Supreme

Yeah, I could see a few lines in the "Notes" section set aside for that. I was thinking of stuff that would be auto-generated by formulas working off of your character's STR.

I'm working on archetype-specific versions of my famed Champs character sheet (soon to be updated for 5th Ed.). Anyway, one of the thingies I'd like to add is a list of "Strength Facts" which would display what your brick is capable of given his/her strength. What I have so far is "Max Deadlift" which simply displays your current STR's lifting capacity, "Benchpress" which is your lifting capacity * .4, "Max Curl" which is LC*.25 (feel free to post corrections to my math if you know better), and "Equivalent to ___ men". Can anyone else thing of things to put in? Please exclude HTH damage as that's already listed in the self-updating combat maneuvers.

Hey! Can I get those too?

Heck, don't stop there. Most period costume dramas are as unreal to us in modern times (and presented with many historical inaccuracies) as anything from a comic book. Whenever I hear someone denouncing sci-fi, I always say, "Yeah, it's all worthless, like that crap-novel '1984.'" "Oh, well, I don't think of '1984' as a sci-fi novel." Usually if it has "resonance" or meaning for them, they call it "literature".

Just tell them they can't have a power with real points greater than 20 (or whatever limit you prefer). This means that whatever power they get is either really weak, or only works in very, very select conditions (you should also prevent them from taking certain limitations which aren't particularly limiting, like foci) or at END costs so high that they can only use them once a combat. You also might tell them they can't take any combat skills like martial arts, so they can't unbalance the game.

Can I buy CSLs with DCV to counteract the 1/2 DCV penalty with the Sweep maneuver? If so, how much would the levels cost? What I'm effectively aiming for is a low-level version of an auto-fire HTH attack.

Maybe I should just take 2 or 3 CSLs with DCV and cope...

Re: What Would (your character here) Do? My last PC (I'm running currently) Champion has N-Ray and Telescopic vision. That makes most hostage situations much simpler. Just land on the roof while the police go through the motions of conceeding to the villain's demands. Wait until he gets into position and smash right through the roof. Grab him and fly back up through the roof and to a safe distance and let him explode all he wants.

I have actually seen Hal Jordan pull of desolidification at least once, though I can't remember the issue. In general, I don't think that any of the GL rings are limited enough justify any limitation just for the kinds of things they can make. I made a GL knock-off for a game once. As well as "Can't effect the color green" (my character's ring was blue), I took "Can't use invisible power effects advantage". That actually bit me in the tuckus more than once. You may also consider making the VPP require an EGO-based skill roll.

You know I looked for Rapid Attack, and couldn't find it. Is it listed under skills or talents?

If I wanted to purchase levels with DCV, but only for performing sweeps (to counteract the 1/2 DCV penalty) how much would that cost? Also, if I purchased levels with DCV for sweep maneuvers, would the levels get halved as well?

All right. And here's an early digital "sketch". I say "early" because I didn't have time to finish the background.

That's some good stuff! Makes plenty of sense and allows players a wide range of choice for the kind of game they want to play. It also allows GMs in the group a wide range of choice for the campaign they might want to run -- assuming a shared universe, of course.

Re: Homebrew Organizations The main one I created was the Department of Metahuman Activity or DMA. The DMA was originally a branch of the War department during WWII and served as a liason between the Justice Society and the US military (the Justice Society was a "deputized" volunteer organization that had no official government sanction). After the war the DMA was moved to the Department of Justice where, during the ebb in metahuman activity between 1948 and 1959 it became largely a research organization. In 1959, when a new crop of meta-humans surfaced, DMA Director Clark Kent organized several meta-humans into the first official government super-hero team, the so-called Avengers. The Avengers are still an active super-hero team, but are not the only ones. Currently, the DMA employs a handful of super-hero organizations. Some serve as law-enforcement teams like the Avengers or the Protectors (PC team). Other teams, such as the Defenders, serve as consultants.

I always saw origins grouped as follows: Inheritor The Inheritor is the person who is super-powered by nature of their birth. Whether their parents were super-humans, aliens, or geneticists wanting that special baby, the Inheritor is their progeny. What makes the Inheritor different from the others is that the Inheritor spent virtually all their lives with their powers. This can make it harder for them to understand "normal life". Examples: Superman, J'onn J'onzz Accident The Accident is the person who grows up as a normal human, but suddenly something happens which turns them into something else. Like the Inheritor, the Accident has powers that are (now) an innate part of their being. However, unlike the Inheritor, they retain that sense of what it was like to be human. Examples: Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four Self-Made The Self-Made is someone who consciously and deliberately made themselves what they are. This can mean that they trained themselves to be masters of unarmed combat, or they designed a suit of powered armor. In some cases the Self-Made can actually have found a way to give themselves powers without the need for an artificial mechanism. Examples: Batman, Dr. Strange, Iron Man I suppose this is more of a grouping of where the powers came from, as opposed to the events that lead them to a life of crime-fighting/-committing. Still, it's a good idea to keep it separate from the the "Because I Must" list. As an aside, though many would want to put Marvelesque mutants like the X-Men in the Inheritor group, they are actually "Accidents". This is because they spend their childhoods and formative years as normals, then become super-humans. Thus they retain their "I remember being human" aspect which is definitive of the Accidents.

