eastern European folkloric monsters other than the run-of-the-mill vampires, werewolves, etc. that'd be great.

Re: Early Marvel Age x Silver Age I think "fooled" is more like it. That was FAKE?!? The author went to some length in the back of the book about where and how he dug up which details and which ones he had to interpret and such. That was an elaborate ruse. I am Embarrassed Supreme!

Re: Sneak vs Mental Awareness? I'm not sure if Mental Defense is what should be used to conceal someone from what is basically a Detect: Minds skill. It sounds like saying you should buy more PD to conceal yourself from Radar Sense or Normal Sight.

Re: Is It Worth The Points? It seems to me that the onus is not on the GM to make sure that the players get the most bang for their buck. It's the GM's job to make sure that the player get to do the kinds of things that they envision for their character in a general sense (i.e., mysteries for detectives, slug-fests for bricks, etc.). What I have observed as a kind of GM evil is preventing players from using abilities that the GM just doesn't like. I've gotten into similar discussions about buying detective skills vs buying high-powered enhanced senses. I've made characters who spend more than 30 points just on senses (N-ray, telescopic, general enhanced, etc.) and then use the senses to do the detective work. People (primarily on these boards) object and say that I should be buying detective skills. Well... A. detective skills cost a lot less B. my character doesn't have the background to justify having such skills If I'm GM and a player buys something I don't like, for whatever reason, I say so at the beginning. True, my players often get frustrated with me, but I think it makes for a smoother game later on.

Re: Early Marvel Age x Silver Age Personally, when talking about this stuff I always distinguish between the Silver Age and the Marvel or "Atomic" Age. The styles of the two were always significantly different in virtually every measurable way. DC's characters were always respectable professionals in their thirties who lived in imaginary cities. DC's stories were always "cleaner" because they got the most heat during the McCarthy-era Kefauver hearings which eventually led to the comics code authority, as well as Wertham's book "Seduction of the Innocent." Charges of sadism and homosexuality were primarily directed at Superman and Batman, not Captain America and the Human Torch. The powers-that-were at DC have also always felt that they needed to maintain an air of "respectability" for their characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman as they are often seen as "American Icons." The "Silver Age" is primarily the DC line and started with the first appearance of the Barry Allen Flash in Showcase #4. During this time Marvel doesn't have a single super-hero title. They have only Atomic-Age horror monsters and teen romance comics. When DC released the new Justice League in 1959, it was a huge hit. Fans have always gone bonkers for crossovers. According to legend, the heads of DC and Marvel (I don't remember either of their names, sorry) were playing golf and the Marvel guy was regaled with tales of how well JLA was selling. So the Marvel head when back to his head-writer of the time, Stan Lee, and told him to write a team super-hero book. This was odd because the JLA, like all other team books before it, was composed primarily of pre-existing characters who appeared in their own titles. Fortunately, Stan and his buddy/colleague Jack Kirby had a source of inspiration. Stan and Jack had recently attended a party of a scientist named Reed Richards who was doing work on something called "unstable molecules." Seeing the dysfunctional dynamics of Reed's "family" which consisted of him, his fiance Susan Strom, her brother Johnny, and his old friend, ex-boxer Ben Grimm, gave Stan and idea. He would write a comic about a dysfunctional family of super-heroes who would fight each other as much as they fought super-villains. That was 1961. The rest is comics history.

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing? Except that Lee has expressly stated this in interviews about the X-Men many times. He has even characterized himself as "copping out" on their origins. Check out his interviews in the X-Men DVDs and you'll see what I mean.

Re: Building characters of different sizes Yeah, and some of us think that it's justifyable to assign OCV levels as well since the smaller characters are trying to hit relatively larger targets. Of course if you really wanted to split hairs, you'd also have to make adjustments for reach.

Re: What's the best method of introducing HERO System to newbies I actually know a GM who insists that the only way to teach people the system is to have them make their own characters. While that idea has certain merits, people who are new to gaming in general might find that a bit too daunting. My system is to give them "cheat sheets" which summarize the most common stats they have to refer to: stat rolls (make sure they understand the difference between the stat and the stat roll), phases, combat values, defenses, END, and STUN. It's also important to teach them the difference between rolling to succeed and damage.

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing? Well, I can actually see people being more phobic about the X-Men than the Avengers. The X-Men, and the other mutants, represent mankind's evolultionary replacement, where as the (non-mutant) Avengers tend to represent people who have benefitted from accidents and use those benefits in mankind's service. True, the idea of the mutant itself is dumber than a sack of hammers - or getting drunk with Mightybec, but taking that idea as a given it follows a certain internal logic. And that was interesting about 40 years ago. Let's give a new idea a try hm? Of course Thor is a whole 'nother ball of uru-wax. He represents the confirmation of the ancient Norse pagan relgion. Holy crapeth! Does that mean that the world will end in Ragnarok and not the second coming of Christ?!?! Think that might cause something of an uproar? And when it comes to always being hated vs always being loved, I think that it's much more realistic to have the characters being controversial and to have the attitudes about them to be mercurial. When it comes to our own real-life celebrities we laud and boo them whenever the wind shift. I think the next time I run a campaign, I'm going to have the PCs become keenly aware of how elections effect their activities.

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing? I'm pretty much sick of the entire "Dark Champions" schtick. Yeah, there's potential in a story about heroes who fight for a people that will never thank them, or there WAS the first 8649 times. Now it's a little old. And you know what else is old as HELL??? Mutants and anti-Mutant hysteria. Stan Lee originally came up with it as a cop-out for thinking up origins for the X-Men. He couldn't think of an origin, then decided that if he just said "mutants" the problem would be solved. Forty years later, we're still paying for his laziness.

Re: April Fool's, Champions style Good idea. You realize that if they just kept doing that outside a bank or something, the heroes would eventually breach bank security to get inside and see what was going on... That's a whole can of Cthulhoid worms right there.

Re: THE ULTIMATE BRICK -- What Do *You* Want To See? One thing we could have in the TUB is and expansion on BODY and DEF stats and how they interact with various effects of strength and density increase. Thus, if your character has two levels of density increase he can't walk over ground that is less than X Def per hex without damaging it. An object that weighs X tons must have Y Def per hex to support its own weight. Etc.

Re: Iron Age Challenge 2!

Re: Mental Entangles and the Weak-Willed This reminds me of the issue of the Fantastic Four where the FF and the Avengers have to take down Galactus before he eats the world (again). They're hitting G for all their worth and slowly eroding him, but too slowly. Then Dr. Strange walks up and does a little wave of his hand. Galactus screams and collapses. When they ask, Strange replies that he cast a spell which confronted G with a vision of ALL the people he's killed over the ages.

Re: Iron Age Challenge 2! I'd rather see a reverse of these challenges: convert Iron Age characters (Punisher, Lobo, etc.) to the Golden Age. Hmm... maybe I'll start a thread.