Agreed. Though I do like that they've opened up a way to purchase intermediate levels of all the mass/volume-changing powers. Particularly when it comes to Shrinking. In my Opinion Supreme, Shrinking gets kind of sick after three levels. Your DCV becomes so high that you'll never get hit by anybody. When I put that in a framework with other mass/volume-changing powers I wind up with a character who can grow or DI to a 60 STR, but can only shrink to 9" tall. That always seemed so lame to me. Except when he's in his Secret ID, the Atom never stands at more than 3" tall.

I've seen "Looker," and I can't see the Looker gun as an entangle because an entangle stays in place until broken. The Looker gun specifically freezes a person in place for one hour. That sounds like a transform, with the recovery condition being "once one hour has elapsed."

I was just having an interesting e-conversation with a friend of mine about motivations for super-heroes. He said that there are five classic reasons why someone uses their powers for good: Idealistic (Superman, most Golden-Age Characters) Avenging/atoning for a personal tragedy (Batman, Spider-Man) Inherits heroic "mantle" (Silver Age Green Lantern, Buffy) Thrill-Seeker (Booster Gold) Reluctant/Shoved into it (Cyborg, Hulk) I added: Apprentice/Inspired by another hero (Robin, 2nd Nite-Owl) Your thoughts?

Yeah, I know the Cricket has more than a few weaknesses. I took the relatively low defs and SPD because I really wanted to keep this character as close within "human limits" as possible. And we don't generally allow CSLs for beginning characters.

Update Here's my most current update of the Iron Cricket.

Personally, I can understand why there wouldn't be that many alien races developed. In the comics keeping track of the alien races can be a Pain Supreme. Why do you think so many of the DC aliens races are all dead? Alien races open so many cans of worms. Do they know about Earth? Why don't they conquer us? Why don't they contact us? What is their technology based upon, etc. As an aside, a friend of mine always had one simple rule for any of his players when developing an alien race as part of their character's background: individual aliens have no more physical abilities than we do. That is to say the average lskjlkjhvsdian should come to 0 points, just like the average person. If your PC is a lskjlkjhvsdian, then their powers should make them just as extraordinary to the other lskjlkjhvsdians as they do to us. Personally, I think that the best way to develop alien races, but maintain a good reason why they don't - or aren't supposed to - interfere with us is that the various alien governments have signed some kind of treaty that prevents interference with non-FTL civilizations. This would make Earth a kind of a giant game-preserve/conservation territory. This doesn't mean that other alien races won't try to interfere with us secretly, and in the process create all kinds of super-humans. Just a Thought Supreme.

Exactly. Of course one way to balance things out it to have a lot of problem solving. especially in social situations. Then you put a restriction on the alien characters that they can't purchase any social or cultural skills. This means the aliens can't purchase (off the top of my head): conversation, interrogation, streetwise, bureaucratics, acting, shadowing (I think shadowing implies a knowledge or understanding of how people move and walk through city streets naturally), combat driving or piloting (any Earth vehicles, anyway), any Earth languages (though you may want to let them purchase English so that the human PCs can communicate with them, otherwise you'd have to work out some other form of communication), any Earth-bound knowledge or science skills, professional skills, etc. The remaining challenge would be to keep the game from revolving around the aliens. This would be quite challenging as the human PCs are basically spending the game clearing the way for the alien PCs to lay-low the supernatural threat with their powers. Another thing you could do would be to put a really low point limit on all characters, or even a maximum real point limit on alien powers. This means that they'll have powers which will be useful, but with so many limitations that it'll be hard to use them most of the time.

I once tried to design a detect modelled after Geordi LaForge's VISOR on Star Trek: TNG. This was in the days of 4th Ed. It was something like... Detect: EM Spectrum, as sense, range, discriminatory, targetting With 5th Ed, I'd probably tack on N-Ray since he can sometimes see through walls with it.

I am Honored Supreme. Yeah, one of the reasons why I haven't played too many martial artists before is because I couldn't come up with a personality and background I wanted to play. I prefer to play characters like Spider-Man who joke around a lot and act like little stand-up comedians on the battlefield. I had a hard time imagining someone who spent 10+ years training to become a super-hero doing that. Those kind of people tend to be really solemn and even socially awkward (and I've known people who devote their lives to becoming outrageously good martial artists, they're not fun to hang out with). This origin let me have my cake and eat it. I told the origin story to the Wife Supreme with whom my stories are usually met with supportive, but otherwise placid reception by virtue of the sheer volume. She laughed out loud.

Ah, good point about the Find Weakness. I'd probably use it with the Fast Strike since the OCV so high. The character is still in his "rough draft" state. I'm going to "iron" him out some more over the weekend (I don't pun much, so enjoy when it happens ) and finish up the promised sketch. I had another thought/question having to do with martial arts. If I wanted to have Iron Cricket whip out the old martial arts weapons, aside from buying the appropriate familiarities, would I also have to buy maneuvers to use them, or could I use the weapons with my previously purchased maneuvers?